"To Empathize is to Civilize" Is it Possible We Can Extend Empathy?
Is it possible we can extend empathy to the entire human race? This is a great video - you can listen to it, but there's also some great drawings that illustrate the lecture. We have to be able to imagine empathy in the entire human race in order to create it. This is based on research and technology developed in the last decade. Please watch or listen to this 10 min. video if you care about our future.
Here are some quotes/ideas from it:
In the last 10 years there have been some interesting developments...that challenge our assumptions.
MRI brain scan studies on primates and humans show that we're soft-wired with mirror neurons...I can feel what you're doing...as if we're experiencing it ourselves.
The first drive is a drive to actually belong. Babies in nurseries will cry when they hear another baby cry.
Selfhood increases empathic development... When a child learns about birth and death... they learn how fragile life is... It's tough to be alive on this planet.
There is no empathy in Heaven. Empathy is the opposite of Utopia... because there's no suffering and mortality.
Our brains are not wired the same as they were in the past.
Empathy is the invisible hand... to stretch our sensibilities to one another.
Theological consciousness allows us to think of like religious people as extended family.
In the Industrial Revolution we created a "nation state" and we see fellow countrymen as extended family - these are fictional boundaries.
Why stop at nation state identity? Why stop at theological identity?
When the earthquake hit Haiti, Twitter and other communications sent out messages and resulted in a response to the tragedy.
We have to begin thinking as an extended family. We don't have to give up our identities to do that.
Let's rethink human nature, bring our empathetic sociability to rethink the institutions in society.
Here are some quotes/ideas from it:
In the last 10 years there have been some interesting developments...that challenge our assumptions.
MRI brain scan studies on primates and humans show that we're soft-wired with mirror neurons...I can feel what you're doing...as if we're experiencing it ourselves.
The first drive is a drive to actually belong. Babies in nurseries will cry when they hear another baby cry.
Selfhood increases empathic development... When a child learns about birth and death... they learn how fragile life is... It's tough to be alive on this planet.
There is no empathy in Heaven. Empathy is the opposite of Utopia... because there's no suffering and mortality.
Our brains are not wired the same as they were in the past.
Empathy is the invisible hand... to stretch our sensibilities to one another.
Theological consciousness allows us to think of like religious people as extended family.
In the Industrial Revolution we created a "nation state" and we see fellow countrymen as extended family - these are fictional boundaries.
Why stop at nation state identity? Why stop at theological identity?
When the earthquake hit Haiti, Twitter and other communications sent out messages and resulted in a response to the tragedy.
We have to begin thinking as an extended family. We don't have to give up our identities to do that.
Let's rethink human nature, bring our empathetic sociability to rethink the institutions in society.