The video above is so simple to understand that it’s actually hard to believe. Basically empathy is this idea that it is human nature to see someone doing something whether they are feeling happy, sad, angry, scared, etc. and feel it ourselves. Although there is science to understanding that, once you accept the concept, the rest makes sense. We are soft wired to experience another person’s plight as if we are experiencing ourselves. However over time, humans started to only have that pertain to people of their own blood, religion, country, etc. Once that happened we no longer had empathy towards those we don’t feel are our own kind. This concept is sad on its own, but the fact that we have let this lead to allowing other people to suffer because we have put ourselves into groups and shut everyone out of them seems a little ridiculous when looked at it from the outside. As Rifkin says, is it really so impossible to imagine a world where we imagine everyone as one? This is not to say people can have their own opinions, etc. but just to think that we don’t separate ourselves and no longer support others based on religion, country of birth, and viewpoints. Like I have said before, we ARE all human beings and as such we all deserve to live whether we are a wealthy man from New York City, or a poor man from Ghana. In my mind, both lives are equally valuable. People like Jacquline Novogratz, Paul Farmer, Greg Mortenson, Mohammed Yunus, and the other humanitarians are just taking a head start on our path to this empathic civilization. This place is not a perfect world; however, it is a place where we will all think of each other as an extended family despite our tribal, religious, ethnic, and national ties.
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