The Empathic Civilization

[Jinn]

The Empathic Civilization:

YouTube - RSA Animate - The Empathic Civilisation

YouTube - RSA Animate - The Empathic Civilisation

Amazing video. It's appears to be a speech that was animated later by someone, and the animation itself is worth watching for. But the meaning of the video, the actual core of the speech, is the development of human empathy. In the history of humanity its really a very recent development. They begin talking about mirror neurons and our studies of chimpanzees, and extend it all the way through to how we should use our 'soft-wired' nature for empathy to 'extend the tribe'.

It's really a wonderful video if you've got 10 minutes. Or ten one-minute chances to watch it.

I'm pretty solidly in agreement with the original author/speaker, but I'm wondering what you all think. It this the path to the 'one-world government' that American conservatives fear? Is it reasonable to think that we can unite the entire biosphere and all humanity under a common understanding of empathy, given the differing religious views still commonly in use today? Should we? Is nationalism important for our safety?

[Baraka_Guru]

I started a thread based on this idea, with a few others mixed in: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/general...ciousness.html

Not much response though.

Either people don't want to take the time to watch the video or they aren't interested in the ideas or they reject them, fear them, or choose to ignore them. (Yes, this is a calling out.)

Maybe it will work this time. A 10-minute video is more Internet-friendly than the 50-minute Google talk I posted.

[Eilonwy]

I think this assumes that everyone would be empathetic unless taught otherwise, and I just don't believe that's true. There are very young children that enjoy tourturing animals and/or smaller children, and they do not always learn this behavior from people around them; sometimes it is just built into them. Can it be unlearned; can empathy be taught to these people? I don't know, but thankfully, they are in the minority.

Even if, though, everyone was born empathetic, I don't see a 'one-world government' ever coming about (short of being united by the Vulcans). This video paints a pretty picture of why it's biologically possible, but realistically it's not going to happen. People are selfish, power hungry beings. Whether they are that way because they were taught to be or not doesn't matter; they are, and they will continue to pass it on. Realistically, how would the current wars over religious and national and financial lines be stopped? Wars that have been raging for very, very long times such as those in Africa and the Middle East (not America's there, but their own)? How would those people ever be actually convinced that all humans are their 'brothers' regardless of what currently separates them?

And even if people could somehow be convinced not to hate other people for arbitrary reasons, they would also have to agree on how this one-world government was to be run. The Democrats and Communists and Fascists etc would have to pick one and go with it. Yeah, right.

Call me skeptical or pessimistic or conservative, but I just don't see it.

[ring]

The audio is fuzzled on this home computer.

I will make the trip to the library to watch it.

Empathy as a recent human development?

Not too sure about that idea. Perhaps the recent abilities
to communicate world wide at our fingertips might have spurred our already
existing empathy towards light speed. I don't know.

I will watch this though.

[Hektore]

He took some major liberties there with the idea of Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosome Adam. We inherited her mitochondrial genes, largely due to the nature of mitochondrial inheritance in that it is particularly susceptible to genetic drift. To say that no other women left their genes in the population and that only two people gave rise to everyone today, the way the bible says that it does is a gross misstatement of the facts. Consider that Y-chromosome Adam lived some 50,000 years after Mitochondrial Eve.

Mitochondrial Eve - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Y-chromosomal Adam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Jinn]

Indeed he did. The speaker in the film is Jeremy Rifkin; his book Algeny was called, by Stephen Jay Gould (who I am a big fan of), "a cleverly constructed tract of anti-intellectual propaganda masquerading as scholarship". Evidently this video is a prelude to another book he will be releasing with the same title as this thread.

He does seem to have taken particular generalizations of science a bit too far, but I don't think it undermines the point about increasing the diameter of our 'tribe' over time. I have heard that rhetoric a few times, most recently another notable atheist/skeptic - Shermer - ended his section of a debate I attended on "Does God Exist?" with a call to expanding our 'tribe' to include more 'others,' regardless of God's (non)existence.

[Baraka_Guru]

If you want the longer video based on his book Empathic Civilization, here it is here:

YouTube - Authors@Google: Jeremy Rifkin

YouTube - Authors@Google: Jeremy Rifkin

The book was released at the end of last year.

[Hektore]

Originally Posted by Jinn

Indeed he did. The speaker in the film is Jeremy Rifkin; his book Algeny was called, by Stephen Jay Gould (who I am a big fan of), "a cleverly constructed tract of anti-intellectual propaganda masquerading as scholarship". Evidently this video is a prelude to another book he will be releasing with the same title as this thread.

He does seem to have taken particular generalizations of science a bit too far, but I don't think it undermines the point about increasing the diameter of our 'tribe' over time. I have heard that rhetoric a few times, most recently another notable atheist/skeptic - Shermer - ended his section of a debate I attended on "Does God Exist?" with a call to expanding our 'tribe' to include more 'others,' regardless of God's (non)existence.

I don't think it undermines his point either, it does undermine my willingness to seriously consider what he has to say. It's damaging to your credibility when you try to enhance your position by dressing it up in scientific language and pretend it's intricately related to other theories which it is not. It's even more damaging when you have to misrepresent those theories to make it work.

I seem also to recall that religious idoltry appeared before modern agriculture so his time-line doesn't jive with me. I could be wrong but I'm not confident enough in my knowledge to back Wikipedia's agreement.

Also, WTF is 'increasing self-hood'?

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of increasing our 'circle of empathy' but as far as I can tell he's just talking nonsense through a lot of the video.