The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis

by Jeremy Rifkin

The extent to which empathetic consciousness develops, broadens, and deepens during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, depends on early parenting behavior—which psychologists call attachment—as well as the values and worldview of the culture one is embedded in and the potential exposure to others.

Empathy is the very means by which we create social life and advance civilization. In short, it is the extraordinary evolution of empathic consciousness that is the quintessential underlying story of human history, even if it has not been given the serious attention it deserves by our historians.

In other words, it wasn’t until human beings were developed enough in human selfhood that they could begin thinking about the nature of their innermost feelings and thoughts in relation to other people’s innermost feelings and thoughts that they were able to recognize the existence of empathy, find the appropriate metaphors to discuss it, and probe the deep recesses of its multiple meanings.

My own grandparents were unable to probe their feelings and thinking in order to analyze how their past emotional experiences and relationships affected their behavior toward others and their sense of self.

Einfühlung relates to how observers project their own sensibilities onto an object of adoration or contemplation and is a way of explaining how one comes to appreciate and enjoy the beauty of, for example, a work of art.

Unlike sympathy, which is more passive, empathy conjures up active engagement—the willingness of an observer to become part of another’s experience, to share the feeling of that experience.

[W]hen a person realizes he has been deeply heard, his eyes moisten. I think in some real sense, he is weeping for joy. It is as though he were saying, “Thank God, somebody heard me. Someone knows what it’s like to be me.”13

Because empathic skills emphasize a non-judgmental orientation and tolerance of other perspectives, they accustom young people to think in terms of layers of complexity and force them to live within the context of ambiguous realities where there are no simple formulas or answers, but only a constant search for shared meanings and common understandings.

The perpetrators, in turn, are given the opportunity to make a full and truthful disclosure of their crimes in front of their victims and, if they choose, to ask for forgiveness. The experience is designed to provide a “safe environment” to allow for an empathic catharsis, reconciliation and healing among the parties.

We are learning, against all of the prevailing wisdom, that human nature is not to seek autonomy—to become an island to oneself—but, rather, to seek companionship, affection, and intimacy.

The awakening sense of selfhood, brought on by the differentiation process, is crucial to the development and extension of empathy.

The more individualized and developed the self is, the greater is our sense of our own unique, mortal existence, as well as our existential aloneness and the many challenges we face in the struggle to be and to flourish. It

Civilization is the detribalization of blood ties and the resocialization of distinct individuals based on associational ties. Empathic extension is the psychological mechanism that makes the conversion and the transition possible. When we say to civilize, we mean to empathize.

Oral cultures are steeped in mythological consciousness. Script cultures give rise to theological consciousness. Print cultures are accompanied by ideological consciousness, while early electricity cultures spawn psychological consciousness.

communications revolutions provide an ever more inclusive playing field for empathy to mature and consciousness to expand.

with the universe in this passionate

consciousness is running up against global

squarely with nineteenth-century utilitarian

society creates individuals.

The infant begins life, then, according to Suttie, with an inchoate but nonetheless instinctual need to receive as well as give gifts, which is the basis of all affection.

Reciprocity is the heart of sociality and what relationships are built on. If reciprocity is blocked, the development of selfhood and sociability is stunted and psychopathology emerges.

Likewise, when we say “I feel your pain,” the reality is that specific mirror neurons allow us to do just that.

It is the deepest act of participation between people and is made possible by collective trust—the feeling that each player can let down his defenses and abandon himself, for the moment, to the care of others so he can experience the elation that comes from a communion.

In other words, the empathic impulse is the biological means of fostering communication, at least among the more evolved mammalian species.

We now know that there are certain facial expressions that conjure up the same feelings across all cultures and for every human being.

In other words, self-focused, as opposed to other-focused, role-taking elicited the most empathic distress.

“in which parents highlight the other’s perspective, point up the other’s distress, and make it clear that the child’s action caused it.”44 When the intervention is done with care, nurturance, and fairness, and the child becomes genuinely aware that he caused another’s distress, it can lead to a sense of guilt and remorse and a sincere effort to want to make reparation. For example, if the child takes another child’s toy away from him, the parent might sit him down and ask him how bad he would feel if someone did the same thing to him. Then the parent might ask him to imagine how bad the other child now feels.

What induction disciplining is really teaching the child is the substance of human morality—responsibility for one’s actions, compassion for others, a willingness to come to another’s aid and comfort, and a proper sense of fair play and justice. The maturation of empathy and the development of a moral sense are one and the same thing.

While guilt can trigger empathic distress and the desire to reach out and make amends to another whom one has harmed, shame denigrates a person’s being, making them feel worthless and inhuman. To be shamed is to be rejected. Shame is a way of isolating a person from the collective we. He or she becomes an outsider and a nonperson. Shame has the effect of turning off the innate empathic impulse. If one feels like a nonbeing, socially ostracized and without self-worth, he is unable to draw upon his empathic reserves to feel for another’s plight. Unable to emotionally connect with others, he either shrinks into withdrawal or acts out his sense of abandonment by exercising rage at others. Why rage? Because it is often the only way he has open to him to communicate and engage his fellow human beings.

By shaming a child, however, the parents are letting him know that he is not living up to their expectations and, therefore, not worthy of their consideration. Their expectations, rather than his humanity, become the focal point of the disciplinary exercise.

Lacking empathy, he is unable to experience other people’s suffering as if it were his own and therefore is likely to judge their plight as their own fault because they failed to live up to the standards of perfection expected of them by society.