The Science of Empathy

When you witness someone accidentally slamming their fingers in a car door and hunching in pain, hand pinched firm in place, do you wince with sympathetic pain? I sure do!

Jeremy Rifkin suggests that the empathy this demonstrates can also be naturally extrapolated to encompass caring about others. ALL others. He ultimately suggests that if we tune into this soft wired ability of ours, it could be the key to our collective survival.

Here is the RSA Animate enhanced video of his hypothesis which I came across while reading the Pronoia Resources blog:

This brings to mind a quote from His Holiness, the Dalai Lama my dear friend Tina shared recently:

His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Photo by flickr.com/36668473@N05

“There is a common perception that compassion is, if not actually an impediment, at least irrelevant to professional life. Personally, I would argue that not only is it relevant, but that when compassion is lacking, our activities are in danger of becoming destructive. This is because when we ignore the question of the impact our actions have on others’ well-being, inevitably we end up hurting them.”

To wit, Fast Company recently interviewed Alex Bogusky, big business marketing wunderkind, who said:

“the greatness that matters more is the greatness people achieve through helping others, through collaborating, more than the greatness that’s achieved by grabbing, getting, or building all you can. The ‘you’ needs to go away for there to be the real greatness to things.”

Don’t worry my conservative and / or affluent friends, this does not mean that I expect you to give away all your hard earned wealth and position to the lazy loafers with their hands out while their dirty malnourished children languish at their feet …

What does it mean? Allow me to quote Cory Morningstar from her post “Eyes Wide Shut the TckTckTck exposé”:

“Prospects for human and other living species do ultimately hinge on whether or not global capitalism is replaced by an entirely different economic system. A system based on fairness and ethics where the wealthy elites do not exploit nor prey on their fellow human beings and our shared natural environment. Where associated producers and consumers democratically plan and harmonize their own economic activities based upon reasonably accurate information on the consequences of different options. The sooner that such a change happens, the happier, the healthier and the safer both society and the environment will be.”

So yeah, just some things I’ve been thinking about lately. Have a great weekend party people! Remember, be excellent to each other.