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Empathy is the natural result of evolution. Society tears us away from our natural path, and so limits empathy; it destroys us, the animals, and the environment. Bringing back empathy is a revolution we can all live with, join and fight with love.
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Members: 273
Code of Conduct
Visibility: open
Membership: open
Group Email: empathy@groups.care2.com
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Our Articles
 Empathy writing  This paper inspired me to start this group. I built the paper mostly from the writing of empathy researchers such as Azar Nafisi. She wrote "No amount of political correctness can make us empathize with 'a child left orphaned .. Only curiosity about the fate of others, the ability to put ourselves in their shoes, and the will to enter their world through the magic of imagination, creates this shock of recognition."  Why empathy is radical Empathy is no longer opinion; it is well-supported scientific fact. The scientific knowledge of empathy has grown quickly and continues to grow. It is radical.  Empathy gallery Orangutans, elephants, whales and many other animals have human-level empathy: empathic neurons, the spindle and mirror cells. Whales have empathic neuron structures more sophisticated than humans have or any other animals.  Ending animal testing: free technology An important step towards universal empathy is the elimination of sadistic chemical testing on animals, called animal experimentation, by replacing, or "virutalizing," the testing process with computers and networks; this is often called bio-molecular testing. There is interest in this group to contribute towards this accomplishment. Important to converting testing to computers is the Linux operating system; Linux is the system behind the US government, or NOAA, weather forecasting system, and also the giant search engine, Google.  Empathy in education and therapy: My experiences Within every child springs forth an effort to make the best of every day. Rogers says in his writing that every animal has this energy, and even every plant. Children naturally develop interest and responsibility, and that the children who are ultimately most successful, who have self-actualized the best, are the ones who develop their interests independently and from within, and do so at the earliest age.
Our greatest discussion threads
Roadside Busts: The lack of empathy in NY state police "the empathic part of most officers brains are deficient if not missing altogether for the general public. Curiously however, they can be empathic towards their fellow officers that get criticized for torturing or killing citizens" The Real Donna F.
Animal Rights: Empathy with the help of technology Anyone who harms an animal or person is NOT an ALF activist; no-one has ever been hurt by an ALF activist, there have been incidents blown out of all proportion by the media that have been carried out by infiltrators .. Should be an interesting discussion. Alf I.Empathy, health and healing Nearly 4,800 patient surveys and 100 covertly recorded visits by actors posing as patients revealed that empathy is lacking in many exam rooms around the Rochester, N.Y., area – however, doctors who do convey empathy are viewed as more trustworthy.Debs B. Radical_Empathy (early post)
As the un-empathic have no way of understanding the feelings an empathic person feels as a result of disloyalty and lies; they will lie until they the empathic rebel and resist. Lessons in desensitising -- Medicine
I think it is sad that many people who end up taking part in these things come onboard because they are empathic--wanting to help find something to help heal, wanting to study biology to work on behalf of wildlife, etc. Anon.
The new neurological research tying empathy to neural constructs in the mind has generated debate, as the new research seems to tie our neural activity with morality. Gary Olson, a political science professor, posted a link to his contribution on the radical empathy discussion group on Care2.com: " From Mirror Neurons to Moral Neuropolitics." It strengthens the old school approach to humanism with the new neurology, and in it I found many names that are important to me, especially Petr Kropotkin's. I also found that Olsen's writing very closely resembles my capstone project (and website), Empathy: Spiritual Darwinism that concluded my undergraduate studies. In my own empathy writing I attempted to show the empathic nature of humanity as we find it in nature and native tribes, and I also criticized the coldness of scientific researchers showing that they cannot understand empathy, as they appear to lack it themselves. As I was finishing up this paper I started this empathy group on Care2.com, and as I started posting further ideas for the group darker issues surrounding empathy started to emerge from my mind. I woke up one morning with the phrase "we live in an aspergers empire" on my lips. - Aspergers is the disease of unempathy, or the lack of empathic neurons.
- All empires follow the model developed by the Romans; they are diffuse tribute collection systems (after Lewis Mumford.)
What my subconscious said to me was that the structure we live in is built for the anti-empathic, and further thought answered the question "why?" In nature the anti-empathic are marginalized. In the Cayo Santiago, an island off of Puerto Rico that has a wild monkey community, researchers found that "selfish" monkeys were driven away from the community for stealing food and also for being selfish about knowledge about food resources. In nature collaboration is enforced; the tribally native community is the social layer of what we consider the ultimate goal of evolution: empathy. Compassion and collaboration have long been known to be essential to human development, and groups devoted to these empathic strengths have developed most of our important institutions. Yet unfortunately the combined efforts of all these people we admire have not made significant change: we are always at war. For example we in the US are right now involved in a senseless war in Iraq that seems to have created the very problem it was started to solve: Al Qaeda terror. This war, like all wars, is the product of many of the most intelligent people in our society such as Colin Powell, the US general considered to be a "dove." Something is missing from the pacifist/empathic way of thinking that is preventing the socially active from restoring empathy as the basis of society, and this may be where the real controversy begins. The problem, I believe, may be that because humans, and nearly all animals, are highly empathic, and the anti-empathic in society, and in animal communities, have become marginalized just as in the Cayo Santiago. Afraid of being isolated, and without any neural ability to survive collaboratively, the anti-empathic have built a structure of armies to protect themselves from nature's tendency to cure its diseases, in their case apsergers. The most powerful in our cultures of structure tend to attack those considered weak and useless; those hurt are usually described as "emotional," a strength those without empathy conceive of: Hitler is the perfect example. Dawkins the famous atheist attempts to justify this approach when he says that cruelty is synonymous with evolutionary survival with his "selfish gene" hypothesis. Now with the solid proof empathy found in the mirror cell systems (and also spindle cells, as spindle cells allow for imagination), we may see that the dominant controllers in society, the structural operators whose policies and actions are devoid of genuine feeling, are themselves genetically broken. We can certainly say this of Hitler and Stalin, and I say this about scientists who engage in sadistic and unscientific (and hence illegal) experiments on animals to, of all things, prove empathy. This brings to my mind the "blue hats" of the United Nations: the soldiers of empathy. They kill the anti-empathic, something the most intelligent of the anti-empathic quickly point out as being anti-empathic in of itself. The most intelligent of the anti-empathic, or savants (from Daniel Goleman), thrive purely through the trickery of words, or lying, and by creating from nearly every meaningful word misnomers. Lying is the opposite of communication, especially the emotional communication of empathy. Empathy creates a single criteria for understanding humanity. Anti-empathic behavior can easily predicted, where the greatest predictor of anti-empathy is the culture of control in our societal structures. What do you think?
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I am writing this as a response to the article posted on the empathy homepage about "living in an Asperger's society." Whoever posted this is ignorant about the definition of Asperger's. You are not looking for the term Asperger's, you are looking for the term Antisocial Personality Disorder. These disorders are very different. Persons who suffer from antisocial personality disorder persistently violate the rights of others because they lack empathy, but do not lack an understanding of social situations. Thus, they are able to be quite manipulative and harmful to society. Persons who suffer from Asperger's generally do not violating rights of others despite their impairment in relating to others. As a therapist who has worked with individuals who suffer from each illness, I can tell you first hand that high functioning persons with antisocial personality disorder will prey without conscience on more vulnerable individuals while those with Asperger's are more likely to tell a joke that no one else finds amusing. Speaking of empathy, please be aware that casually using the term Asperger's erroneously can be quite hurtful to the growing number of families whose children suffer from this disorder.
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Study finds long benefit in illegal mushroom drug
By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
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FictionIn some works of science fiction and fantasy, empathy is understood to be a paranormal or psychic ability to sense the emotions of others, as opposed to telepathy, which allows one to perceive thoughts as well. A person who has that ability is also called an "empath" or "telempath" in this context. Occasionally these empaths are also able to project their own emotions, or to affect the emotions of others. Examples of this in television and motion pictures include the character Deanna Troi (and all Betazoids) fromStar Trek: The Next Generation, and the demon Lorne of the American television show Angel. Additionally, onCharmed, two of the Charmed Ones Prue (temporarily) and Phoebe Halliwell become empaths, in addition to a race of empathic magical creatures. In the Charmed universe, magical powers are said to be tied to the user's emotions. Due to this concept, the empath Phoebe Halliwell is able to, not only feel the emotions of others, but also to tap into them in order to control and chanel a magical being's powers. Charmed also displays empathy as a way of strengthening a being's own magical powers, again due to the concept that powers are tied to emotions. Finally, in the series finale, Forever Charmed, Phoebe discovers that she is able to conjure her future-husband Coop simply due to the strong emotion bond they share. This may be as a result of her empathic power and/or her psychic, clairvoyant abilities. In Superman (Pre-Crisis), Lex Luthor's younger sister Lena Thorul is also an empath. One of Teen Titanscharacter Raven's powers includes empathy. Also, in the Marvel Universe, the mutant Empath has, as his name suggests, empathic abilities, both to sense and manipulate emotions. In the Japanese Pokémon manga Pokémon Special, the characters Yellow, Lance/Wataru, and Giovanni/Sasaki have empathetic powers towards Pokémoncreatures. Empathy also plays a part in many other Japanese manga, having either actual empaths or of instances of empathy. Some expamples are Hisoka Kurosaki from Descendants of Darkness, Camus Pfalzgraf von Silvaner Lüneburg from Meine Liebe, and Quatre Raberba Winner from Gundam Wing. The character of Vincent in the TV series Beauty and the Beast is constantly empathically connected with his love, Catherine, and is considered by many fans to have at least a partial empathic sensing of others around him, fading with distance. In the movie Equilibrium, members of the Grammaton Clergy claim to be able to feel someone's feelings, sometimes before the other person is even aware of their own feelings. In printed fiction, several characters in the book To Ride Pegasus by Anne McCaffrey and its sequels are telempathic, and are also able to broadcast chosen emotions. The character Flinx from Alan Dean Foster's ongoing "Flinx and Pip" series is telempathic as well. The book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (on which the film Blade Runner was based) directly explores a number of issues surrounding empathy and the emotions, most notably a test which distinguishes humans from androids based on involuntary empathic reactions; but also tells of a religion based on collective experience and empathy for animals, as well as the 'mood organ' (a device which arouses any chosen emotion). Mercedes Lackey, a prominent American fantasy writer, imbues her "Heralds of Valdemar" with different abilities, including empathy, most notably in the Queen's Own Herald, Talia. Octavia Butler's classic science fiction novel Parable of the Sower also features a character who is an empath. In Isobelle Carmody's Obernewtyn Chronicles, some characters have the ability to project their own emotions and to 'feel' the emotions of others around them. In the book series called Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, a vampire character named Jasper has a strong ability to feel any emotion in anybody and change the emotions of the people around him. He often uses this power to calm others in hostile situations. Rose Rosetree describes how an empath learns to explore her empathic talent and to use it more efficiently in her fiction novel The Roar of the Huntids. [21]. In the NBC television series Heroes, the character of Peter Petrelli is revealed to be an "empath", possessing the ability to absorb and use the power's of other heroes, even when they are not present, simply by recalling the way he felt when he was near them. In the pen and paper role-playing game Rifts, Empathy is a psychic ability used to "feel" or "read" the emotions of others. The super psychic ability, "empathic transmission" enables the psychic to affect the emotions of others, with negative or positive results. For example, the psychic can force his victim to feel extreme sorrow, or extreme joy. Some philosophers (such as Martha Nussbaum) suggest that novel reading cultivates readers' empathy and leads them to exercise better world citizenship. For a critique of this application of the empathy-altruism hypothesis to experiences of narrative empathy, see Keen's Empathy and the Novel (Oxford, 2007).
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Dansk (Danish)
n. - indføling, indlevelsesevne Nederlands (Dutch)
empathie (inleving in gevoelens van een ander), inlevingsvermogen (in gevoelens van een ander) Français (French)
n. - empathie, communion d'idées/de sentiments Deutsch (German)
n. - Einfühlung, Empathy Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - ενσυναίσθηση, συναισθηματική ταύτιση Italiano (Italian)
empatia Português (Portuguese)
n. - empatia (f) Русский (Russian)
сочувствие Español (Spanish)
n. - empatía Svenska (Swedish)
n. - empati, inlevelse
中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
移情作用, 神入 中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 移情作用, 神入 한국어 (Korean)
n. - 감정 이입 日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 感情移入 العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) الاعتناق, التقمص العاطفي עברית (Hebrew)
n. - הזדהות גמורה, אמפתיה
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Culture Influences Brain Cells: Brain's Mirror Neurons Swayed By Ethnicity And CultureScienceDaily (July 23, 2007) — The brain's mirror neuron network responds differently depending on whether we are looking at someone who shares our culture, or someone who doesn't. A thumb's up for "I'm good." The rubbing of a pointed forefinger at another for "shame on you." The infamous and ubiquitous middle finger salute for--well, you know. Such gestures that convey meaning without speech are used and recognized by nearly everyone in our society, but to someone from a foreign country, they may be incomprehensible. The opposite is true as well. Plop an American in a foreign land and he or she may be clueless to the common gestures of that particular culture. This raises a provocative question--does culture influence the brain? The answer is yes, reports Istvan Molnar-Szakacs, a researcher in the UCLA Tennenbaum Center for the Biology of Creativity, and Marco Iacoboni, director of the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Lab at the Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center of UCLA's Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. Their research appears in the journal PLoS ONE. In their study, the researchers wanted to investigate the imprint of culture on the so-called mirror neuron network. Mirror neurons fire when an individual performs an action, but they also fire when someone watches another individual perform that same action. Neuroscientists believe this "mirroring" is the neural mechanism by which we can read the minds of other people and empathize with them. When it comes to the influence of culture, they found that indeed, the mirror neuron network responds differently depending on whether we are looking at someone who shares our culture, or someone who doesn't. The researcher's used two actors, one an American, the other a Nicaraguan, to perform a series of gestures--American, Nicaraguan, and meaningless hand gestures, to a group of American subjects. A procedure called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was used to measure the levels of so-called "corticospinal excitability" (CSE)--which scientists use to probe the activity of mirror neurons. They found that the American participants demonstrated higher mirror neuron activity while observing the American making gestures compared to the Nicaraguan. And when the Nicaraguan actor performed American gestures, the mirror neuron activation of the observers dropped. "We believe these are some of the first data to show neurobiological responses to culture-specific stimuli," said Molnar-Szakacs. "Our data show that both ethnicity and culture interact to influence activity in the brain, specifically within the mirror neuron network involved in social communication and interaction." "We are the heirs of communal but local traditions," said Iacoboni. "Mirror neurons are the brain cells that help us in shaping our own culture. However, the neural mechanisms of mirroring that shape our assimilation of local traditions could also reveal other cultures, as long as such cross-cultural encounters are truly possible. All in all, our research suggests that with mirror neurons our brain mirrors people, not simply actions." Thus, it appears that neural systems supporting memory, empathy and general cognition encodes information differently depending on who's giving the information--a member of one's own cultural/ethnic in-group, or a member of an out-group, and that ethnic in-group membership and a culturally learned motor repertoire more strongly influence the brain's responses to observed actions, specifically actions used in social communication. "An important conclusion from these results is that culture has a measurable influence on our brain and, as a result, our behavior. Researchers need to take this into consideration when drawing conclusions about brain function and human behavior," said Molnar-Szakacs. The findings, the researchers note, may also have implications for motor skill and language learning, intergroup communication, as well as the study of intergroup attitudes toward other cultures. Other author's of the study included Allan D. Wu and Francisco J. Robles. Both Molnar-Szakacs and Iacoboni are members of UCLA's Foundation for Psychocultural Research (FPR) Center for Culture, Brain and Development, which provided funding for the study.
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