The role of empathy in human thought. How did we evolve separate value systems?

The human mind is not as flexible as we might like to think. The most obvious place to see this is in the political sphere. Knee jerk responses to frames are the norm, not the exception. The most common place to see this is in the mass media. Political propagandists have known this for centuries.
The interesting irony here is the way the human mind has evolved as a utilizer of the results of science and engineering that are used to produce profitable technology. We have become very dependent on these devices without total awareness of how they have changed us. Along with all this has been the significant advances in knowledge for other reasons, but that has always been allowed by those in control because they realize it helps get the profitable stuff done and gives an illusion of freedom.
The political variations of interpretation of the word “freedom” are myriad. Those interpretations arise out of systems of values. Those systems of values arise out of culture and political practice in a circular manner because they contribute to the composition of culture and political practice. Cognitive scientists such as George Lakoff have Written much about this. He has built a model of the conservative and progressive minds around the values they espouse. Much of what he attributes to these opposing world views can be interpreted in terms of empathy and its role in the way the mind evolves.
We are now in a period of recent history where these ideas are being displayed in a very naked way. In particular, we have elected a President who seems incapable of experiencing empathy. The reaction to his behavior has been mainly interpreted as an extreme form of narcissism. The two ideas are very closely related especially in terms of the development of the individual mind.
The ability of a person like Donald Trump to rise to the leadership of this nation has to be interpreted in the context of a relatively unexplored relationship between individual psychology and group behavior.
The things that Trump has nakedly flaunted as an individual and incorporated into his relationship with the population are not new. What is new is the shedding of any attempt to hide them other than by a very transparent propaganda technique.
Trump exhibits no sign of classical empathy. He also seems to contradict this by displaying a very large capacity for something just like it. If we were to include passions such as racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and others in those human feelings an empathic person has access to then he is extremely empathic in the usual sense.
Being surrounded by Trump supporters makes this very clear to me. They like him because he expresses what they feel. This cuts us adrift from any classical moral bench marks.
There are others, Paul Ryan for example, who see morality in the Ayn Rand framework and have much in common with Trump. Ryan, however, is still nowhere as deep into the narcissistic trends this way of thinking produces. Ryan, like Trump, has the capacity of touching voters and getting the desired response.
This area of psychological research is still relatively young. It should progress handily with the drama that is unfolding day by day.
Meanwhile it makes it even more clear that existing models are far behind reality. We have work to do if we are to get anywhere before it is too late (if it is not already).

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

but I am wary of taking part in the important discussion I hope it will lead to. I have been thinking about this too, about the difference between people who care about children being slaughtered in Syria and people who don't. What concerns me most is that I have had to face the possibility that lots of Democrats don't care about the slaughter we've unleashed in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, the several countries I can't name in Africa, and the nuclear weapons saber-rattling we're doing in Eastern Europe. It's not on their personal devices or their attention spectra, possibly because they don't care about the suffering and death of other people, including children.

So here is the thought that I'm leery of admitting. I'm concerned that we are losing the instinct of nurturing, the process of learning to love, which may have been for centuries a survival instinct but now may not be. I'm concerned that we may not be taking enough care of our children to teach them that we love them enough to be with them. Please tell me I'm off course.

up
0 users have voted.
don mikulecky's picture

@Linda Wood I wish you were. IT has been developing for a long time. The genocidal origin of our Nation set its course, but it was not new then.

up
0 users have voted.

An idea is not responsible for who happens to be carrying it at the time. It stands or it falls on its own merits.

thanatokephaloides's picture

@Linda Wood

So here is the thought that I'm leery of admitting. I'm concerned that we are losing the instinct of nurturing, the process of learning to love, which may have been for centuries a survival instinct but now may not be. I'm concerned that we may not be taking enough care of our children to teach them that we love them enough to be with them. Please tell me I'm off course.

Good news: you are off course, at least as the human race as a whole is concerned.

don mikulecky's objections are quite valid, of course. But, in my humble opinion, he is making one error: He is implicating the human mind in all of these American political doings. I respectfully suggest that, with respect to most modern American politics, the human mind -- hell, the mammalian brain in its entirety -- "has no dog in this fight". American politicians as a whole, these days, are working from the most primitive parts of their reptilian brains; and yes, I realize I just insulted every cold-blooded land dweller on our Planet for which insult I apologize. If the mammalian brain is involved at all, it's not on the evolutionary level of the great cats, much less that of the pithecine apes we're supposed to be.

American power politics, and the chrome-plated .45 caliber assholes who carry it out, are a disgrace to the entire human race. They are carried out by those who are biologically human, but are acting as human beings in no other publicly detectable sense.

And as for love, nurturing, empathy, and altruism, we humans have always needed these things and always will, Ayn Rand's tormented sophistry notwithstanding. The facts remain forever: we have piss-poor sight, smell, and hearing by animal standards; we are dependent on technologies (clothing and shelter) for our basic environmental protection; we synthesize almost no essential nutrients of any kind (except for some, but not all, of our Vitamin D needs) and must extract all of them, vitamins and minerals alike, from the food we eat.

The bottom line has never changed: We either learn to love and nurture one another, or we all end up equally dead. True throughout the past, true now, will be true forever, world without end, (r)amen! Wink

The existence of places like c99p -- and there are more of them as time passes -- are evidence that the majority of actual Americans just aren't going to take this crap any more. And it is my opinion that we shall prevail. The only question (again, as don mikulecky has pointed out) is: can we do it in time to keep ourselves and our progeny alive?

I hope so.

up
0 users have voted.

"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

don mikulecky's picture

@thanatokephaloides Trying to isolate this to American values is missing the point. American values are a direct extension of European Colonialism which is like many other imperial moveme3nts in human history. What we are talking about has much deeper roots. My book with Jim Coffman puts more meat on these bones: Global Insanity: How Homo sapiens Lost Touch with Reality while Transforming the World

The Global Economy that sustains the civilized world is destroying the biosphere. As a result, civilization, like the Titanic, is on a collision course with disaster. But changing course via the body politic appears to be well nigh impossible, given that much of the populace lives in denial. Why is that? And how did we get into such a fix? In this essay, biologists James Coffman and Donald Mikulecky argue that the reductionist model of the world developed by Western civilization misrepresents life, undermining our ability to regulate and adapt to the accelerating anthropogenic transformation of the world entrained by that very model. An alternative worldview is presented that better accounts for both the relational nature of living systems and the developmental phenomenology that constrains their evolution. Development of any complex system reinforces specific dependencies while eliminating alternatives, reducing the diversity that affords adaptive degrees of freedom: the more developed a system is, the less potential it has to change its way of being. Hence, in the evolution of life most species become extinct. This perspective reveals the limits that complexity places on knowledge and technology, bringing to light our hubristically dysfunctional relationship with the natural world and increasingly tenuous connection to reality. The inescapable conclusion is that, barring a cultural metamorphosis that breaks free of deeply entrenched mental frames that made us what we are, continued development of the Global Economy will lead inexorably to the collapse of civilization.
up
0 users have voted.

An idea is not responsible for who happens to be carrying it at the time. It stands or it falls on its own merits.

janis b's picture

@Linda Wood

I'm concerned that we are losing the instinct of nurturing, the process of learning to love, which may have been for centuries a survival instinct but now may not be.

When I consider your concern, I am aware that it is a valid concern; but when I look around me, I feel fortified by our innate instinct to love and be loved. I'm trusting that instinct prevails.

up
0 users have voted.
Steven D's picture

@Linda Wood

1) How many people (not politicians) actually know the US is responsible for killing so many in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen,and god knows where else all on Obama's watch? The media sure didn't tell them.

2) We all have the capacity for empathy to some extent at birth, but most of us have it drummed out of us by our cultural, educational, religious and political institutions at an early age. We are a society at present that values individual achievement and financial success over collective action to improve the lives of all people. It should come as no surprise to anyone that the conservative forces in the country targeted these institutions after the Democrats success in passing Civil rights laws in the mid 60s and the antiwar protests against Vietnam.

up
0 users have voted.

"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

Aramis Wyler's picture

@Linda Wood I think you're off course.

As near as I can tell, your premise is that because many (if not most) citizens of the united states do not care about the slaughter of children in Syria et al, we may be losing the ability to love children at all.

My major problem with this is that it implies that anyone, anywhere, ever cared enough about the death of foreign people on the other side of the planet to do more than pause between sips of tea. It also suggests that there is really no difference - instinctively mind, not consciously - between caring for a child one bore and caring for a child you didn't know existed, whose family you didn't know existed, in some country farther away than you'll ever travel.

People die in droves for terrible and heartless reasons every day. They always have. To suggest that in this age with much better communications that we've become less able to nurture our children simply because now we're physically capable of knowing about some small portion of the death elsewhere in the world is quite off course indeed. If the internet was down and we didn't know people were being killed in Syria would we become better parents? Is the news itself making us worse parents because we learned that someone did something bad? No, I don't think so.

I see some excellent points being raised in other threads and this one that we are an offshoot from a colonial empire and so have tendencies in that regard. That is probably true, but there is no country of people who are giving their lives to save strangers on other continents like they would for their own children, and there never has been.

This is not an instinct we've lost. Selfless devotion to the children of strangers in a far off land, let alone our enemies, is not an instinct we've ever had. If anything those instincts are insular and hostile to outsiders.

I hope that we can overcome them with conscious effort one day, but becoming aware of a limitation we hadn't previously realized in ourselves does not mean that we've become less capable. It means that we've become more capable because now we can see something we were blind to previously.

up
0 users have voted.

Currently reading: How to Create a Mind - Ray Kurzweil
janis b's picture

I actually think that the human mind is infinitely flexible (plastic), but that for many, its secret lies buried.

up
0 users have voted.

@lotlizard
I liked everything he said. Especially the part about the $6 trillion we've spent in the Middle East and that you know where we are there. These are moments when he actually gives me hope. And then there's Yemen.

up
0 users have voted.
mhagle's picture

We haven't lost our instinct for love. It is still there at the core of our being.

I am currently participating in this online study course. There are lectures, question/answer opportunities, and weekly exercises. It is not associated with any religion.

Here are some of the weekly exercises:

  1. Put your hand on your heart and think of something/someone you are deeply grateful for. Hold it there for a period of time.
  2. When you are out in public, look at a stranger and think "I wish you well." Repeat with four or more other people.
  3. A breathing exercise - breathe in the pain of the world ... Breathe out compassion for the world.
  4. When engaging in conversation with another person, think to yourself "I love you." Then truly listen.

Too simplistic to be worthwhile?

up
0 users have voted.

Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

@mhagle
Very worthwhile. Beautiful. And very helpful. I know there is love in the world. I know most people love and are loved. I am gathering on my computer hundreds of photographs of refugees from our war of choice. All of these images express love and anguish. And they move me every day to do something about this catastrophe. Their love is very visible.

But I am afraid, because of the manipulation of our voting public, that there is somehow a loss of love and of compassion that has happened to our country. It scares me. It is not normal. I'm frightened to think where it is coming from. It's not just the voting public. The Congress is walking around not caring about the carnage they are authorizing!

up
0 users have voted.
mhagle's picture

@Linda Wood

I am glad you are posting info about the wars. True that many here in the USA do not pay attention.

Sad

up
0 users have voted.

Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo