What if philosophers got it wrong? What if the basic notion that we are hard-wired for narcissism and self-interest is not as true our our forefathers adamantly ascribed?
I’m deep into The Empathic Civilization, a profound work of human understanding. Jeremy Rifkin suggests that science is now calling into question just about all of our pre-existing notions of human enlightenment and philosophies, many are built on the notion that humans are selfish brutes. Science is now revealing a little thing called mirror-neurons, which reveal that we are hired wired for connection. It doesn’t mean we don’t have selfish interests. It suggests that our bodies are hired wired to transcend those selfish interests automatically.
Mirror neurons work very simply. In order to understand the world, we internally reconstruct what we see happening outside of our bodies. In other words, our bodies create meaning by reliving what we see in others. This ability reveals that we are hard-wired to connect, to feel what others are feelings, to engage other’s pain and suffering, and to help transcend those maladies.
“The essential point is that mirror neurons underwrite the ability to recognize what helps or distresses others, what they suffer and enjoy, what they need and what harms them.” – A.C. Grayling
Rifkin begins his great work by suggesting that there is a strange relationship happening inside the body.
“At the very core of the human story is the paradoxical relationship between empathy and entropy.” Rifkin, (p 2)
Empathy is the fullest realization of our design as human beings created in the image of God. Entropy is the fullest negation of it. So the question is then what keeps us locked into a state of entropy? What keeps us from realizing what our bodies are already designed to experience?
I wonder if we’re afraid of empathy because if we experience what the other person is experiencing it may just captivate us. This is the tension of the human story. Does the experience of evil make us evil? Can we change reality? I would suggest that this is the underlying tension of the human experience. Can God transcend what we’ve done and love us then? I would also suggest that the basic human journey is to participate with Jesus in overcoming this death.
This is the brilliance of grace. Grace is the original framework that allows us to live in the midst of chaos and not be defined by it. Actions, or what we’ve done was never the basis for human dignity, or value. God’s declarations were.
So my question is this. What keeps you from experiencing what you are already designed to do, which is connection and relationship?
