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RSAnimate

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www.theRSA.org

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Jeremy Rifkin. The Empathic Civilisation.

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In the last ten years

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there's been some very interesting developments in evolutionary biology

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neurocognitive science, child development, research and many other fields

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which is beginning to challenge some of these long held shibboleths that we've had

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about human nature and the meaning of the human journey.

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But, there is another frame of reference emerging in the sciences

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which is quite interesting and really challenges these assumptions.

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And with that, the institutions that we have created based on those assumptions

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our educational institutions, our business practices, our governing institutions, etc.

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Let me take you back to the early 1990s

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sleepy little laboratory in Parma, Italy.

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And scientists had a MRI brain scanning machine on a macaque monkey

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as the macaque monkey was trying to open up a nut.

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They wanted to see how the neurons would light up.

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So the monkey's trying to open up the nut, the neurons light up

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and just by serendipity, and this is how science sometimes happens

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a human being walked in the laboratory, I don't know if it was by mistake

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and he was hungry and saw the nuts and opened up one of the nuts

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and tried to crack it open.

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The macaque monkey was totally shocked

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because, who was this invader in his laboratory?

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And he didn't move, he just gazed at this human trying to open up the nut

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just like he had done a few seconds earlier

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and then the scientist looked on the MRI brain scanner

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the same exact neurons were lighting up

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when he observed the human being opening the nut

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as when the monkey opened the nut,

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and the scientists had not a clue as to what this was

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they thought the MRI machine had broken.

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They then began to put MRI brain scanning machines on other primates

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especially chimpanzees with our big neocortex.

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Then they went to humans, and what they found over and over again

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is something called 'Mirror Neurons'.

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And that is that we are apparently soft-wired

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some of the primates, all humans

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we suspect elephants, we're not sure about dolphins and dogs, we've just begun.

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But all humans are soft-wired with mirror neurons

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so that, if I'm observing you, your anger, your frustration

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your sense of rejection, your joy, whatever it is, and I can feel what you're doing

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the same neurons will light up in me as if I'm having that experience myself.

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Now, this isn't all that unusual.

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We know if a spider goes up someone's arm

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and I'm observing it going up your arm, I'm going to get a creepy feeling.

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We take this for granted, but we're actually soft-wired

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to actually experience another's plight as if we're experiencing it ourself.

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But mirror neurons are just the beginning of a whole range of research

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going on in neuropsychology and brain research and in child development

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that suggests that we are actually soft-wired not for aggression

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and violence and self interest and utilitarianism

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that we are actually soft-wired for sociability

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'attachment' as John Bowlby might have said

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affection, companionship, and that the first drive is the drive to actually 'belong'.

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It's an empathic drive.

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What is empathy? Very complicated.

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When little babies are in a nursery and one baby cries

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the other babies will cry in response, they just don't know why.

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That's empathic distress, it's built into their biology.

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Around two and half years of age, a child actually can begin to recognize himself in a mirror.

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That's when you begin to mature empathy as a cultural phenomenon.

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And then, once a toddler can identify themselves

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then they know that if they're observing someone else have a feeling

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they know that if they feel something, it's because they're feeling it because someone else has it.

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They're two separate beings.

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Selfhood that goes together with empathic development.

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Increasing selfhood, increasing empathic development.

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Around eight years of age a child learns about birth and death

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they learn where they came from, that they have a one and only life

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that life is fragile and vulnerable and one day they're gonna die.

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That's the beginning of an existential trip.

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Because when a child learns about birth and death and they have a one and only life

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they realise how fragile and vulnerable life is.

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It's very tough being alive on this planet

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whether you're a human being, or a fox navigating the forest.

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So when a child learns that life is vulnerable and fragile

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and that every moment is precious, and that they have their own unique history

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it allows a child then, to experience another's plight in the same way.

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That, that other person, or other being (could be another creature)

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has a one and only life, it's tough to be alive and the odds are not always good.

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So if you think about the times that we've empathized with each other or fellow creatures

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it's always because we felt their struggle.

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We have the whiff of death in empathy, and the celebration of life.

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And we show solidarity with our compassion.

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Empathy is the opposite of Utopia.

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There is no empathy in Heaven, I guarantee you, I'll  tell you before you get there.

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There isn't any empathy in Heaven because there's no mortality.

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There's no empathy in Utopia because there is no suffering.

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Empathy is grounded in the acknowledgement of death and the celebration of life

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and rooting for each other to flourish and be.

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It's based on our frailties and imperfections.

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So when we talk about building an empathic civilization, we're not talking about Utopia.

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We're talking about the ability of human beings to show solidarity

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not only with each other

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but our fellow creatures who have a one and only life on this little planet.

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We are 'homoempathicus', so here is the question

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We know that consciousness changes in history

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the way our brain is wired today is not the way a medieval serf's brain would be wired,

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and their brain wouldn't be the same as the wiring of a forager/hunter 30,000 years ago.

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So the question I asked at the beginning of this study six years ago is

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How does consciousness change in history?

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Because I wanted to imagine the following proposition

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Is it possible that, we human beings who are soft-wired for empathic distress

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is it possible we could actually extend our empathy to the entire human race

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as an extended family

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and to our fellow creatures as part of our evolutionary family

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and to the biosphere as our common community?

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If it's possible to imagine that

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then we may be able to save our species and save our planet.

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And when I say to you tonight, if it's impossible to even imagine that

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I don't see how we're going to make it.

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Empathy is the invisible hand.

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Empathy is what allows us to stretch our sensibility with another

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so that we can cohere in larger social units.

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To empathise is to civilise, to civilise is to empathise.

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With forager/hunter societies, communication only extended to

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the local tribe and shouting distance.

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Everyone over in the next mountain was the 'alien other'.

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So empathy only extended to blood ties.

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When we went to the great hydraulic-agricultural civilisations

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script allowed us to extend the central nervous system

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and to annihilate more time and space and bring more people together

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and the differentiation of skills and the increasing selfhood

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not only led to theological consciousness but empathy now extended to a new fiction.

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And that is, instead of just associating with one's blood ties

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we de-tribalised and began associations based on religious ties.

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So a new fiction

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Jews start to see all other Jews as extended family and empathise with Jews.

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Christians start to see all other Christians as extended family and empathise with Christians

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Muslims the same.

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When we get to the 19th century, the industrial revolution

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and we extend markets now to larger areas and create a fiction called 'The Nation State'.

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And all of a sudden, the Brits start to see others in Britain as extended family

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the Germans start to see Germans as extended family, the Americans as Americans.

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There was no such thing as 'Germany'. There was no such thing as 'France'. These are fictions.

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But they allow us to extend our families so that we can have loyalties and identities

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based on the new complex energy communication revolutions we have

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that annihilate time and space.

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But if we have gone from empathy in blood ties

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to empathy in religious associational ties

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to empathy based on national identification

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is it really a big stretch to imagine the new technologies

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allowing us to connect our empathy to the human race at large in a single biosphere?

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And what reason would we stop here at the nation-state identity

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and only have ideological empathy or theological based empathy

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or tribal-based blood-tie empathy?

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We have the technology that allows us to extend the central nervous system

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and to think viscerally as a family, not just intellectually.

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When that earthquake hit Haiti and then Chile, but especially Haiti

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within an hour, the Twitters came out

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and within two hours, some cell phone videos - YouTube

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and within three hours the entire human race

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was in an empathic embrace, coming to the aid of Haiti.

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If we were, as the enlightenment philosophers suggested

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materialistic, self-interested, utilitarian, pleasure-seeking

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it couldn't account for the response to Haiti.

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Apparently, 175,000 years ago in the Rift Valley of Africa

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there were about 10,000 anatomically modern human beings walking the grasslands, our ancestors.

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The geneticists located one data base woman, it's a data baseline

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apparently, her genes passed to everyone in this room tonight, the other ladies didn't make it.

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Gets even more strange...

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They located a single male, this is a data baseline for genetics

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they call him the 'Y chromosome Adam'

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apparently a very potent guy

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his genes passed to everyone in this room.

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So here's the news: 6.8 billion people, at various stages of consciousness

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theological, ideological, psychological, dramaturgical

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we're all fighting with each other with different ideas about the world

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and guess what?

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We all came from two people. The Bible got this one right.

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We could've come from many, but the point is

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we have to begin thinking as an extended family.

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We have to broaden our sense of identity.

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We don't lose the old identities of nationhood, and our religious identities

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and even our blood ties.

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But we extend our identities so we can think of the human race as our fellow sojourners.

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And our other creatures here as part of our evolutionary family

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and the biosphere as our community.

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We have to rethink the human narrative.

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If we are truly homoempathicus, then we need to bring out that core nature.

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because, if it doesn't come out and it's repressed

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by our parenting, our educational system, our business practice and government

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the secondary drives come

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the narcissism, the materialism, the violence, the aggression.

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If we can have a global debate

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let us start here from the British Royal Society for the Arts

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which apparently you are doing.

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To begin rethinking human nature.

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To bring out our empathic sociability

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so that we can rethink the institutions and society

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and prepare the groundwork for an empathic civilisation.