[Oakley]

In this interesting video (about 10 minutes) Rifkin discusses the discovery of our natural ability to empathize.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFR ... r_embedded

He points out that we do identify with others and empathize; we are basically good. He talks about early man living in tribes and empathizing with fellow tribe members, but when religion grew we then identified with and empathized with fellows of the same religion. The same transition took place when nations arose and we identified with and empathized with countrymen. He sees the next step as identifying with all of humanity as trade, travel and ease of communication progresses.

Of course those of us who see peak oil as a turning point might disagree about his view of a future with expanding globalism. While he emphasizes the positive side of feeling empathy toward others with whom we identify, I see the negative side. We easily go to war with other nations because we do not identify with them and do not feel empathy toward them. And before nations, we did not identify with people of other religions and easily killed them. And before religion, we easily engaged in tribal warfare for lack of a common identity and empathy.

As peak oil unfolds and economies enter long term contraction, I think the pressure will be for nation states to collapse. If we congregate around religion instead of the nation, then that will replace national identity with the potential for religious wars. And if we congregate based on tribe (race) then we will have the potential for tribal warfare (race war). And in reality, all three of these identities seem to me to operate simultaneously. We have religious divisions within some nations that even erupt into violence. We have tribal warfare today within some nations, and look at the racial division that exist in the US now, white, hispanic and black.

The potential for conflict based on lack of identity with others and lack of empathy for others seems very high in a future that has resources adequate only to support a fraction of the current world population.

[evilgenius]

I wonder if it is empathy, or some related brain circuitry that has to do with something I came across lately. I was watching one of the Charlie Rose Brain Series episodes and saw how only at a certain age are children able to reason the difference between one and more than one. You know, more than one being the ability to attach a numerical significance to more than one. Until a certain age children can see one (which they see easily enough) or many, not how many. When they reach that certain age suddenly they can differentiate between all of the possibilities that many has.

Anyway, I was watching this and it immediately struck me that some adults think like little children when it comes to things like SUV's. They don't seem to understand the quality issues, although they can certainly cite them as reasons why they drive something so outsized to their real needs, what they really see is just something 'big'. The mechanisms involved are, I'm guessing, probably the same ones that can cause certain drivers to undergo a kind of paralysis that prevents them from being able to pass large vehicles, even though before they reached said vehicles they were zooming along. No doubt this kind of thinking is highly emotional.

The big question then is, how does this kind of thinking play out in society? Does it effect the way that people interact with each other? Maybe something like this is what Blake really meant when he was talking about the 'doors of perception'?