www.theRSA.org

Jeremy Rifkin. The Empathic Civilisation.

In the last ten years

there's been some very interesting developments in evolutionary biology

neurocognitive science, child development, research and many other fields

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

about human nature and the meaning of the human journey.

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

which is quite interesting and really challenges these assumptions.

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

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

Let me take you back to the early 1990s

sleepy little laboratory in Parma, Italy.

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

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

They wanted to see how the neurons would light up.

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

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

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

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

and tried to crack it open.

The macaque monkey was totally shocked

because, who was this invader in his laboratory?

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

just like he had done a few seconds earlier

and then the scientist looked on the MRI brain scanner

the same exact neurons were lighting up

when he observed the human being opening the nut

as when the monkey opened the nut,

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

they thought the MRI machine had broken.

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

especially chimpanzees with our big neocortex.

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

is something called 'Mirror Neurons'.

And that is that we are apparently soft-wired

some of the primates, all humans

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

But all humans are soft-wired with mirror neurons

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

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

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

Now, this isn't all that unusual.

We know if a spider goes up someone's arm

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

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

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

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

going on in neuropsychology and brain research and in child development

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

and violence and self interest and utilitarianism

that we are actually soft-wired for sociability

'attachment' as John Bowlby might have said

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

It's an empathic drive.

What is empathy? Very complicated.

When little babies are in a nursery and one baby cries

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

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

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

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

And then, once a toddler can identify themselves

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

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

They're two separate beings.

Selfhood that goes together with empathic development.

Increasing selfhood, increasing empathic development.

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

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

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

That's the beginning of an existential trip.

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

they realise how fragile and vulnerable life is.

It's very tough being alive on this planet

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

So when a child learns that life is vulnerable and fragile

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

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

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

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

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

it's always because we felt their struggle.

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

And we show solidarity with our compassion.

Empathy is the opposite of Utopia.

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

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

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

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

and rooting for each other to flourish and be.

It's based on our frailties and imperfections.

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

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

not only with each other

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

We are 'homoempathicus', so here is the question

We know that consciousness changes in history

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

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

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

How does consciousness change in history?

Because I wanted to imagine the following proposition

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

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

as an extended family

and to our fellow creatures as part of our evolutionary family

and to the biosphere as our common community?

If it's possible to imagine that

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

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

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

Empathy is the invisible hand.

Empathy is what allows us to stretch our sensibility with another

so that we can cohere in larger social units.

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

With forager/hunter societies, communication only extended to

the local tribe and shouting distance.

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

So empathy only extended to blood ties.

When we went to the great hydraulic-agricultural civilisations

script allowed us to extend the central nervous system

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

and the differentiation of skills and the increasing selfhood

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

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

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

So a new fiction

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

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

Muslims the same.

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

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

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

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

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

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

based on the new complex energy communication revolutions we have

that annihilate time and space.

But if we have gone from empathy in blood ties

to empathy in religious associational ties

to empathy based on national identification

is it really a big stretch to imagine the new technologies

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

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

and only have ideological empathy or theological based empathy

or tribal-based blood-tie empathy?

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

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

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

within an hour, the Twitters came out

and within two hours, some cell phone videos - YouTube

and within three hours the entire human race

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

If we were, as the enlightenment philosophers suggested

materialistic, self-interested, utilitarian, pleasure-seeking

it couldn't account for the response to Haiti.

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

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

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

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

Gets even more strange...

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

they call him the 'Y chromosome Adam'

apparently a very potent guy

his genes passed to everyone in this room.

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

theological, ideological, psychological, dramaturgical

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

and guess what?

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

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

we have to begin thinking as an extended family.

We have to broaden our sense of identity.

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

and even our blood ties.

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

And our other creatures here as part of our evolutionary family

and the biosphere as our community.

We have to rethink the human narrative.

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

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

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

the secondary drives come

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

If we can have a global debate

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

which apparently you are doing.

To begin rethinking human nature.

To bring out our empathic sociability

so that we can rethink the institutions and society

and prepare the groundwork for an empathic civilisation.