The New Scientist interviews modern thinker Jeremy Rifkin. He talks about a third industrial revolution and an accompanying change in our consciousness. He talks about moving away from our 19th Century notions of the enlightenment and making empathy the central device needed for our survival as the world that we know is changing so drastically and the perils are vastly more threatening.
Its a good read and is good material to contemplate.
New Scientist: Jeremy Rifkin: The third industrial revolution
...But empathy isn't about utopia. It's about knowing how damn tough it is to be alive. We empathize with others because we smell the whiff of death in their vulnerabilities and so we celebrate their life. There's no such thing as empathy in heaven because there's no mortality, no suffering. Empathy is about encouraging another person's struggle to be. It's a tough feeling to have. In utopia there's no struggle, there's nothing to empathize with. Empathy is more than just, "I feel your pain". We root for each other's struggle to live out this mystery of life.
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Goethe understood this a couple hundred years ago--he disagreed with Francis Bacon's approach. He argued that we understand nature by participating, not by standing back and observing with dispassionate neutrality. Especially in the ecological sciences and climate science, you need to be engaged, interactive and interdisciplinary, because you're dealing with systems thinking.
4 comments:
Empathy? But greed is so much more fun, it's about me, and while I do care about you, I'll never care about you more than I care about me.
There's a joke in here somewhere -
What's the difference between selfishness and empathy?
Its when your date also orders the expensive wine and the deluxe dessert.
My old granny had a saying about people's real nature. She always would say to me "Sonny just remember, after ME you come first."
Selflessness is not part of the American dream.
Empathy might possibly wear out the sole of selfishness, but I would be the last to know.
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