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The Earthquake That Triggered A Global Empathic Response: What The Haitian Crisis Tells Us About Human Nature
Frantic tweets and videos have been seeping out of Haiti, pleading for help from the rest of the human race in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake that leveled one of the poorest countries on the planet, spreading destruction and death.
The response by people all over the world has been immediate. Governments, NGOs, and individuals are mobilizing relief missions, and social websites are lighting up, as the collective human family extends a global empathic embrace to its neighbors in this small Caribbean nation. We saw a similar global response in the wake of Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans and the gulf coast of the United States and the giant tsunami that struck Asian and African coastlines earlier in the decade.
In recent years, whenever natural disasters have struck, in what is increasingly becoming a globally interconnected and interdependent world, human beings have come together as an extended family in an outpouring of compassion and concern. For these brief moments of time, we leave behind the many differences that divide us to act as a species. We become Homo empathicus.
Yet, when faced with similar tragedies that are a result of human-induced behavior, rather than precipitated by natural disasters, we are often unable to muster the same collective empathic response.
For example, recall when oil hit a record $147/barrel on world markets in July, 2008. Prices soared and basic necessities from food to heating oil became prohibitively expensive, imperiling the lives of hundreds of millions of human beings. Food riots broke out in more than 30 countries. Yet, the collective response of the human race was barely perceptible. Similarly, plagued with the real-time impacts of human induced climate change, which is already devastating ecosystems in countries around the world and creating millions of environmental refugees, the global response has been weak.
The question is: why?
It's true that unexpected natural disasters quickly arouse our attention. But, my suspicion is that this is not the only reason that we are unable to respond to human induced suffering with the same emotional and cognitive focus. The problem lies much deeper. When human induced behavior results in suffering to others on a large scale, we tend to shrug our shoulders as if to say, "that's human nature and therefore, there's not much we can do about it." That's because we have come to think of human nature as essentially selfish. Our beliefs have become a self-fulfilling prophecy--even if they turn out to be incorrect.
At the dawn of the modern market economy and the nation-state era, the philosophers of the Enlightenment argued that human beings are autonomous agents, and are detached, rational, and driven by material self-interest and utilitarian pursuits.
But, is that who we really are?
If so, then how do we explain the empathic response to natural disasters like the one that occurred in Haiti this past week. Perhaps our ideas about human nature merely reflect the operating assumptions of the modern market economy and provide those in power with an easy way to justify and explain the suffering inflicted on others, writing it off as a reflection of our species' aggressive, predatory and selfish behavior.
But, what if these age old assumptions about human nature are false? In the past 15 years, scientists from a wide range of fields, from evolutionary biology to neurocognitive research and child development, have been making breathtaking discoveries that are forcing us to rethink our long-held beliefs about human nature. Researchers are discovering mirror-neurons--the so-called empathy neurons--that allow human beings and other species to feel and experience another's situation as if it were one's own. We are, it appears, the most social animals and we seek intimate participation and companionship with our fellows.
It is only when our basic biological drive of empathic engagement is repressed or denied that secondary drives like aggression, acquisitiveness, and selfish behavior come to the surface.
It turns out that empathic consciousness has grown steadily over history. Our forager/hunter ancestors only extended primitive empathic distress to their immediate blood relatives and extended family. With the rise of the world's great religions, empathic consciousness extended to those of like-minded religious affiliation. Jews empathized with Jews, Christians with Christians, Muslims with Muslims, etc. In the modern market economy and nation-state era, the empathic embrace extended to people sharing a common national identity. American empathized with Americans, Germans with Germans, Japanese with Japanese, etc.
Today, distributed information and communication technologies are bringing together the entire human race in an extended family. Is it so difficult, then, to imagine a leap to biosphere consciousness and the extension of empathy to our species as a whole and to the other creatures that cohabit this planet with us? Think for a moment, about the global empathic response when a young college pre-med student was gunned down in the protests that followed the flawed Iranian election. Within minutes, millions of college students around the world were viewing a cell-phone video of the killing and were extending their empathy to the young people in Iran. Or consider the release of the video showing a polar bear and her cub stranded on an ice floe in the arctic because of global warming. Millions of youngsters around the world instantly empathized with the plight of the mother and her cub.
Schoolchildren everywhere are learning that their everyday behavior--the food they eat, the electricity they use, the family car they drive in, and myriad other consumer habits intimately affect the wellbeing of every other human being and every other creature on Earth. This is the emergence of biosphere consciousness and the beginning of the next stage of our evolutionary journey as an empathic being.
Now we need to prepare the groundwork for an empathic civilization that is compatible with our core nature. This will require a rethinking of parenting styles, reforming our educational system, reinventing our business models, and transforming our governing institutions so that the way we live our lives is attuned to and, in accord with, our fundamentally empathic nature.
Lest we think this is an impossible task, consider again the global empathic outpouring for the victims of the Haitian earthquake. Then ask, why we can't harness that same global empathic embrace, not only to rescue victims of natural disasters, but also to raise generations of empathic global citizens who can live together in relative peace and harmony in a biosphere world.
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87 Comments so far
Show AllAnd DubyaCheney managed to quickly destroy worldwide empathy for the US that had been engendered by 911. But that was by design and to satisfy greed and a lust for power.
And where's the global compassion to counter US' Obaman-made catastrophe in Iraqiranistan?
After all the carping about Obama's failure to live up to the promise, it is great to read such an optimistic piece as this.
I agree wholeheartedly with the premise that as civilization has matured so has human nature for the most part. We indeed do feel greater empathy for those outside the immediate family/tribe. Most nations now view the death penalty with disgust. View torture as dehumanizing to the torturer as well the tortured. Animal fighting is regarded as barbaric.
Except in America, among some of us.
Why is that?
I'd say upbringing, not hard-wired, as other developed cultures don't manifest the same small-minded blood-thirstiness. Parents raise bigots and abusers. Train their children to be ego-centered. Stunt the natural empathic impulses. Teach a selfish human-centered consciousness that see the world as a domain, not a home.
Thus we CAN change that American failing. That dark streak in the American psyche. We just have to parent better by living better and setting better role-models.
That's all.
No, I don't think it will be easy. But necessary.
To save the world.
Meanwhile the dying goes on...
American Friends Service Committee http://www.afsc.org/
American Red Cross: http://www.redcross.org/
Artists for Peace and Justice: http://www.artistsforpeaceandjustice.com/
NetHope: http://www.nethope.org/
Lambi Fund for Haiti: http://www.lambifund.org/
Save the Children: http://www.savethechildren.org/
World Vision International: http://wvi.org/wvi/wviweb.nsf
Care: http://www.care.org/index.asp
MercyCorps: http://www.mercycorps.org/
Partners in Health: http://twitter.com/PIH_org
Unicef: http://www.unicef.org/
Doctors Without Borders: http://doctorswithoutborders.org/
Parners in Health: http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti
Ofram: http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressrelease/2010-01-13/large-earthquake-haiti
RN Response Network: https://secure.ga1.org/05/rnrn_relief_fund
National Nurses United has launched a relief effort to send over 7,000 registered nurses to Haiti. There's just one problem: the cost of sending them. Please donate today at www.SendaNurse.org. Every dollar you donate goes toward the resources nurses need to care for the survivors of this tragedy.
Pass it on.
Gary
It is not US's job to , as you say, "save the world". The US needs to just "step off". Haiti would have been much better prepared to help itself if the US hadn't helped itself to Haiti in the past.
Get out of Honduras!! Back off from Venezuela, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq,Yemen and everywhere else!!
The US is one sick puppy and needs to be locked up until it can grow up.
Thank you gdgoodman. I've printed out the list and will pass it on. And also use it.
Gary
Thanks again for the list! We used it.
"Most nations now view the death penalty with disgust. View torture as dehumanizing to the torturer as well the tortured. Animal fighting is regarded as barbaric."
I'm not sure "most" nations do. There are still many that do not feel that way. Unless you were speaking mostly of Europe.
"Animal fighting is regarded as barbaric"
It's regarded as "barbaric" by the same nations that use cluster bombs to secure resource colonies. I'm not encouraged by this kind of constructed and strategic empathy.
Sioux Rose
GARY: Good post... except parenting does not take place in a vacuum. Consider the following factors:
1. The family itself is an organ that fashions conformity in its members. Each is taught how to "fit in." Therefore if the family resides in a land that pushes an agenda of national identity based on the idea of exceptionalism (to international rules and codes of behavior), then the child in that family will not reflect empathy towards those outside his "tribe."
2. Media: 90% of media pushes the idea, "You are out for yourself." Whether it's the way the tough guy gains all the glamour in a movie, or the top athlete "creams" the others who are perceived as weaker; or in "crime time live shows" where the poor slob gets busted... the images all contain behavioral cues designed to program viewers to respect strength as HARDNESS and see caring as weakness, an EFFEMINATE emotion to be avoided.
3. Sports (part of the media conglomerate, see above).
4. Militarism: It's now woven into the entire economic fabric of the nation. For that factor to pass snuff, the population must be constantly massaged into a love of, or at least grudging acceptance of war.
5. Economics: If both parents must now work, or if the insane drug laws send one parent to jail, or if a health issue takes one parent OUT of this world too soon... then the remaining parent must slug it out in a compromised job market. Usually the child/ren suffer. For one thing, the stressed out parent/parents cannot provide enough quality time. Americans work longer hours and take less vacation time than their peers in other lands.
6. Education: it's now based on creating passive consumers who know how to "match" the "right" answer for test results, but lack critical thinking skills. Many could care less about ferreting out deep information, and prefer instead to look cool, or own the latest cool gadgets. That's hardly indicative of empathy.
These are some factors that come to mind, but there are countless others. Good parenting requires a healthy support system. Hillary Clinton was right about that, to raise a child, it DOES take a village, especially one where the natives care for one another, or share a palpable sense of basic empathy. Putting the entire responsibility on parenting given all that's armed against that ideal is naive at best.
Sioux Rose
It turns out there is a correlation between minority students lack of achievement and the lack of fathers in the home. Has nothing to do with race. Recent immigrants with fathers, African and Latino students in the same classrooms do better, than native students.
Contemporary US culture functions as an inhibitor of the inherent and natural human empathic response. Overwhelming emphasis on the accumulation of wealth promotes a "take no prisoners" competitive behavioral model that awards status to those with a deficit of compassion.
Capitalism manufactures narcissitic, anti-social people. It produces exploitation, poverty and war. Misery and death on an industrial level.
It is my own naton, my own family, my friends and neighbors who are the destructive force that tramples the good. In essence it is me.
We are the ones who need to get to work to dismantle the machine that produces so much misery and death.
And transform ourselves into the genuine manifestation of the love and empathy that is the natural human social response.
This is our responsibility and our work and we're running out of time.
And what about OUR orphans? What about OUR poor?
The Haiti fiasco is just unbelievable hypocrisy and BS. Here's a country that assaulted and kidnapped tourists regularly throughout all their cities. They have an earthquake that damages one of their cities and want everyone to run to them with open arms to help them. After they get their "help" (MONEY) they'll revert to kidnapping and robbery again.
Poor Haitian orphans are brought here (WHY?) to be given to adoptive parents... ADOPTIVE PARENTS? It takes months to years to adopt a child. It isn't an overnight deal. We have plenty of orphans here already. The entire "orphans to the USA" report stinks of BS.
Sorry they had an earthquake. We aren't friends with Haiti and they aren't friends with us. Instead of all the fake compassion and plastic sympathy we're dealing out, we should leave them to fend for themselves and focus on our own county for ONCE.
Man, you're an evil dude. Talk about hypocrisy. You really din't get the article did you?
Gary
And, apparently doesn't know anything about Haiti's history.
Is he GOP or just a christian?
Humbaba
I'm a Christian.
Actually if I was a Christian or GOP I'd have a big plastic smile on my face telling everyone how much we need to help the poor Haitians. All I would actuallly be thinking of is how I could help the poor Haitians out of their money...
Christians and GOP are pretenders and lying manipulators. I never pretended to care about Haiti. I never suggested any way to manipulate the people there.
Our money is being flushed down the toilet in Iraq. It's flushed down the toilet in Afghanistan. Now it's being flushed down the toilet in Haiti.
We should immediately withdraw all assistance to Haiti and focus on our own problems.
TheLorax
I repeat, I'm a Christian and I've never in my life lied (small one like, they were out of milk) nor do I pretend, nor do most have plastic smiles. Most are ordinary good people.
No one goes around caring about everybody all the time, but when people are in trouble, we do. I certainly do and I suspect that you really do too. I don't believe that if you had the choice you'd withdraw our aid from Haiti. I do not believe you would leave them to die, would you?
The USA is not the only source of aid available to the Haitian people. There are many other nations assisting and providing help. So "leaving them to die" isn't really applicable.
I care about people that are in trouble but you must realize there's no way to save everyone. The place to start is in America. Here we have thousands of homeless, orphaned, and abandoned children. We have too many jobless, too many losing their homes, and too many sick with no care. We (America) isn't ready to look outside it's borders yet. We're falling apart inside.
Haiti never was our friend. Providing aid to them isn't going to help in that respect. When you have a problem, you call your friends for help. You wouldn't call just anyone, or ask the street thugs to help you out. That's the way of things.
So yes, I would withdraw support to Haiti immediately and wouldn't acknowledge any continued requests for assistance.
I am truly sorry to hear that you are a Christian. I don't like Christians (or any religious people for that matter) and distance myself from them as much as possible. I have never even seen one that was an "ordinary, good person". If I did I'm sure I'd be shocked. (no offense intended)
I urge you to re-evaluate your belief.
And how much did you offer to Haiti in the past 50 years? Zero?
Why? They needed your help then too. So now you flip them a nickel and pretend that you care about them. That's hypocrisy. You should re-evaluate. I never cared about Haiti before the earthquake and I'm not about to pretend that I give a damn about them now.
TheLorax
I don't see much fake sympathy or fake anything. Many children from around the world are adopted each year by Americans, try adopting a child here.
We should indeed focus on our own country, but when the dayb comes that America and Americans have no time to help her neighbors in a time of need, a time of disaster, I don't want to be an American any more. And I love America.
Remember how many countries offered aid when Katrina hit, Cuba even offered to send Dr's and nurses when they havve little.
Think it over and maybe you can come to a different conclusion. Everyone needs help from time to time.
"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness."
-Karl Marx's 1859 Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Humans Are Not Greedy By Nature.
Mainstream Western thinkers from Adam Smith to Freud and today's academics tend to universalize what is in fact Western or industrial experience. Explicitly or implicitly, they assume that the traits they describe are a manifestation of human nature, rather than a product of industrial, capitalist culture. This tendency to generalize from Western experience becomes almost inevitable as Western culture reaches out from Europe and North America to influence all the earth's people.
If anything, humans are cooperative and charitable by nature, or the human species would never have survived.
I hear liberals and progressives spout variations on the "it is human nature to be greedy" libertarian nonsense. It is an apology for the few who are greedy, and it paralyzes the rest of us and seriously confuses any political discussions. If it were human nature to be greedy, then we must accept exploitation and oppression, and authoritarianism to keep those bad people in line. It is a decidedly anti-human doctrine and has no place in any political thinking that could even remotely be considered left wing.
".......... then we must accept exploitation and oppression, and authoritarianism to keep those bad people in line."
You mean, you don't see this as the path the world is headed down with the rich at the helm? I don't know what will convince you then.
It is funny how simple solutions are avoided with excuses such as it might cause conflict.
For instance, why are the no supplies such as food and water being dropped by parachute into hard to reach areas of Haiti? More importantly, why is no one talking about it in the MSM? And why are US citizens not out on the streets demanding decisive action instead of the current bottlenecks when lives are at stake? Maybe it is because we are whipped and finally stripped of our empowerment. Your tax dollars will go to building drone aircraft(without your consent) while they jerk your heart strings for charity from the other side of their mouth. Meanwhile, you need to dole out more to fill the tank of that overpriced Prius that isn't putting as much as a dent in co2 levels.
Yes, of course I see it. I was being sardonic. The internet doesn't do nuance or tone very well.
We're on the same page here.
mcoyote
"The internet doesn't do nuance or tone very well."
Thats the truth for sure!!
Sorry about that. :)
Sioux Rose
MCOYOTE: Great post and extremely-well stated points.
"Researchers are discovering mirror-neurons--the so-called empathy neurons--that allow human beings and other species to feel and experience another's situation as if it were one's own." This is one of the most important and pertinent statements of our times. This basically is why we do what we do. There is a lot more to it in the field of neuroscience and the study of consciousness but basically it is "Monkey See Monkey Do."
This is a beautifully hopeful article and because I think Mr. Rifkin is correct about how we need to feel connected to each other, I am very suspicious of what the "government" of the United States of Global Domination is up to in Haiti.
The terrifyingly disastrous situation in Haiti is being used as another military operation by the U.S. The U.S. has responded very forcefully - even when the military is already being stretched thin. Why?
In the corporate U.S. media this is being presented as if the U.S. military is Superman swooping in to the "rescue". The empathy and assistance of the rest of the world is mentioned, but the U.S. is seen as being "in charge".
The response of the U.S. government has to be regarded with apprehension. No other nation in recent history has done more to destroy the economy and government of Haiti. We need to remember Cuba and Puerto Rico, because this disaster is probably seen by the U.S. as its best chance to finally, totally, take over a Carribean state.
The United Nations should be the leader in this "rescue", but then, the U.S. and its G-8 pals have pretty much rendered the U.N. a thin veil wherein they can hide their schemes of domination and self-aggrandizement.
Haiti now appears to be the epitome of "Disaster Capitalism".
Hopeful articles are a dime a dozen and don't generate much more than a steady paycheck for an author.
Real hope, on the other hand, is increasingly in short supply for a rapidly growing number of the earths inhabitance.
There is no proof that the intensity of todays natural disasters has anything to do with man's exploitation of the planet. But one thing is for sure. If we were towing the line all these years protecting human rights,agriculture and the environment, we would not be expending so much needed energy looking for scapegoats.
Don't ask your boss for a leave of absence so you can travel to Haiti and lend a hand or organize on your own. That would put too much strain on our fragile economy and Pentagon earmarks(not to mention all the diseases you will bring back including,maybe, some radical opinions about capitalism).Just put a check in the mail and everything will be alright. ARMCHAIR HEROS !!
katsteevns
Do you really feel that people that can't go to Haiti personally because they do have to earn a living or physically can't help, or are not wealthy enough to afford the airfare deserve scorn because they do what they (we) can and send a donation of money?
I don't think so, I'm one of them. I've gone to help before, but I'm a little older now.
I don't mean this as a personal statement from me to you, just a general statement.
The point I was trying to make is that the flaw is in the system, not in the individual. The system comprises the actions(and inactions) of the whole populous. In a country as rich as this one, we should have the means to put our lives on hold to perform a decisive, successful and rapid response to other nations in need(especially of food and water!). The lions share of that wealth is concentrated among only one percent of the population who will not part with it and we should be livid about that and are not.
We were told that 5 planes belonging to Doctors Without Borders and one French hospital setup were turned away from Haiti but we weren't told why. Now isn't that peculiar? No, because we generally don't ask "why" when it comes to foreign policy, do we?
katsteevns
Thanks.
Well we certainly have some flawed systems!
But forget the 1%, they are about to be put on a short leash and they don't even know it yet. The rest of America is giving. I know some Dr's from my state are already on the ground there. Fire and Rescue teams, etc. We haven't put our lives on hold to respond, but everyone is interested in helping. The same from all our states I believe.
Heck, I'm proud of Americans response and the rest of the world makes me feel the same way.
Frankly I don't believe a French Hospital Ship was turned away, makes no sense. Where did you see that? Planes not landing could certainly be, though I saw a report that just said one.
I hope you are right.
No, it wasn't a hospital ship. It was a French aid plane carrying a field hospital. Heard it on DemocracyNow!today, jan 19.
I do believe there is a leash coming to these bozo's! From the right or from the right and left together I'm not sure, but it sure looks like it.
"No, it wasn't a hospital ship. It was a French aid plane carrying a field hospital. Heard it on DemocracyNow!today, jan 19."
Thats the one I heard about. Thanks for clearing it up for me.
Pax
Look around and don't be a dupe. When it comes to the US--it is either to control or exploit the situation while portraying ourselves in a good light for political PR.
I believe the point of the article is to show the folly of this self-fulfilling myth. Which Jeremy does very well.
It is not a myth. It is sop beneath the thinnest veneer of self-satisfying altrism--like all the unified flag-waving while we went out on the slaughter of collateral damage that doesn't even rate human enough to count.
In fact, it deeply offends me that at a time when so many in the US are surviving on food stamps alone, with no jobs, no prospects and losing homes, the government advocates volunteering.
All of our do goodism in the US masks a deeper agenda...or a sucker...or a tax write off.
The German army did the same thing in WWII to their own citizens. After the populous was bled, they went out asking for alms for the poor.
From the article:
"Schoolchildren everywhere are learning that their everyday behavior--the food they eat, the electricity they use, the family car they drive in, and myriad other consumer habits intimately affect the wellbeing of every other human being and every other creature on Earth. This is the emergence of biosphere consciousness and the beginning of the next stage of our evolutionary journey as an empathic being. "
Makes you wonder what we have been teaching them in the PREVIOUS 200 years.
They are teaching the children because we all know that you can not teach the old dogs(tax-ridden adults) new tricks. Put in upon the kids, good call!
The one thing they DONT teach the kids is how far gone things really are. I wonder why?
Give all the parents an 8 HOUR WORK DAY with a LIVING WAGE and they can teach their OWN children.
NOOOOOOoooooo. Let the STATE do it! THE STATE KNOWS WHAT IS BEST for our kids.
I wish the children were truly learning about the effect of their food habit - enough to overcome the "educational" messages on diet and nutrition that clearly come from the dairy and meat industry.
A somewhat unusual book by Jeremy Rifkin (compared to his other books) is "Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture" - that came out in the early 1990's, where he goes into the history of beef eating, its role in the colonization of the "New World", etc. I highly recommend this book, although it came out more than 15 years ago.
Well, I'll be dipped in gravy!!!
"tragedies that are a result of human-induced behavior, rather than precipitated by natural disasters, we are often unable to muster the same collective empathic response."
This is accurate.
The "why" is because members of the human species are able to make a distinction between crimes against humanity and natural disasters. Crimes against humanity are a very grave sickness that cannot be healed by money. Empathy can raise money but money cannot buy empathy.
The criminals are in need of retraining, rehabilitation and re-humanizing so that they may rejoin the human race.
What a wonderful article. Absolutely great.
Interesting, but there's not much new here.Prince-yes-Prince Pyotr Kropotkin had pretty much the same insight in the 1890's, when he wrote a book refuting the Darwinian idea of the survival of the fittest.He maintained that co-operation among species was a more powerful factor in evolution than competition.Was he right? Well, Jeremy Rifkin's article provides some support, but the Darwinian point of view is obviously in play too.
Headline of the 'News' article appearing directly adjacent to this column on CD:
"Officials Try to Prevent Haitian Earthquake Refugees From Coming to US"
Apparently somebody didn't get Mr. Rifkin's memo.
Mr. Rifkin has helped reinforce some false assumptions by failing to mention that Haiti is also very much a human-made disaster, as the transnational-corporate system and U.S. government have worked for decades to make Hait a dirt-poor sweatshop, complete with support for dictators.
What if people had the same freedom to move about as money does.
Borders and walls are remnants of dysfunctional and closed systems from the colonialism still alive and well as neoliberalism a truly self defeating system in terms of the common good.
Our youth immersed in the main stream media and video games don’t need to buy Hollywood’s version of Jehad just a Iran’s youth don’t need to buy their religious leaders versions of perverted Islam.
Perhaps it is difficult to imagine no possessions but perhaps the realization that the agape of social relationships is more rewarding than just stuff; and can eventually prevail.
Imagine John Lennon
Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
"Yet, when faced with similar tragedies that are a result of human-induced behavior, rather than precipitated by natural disasters, we are often unable to muster the same collective empathic response."
Simply read Putnam's "Bowling Alone" to understand why this "civilization has matured so has human nature for the most part. We indeed do feel greater empathy for those outside the immediate family/tribe." is mythical. Why Mr.
Rifkin's article is a statement on how things ought to be rather than a reality. Or likely to be a reality.
The Imperial Cycle: the US in Haiti:
Invade,
Kill,
Occupy,
Install new dictator,
Rinse off blood,
Leave,
Repeat cycle.
"This is the emergence of biosphere consciousness and the beginning of the next stage of our evolutionary journey as an empathic being."
Interesting hypothesis, I should get a copy of his book and see if it is a worthwhile read.
The likely genetic bottleneck that we face as a result of climate change and the resulting population crash will impose a large selection pressure. It seems that groups of cooperating empathic individuals should have a better survival chance over groups of aggressive, less empathic, individuals who are more likely to kill group members.
For example genetic differences in the neuronal oxytocin receptor gene have been found to correlate with different empathic ability. The oxytocin hormone is important in pair bonding, the induction of labour and breast feeding.
Our species continues to evolve, generating new genetic variability, so that there are likely several differences that might well foreshadow superior success in the coming difficult times and lead to a better future for both our descendent species and the planet.