On Empathy; Two-Part Special!
Audio 1 here!
Audio 2 here!
Earlier this month, as some of us celebrated the founding of our country, we may have wondered how very different our society might have been had our founding fathers understood our empathetic nature. Instead, we live in a society…where we are all presumed to be self interested adversaries, who can be coerced into cooperating in exchange for financial rewards.
But today there is a new view of humanity and it’s being expressed by an ever widening range of writers, thinkers, and scientists. Rather than the traditional assumption that humans are primarily selfish and anti-social, this new view recognizes that our primary drive is social. A healthy human is inclined towards cooperating, and gets pleasure from taking care of others and making a positive social contribution.