Reason: The Loss of Empathy?

Posted on May 7, 2008
Filed Under Awareness, Fake Culture, Society, Spirituality | Leave a Comment

Most of us are perfectly capable of feeling our own feelings, both the physical and emotional kinds - even if we aren’t always able to understand them clearly. Yet many seem to have something lacking when it comes to feeling other people’s feelings…both the physical and emotional kind. It’s all about empathy. What is it exactly that causes some people to lack this particular trait?

Some claim that before one can relate to a situation, they first need to have experienced it for themselves. If that were true, empathy would be in extremely short supply. I believe that the answer comes down to something a bit more personal - something in our epigenetic makeup. There are many factors which influence our behavior, some hardwired into us from pre-birth, and others adopted from our environment. As it is these things which obviously influence our behavior and perspective, it is not such a leap to believe that these things also heavily influence our (lack of) ability to relate to the world and those around us.

But can it all be explained in terms of science and psychology? I personally believe that the ability to feel is strongly tied into ones ability to imagine. That essentially the stronger an individuals imagination, the greater extent they will be able to relate to the world. Of course, it also depends on how grounded that person is - if they spend their lives living in an imaginary world - they aren’t going to be relating to anything other than their inner awareness.

So - is empathy about a balance between inner-awareness (understanding of our emotional / mental / spiritual selves) and outer awareness (understanding of the physical world)? I feel there is something very interesting in that notion, after all the Western world is very much about the ‘outer’ physical material world. And it is this very attitude which is often accused of being insensate, destructive and domineering.

It is often argued that we live in a reality of science and reason. Yet when I look at the world around me, only a portion of it seems explainable by science and reason. Everyday we experience things which science has no real grasp upon; thinking, dreaming, emotion, love and so on. And that’s without even mentioning spiritual and metaphysical realms. Yet cold hard science and reason will attempt to explain these things, because science has to believe everything is explainable - otherwise it looses its definition as science. Yet many things can indeed only be experienced or felt.

Science and reason cause us to adopt a machine like attitude, where everything is measurable. Suffering - such as starvation, war, and whatever else - can be put into terms of statistics. Is it possible to demean the human experience to any greater extent that the statistic?

When an individual lives with an internal world of pure science, reason and statistics, these things become there perspective upon life. Everything is viewed in terms of measurements. This - to me - is about attempting to step outside of the human experience. And it is when we do this - that the trait of empathy slowly begins to fade.

Reason causes can keep us rooted to a single track as an unseen train approaches. Reason can cause us to jump from path to path as we constantly seek trivia whilst forever missing the message. Does reason ever ask the reason for its own existence? The power of reason lays in the fact that it is a tool, yet many people have adopted it as an article of faith without even so much as realizing this fact.

In the end, empathy needs no reason. Empath is the human experience…

Change Resitant - Why do we Ignore our Senses?

Posted on May 4, 2008
Filed Under Fake Culture, Society, Spirituality | 2 Comments

Our physical senses have a very simple job (in a complex sort of way); they report change to us. Change in light, change in air vibration, changes in physical motion and so on. What does this say about life? It tells us in very clear terms that life is about change. Yet strangely our society has evolved into a position where it is almost completely resistant to all change. And any change it does accept is either unintended, or takes years to unfold.

I know that I personally struggle with this, I like to do things in a certain way - but I have very short limits when it comes to structure and routine; I do not like too much of it. Our resistance to change comes in so many forms - even when everything in the natural world tells us reality is change. Society is very much about living within ‘cells’; contained units of varying size, inside of which we create a set social structure, with rules and ideologies based upon our (limited) experiences and (set) perspectives.

The ‘cell’ is ultimately a creation of government and society. Limits are set upon our ambitions, and from an early age we are shown the paths we must walk. In this way our natural inclination towards curiosity and change is driven out of us - and thus we become a much more suitable component for a change resistant (inter)national community. Curiosity is only accepted within certain professional fields and even then it is limited to predefined areas of examination.

Isn’t it amusing that one needs to be a professional in order to do what a child does innately?

Schooling is clearly an obvious culprit for such damage to the human desire for learning - that’s true learning as in developing our relationship with reality - as opposed to the artificial school-based learning, which is the accumulation of knowledge to improve our relationship with society. This is reflected in the fact that earlier mandatory school starting ages tend to negatively effect the kids ability to learn. South Korea and Finland are at the top of the world in terms of childhood education levels…the school starting age being six and seven. In England the mandatory school starting age is five, with many parents sending their children to school at four. It’s surely no coinsidence that England is very low on the education league tables.

It is worth pointing out that Rudolf Steiner - founder of the world renowned Waldorf Education schools - generally believed that it served a child best if they didn’t learn to read until the age of seven. This allows for the child to develop their being, and self-relationship much more smoothly.

We tend to forget that intellectualism is a tool not an essential natural human component.

I always find it odd and very disturbing to see children as young as five falling into the pitfalls of reason and logic, already starting to ignore what their own senses report. The most despairing thing about this is that often the more disassociated from our senses we become, the greater extent we lose touch with reality. Many adults don’t have the first clue as to what makes them feel ‘happy’, and many suffer an extreme sense of self-doubt and lack any form of direction in life. It’s only natural that under such circumstances we would fall under the thrall of materialism and consumerism.

Is there a way out of this on a global level? I honestly have no idea about that. But what I do know - is this; on an individual level we gain tremendous insight and self-power when we start living in tune with our natural self as opposed to our ego-based programmed desires. Perhaps the lesson here is to teach our children the importance of their relationship with themselves and with reality. I fully believe that we should help them in that task in whatever way possible, as well as limit the damage a nihilistic society inflicts upon us all…

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