Roots and Collapse of Empathy

“Pioneering new ways of perceiving and explaining universal impulses of human cooperation and compassion, opposing the idea that we are born egocentric, out of touch with others’ minds and feelings, Stein Bråten offers compelling evidence that infants and young children have the capability of sharing actions and pleasures with a parent or other child, affording sympathetic help in feeding or care of distress. He predicted the discovery of ‘mirror neurons’, the brain mechanism of such shared attention. Now, turning to events of shocking insensitivity that appear to contradict the above kindness, he gives a dark history of mass murder and cruelty by ordinary individuals submitting to the canon ‘Let there be a world free of evil!’. He explains this paradox as partly due to early experience of rejection of the desire to connect with parents and companions. I believe we must follow his lead and try to understand the nature of the emotions that promote the goodness of the commonwealth of human creativity and altruistic rescue, and also the emotional sources of the evil of ideological conflict and acts of inhumane self-assertion and atrocious cruelty.”