Reason: The Loss of Empathy?

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

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…