Window Seat | Mrinal Chatterjee | 11.10.2020
Empathy
Deficit and why we should be concerned about it
Oxford
English Dictionary defines empathy as “the ability to understand and share the
feelings of another.” Empathy goes
beyond sympathy, which is broadly defined as understanding how someone else
feels.
Empathy
enables us to actually experience those
feelings for ourselves. We feel the emotional pain of others as if it was our
own. There is a Sanskrit word which comes quite close to it: samabedana (sama
means same, and bedana means pain). There is another word in Sanskrit:
sahanubhuti, which means the same feeling (sama means same, anubhuti means
feeling). However, in English it translates to sympathy.
Studies in neuroscience have discovered that the key brain
regions which evoke empathy in a person appear to be the amygdala, which is
involved in the regulation of emotional learning and the reading of
emotional expressions, and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which activates
when people experience their own pain or observe others in pain. But the most
important region of all is the medial prefrontal cortex (MPC), also known as
the prefrontal lobe. A "hub" for social information processing, the
MPC modulates self-awareness and our awareness of other people's thoughts and
feelings. It also appears to play an important role in "marking"
certain emotional experiences so as to provide us with emotional shortcuts to
actions that are positive and therefore likely to be rewarding.
These
discoveries show that empathy is hard-wired and that we are primed for
morality, hence the writer Jeremy Rifkin’s claim that these circuits are the
source of humanity's desire for "intimate participation and
companionship".
This
finds resonance with several Indian seer’s claim of the basic goodness of human
being and also with Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Adam Smith's notion of a
"moral sentiment". As Mark Honingbaum writes
in the Observer ..(they) have come to regard empathy as intrinsically pro-social. When
we empathise, they argue, we mirror the distress of an "other" and,
unless our brains are damaged or we are developmentally abnormal, we are moved
to alleviate their suffering. The result is that, like other modern moral
sentiments such as trust and altruism, empathy is increasingly seen as a
"social glue" and the evolutionary basis of human co-operation.
Empathy
is vital for the running of a civilized society. Empathy is important for
developing social relationships and being able to live with others. In fact
empathy has often been termed as social glue- that binds the members of a
society- even if they are not personally related or even know one another.
So why
are we experiencing this downward trend in empathy levels, especially in young
people? There aren’t any clear answers to this question. Some experts are suggesting ICT (Information
Communication Technology) may be largely to blame.
ICT
may make communication easier and more frequent, however, it promotes only superficial connections
rather than the deeper connections you can only get in person. As Dr. Michele
Borba, author of UnSelfie:
Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World, puts it:
“It’s very hard to be empathetic and feel for another human being if you can’t
read another person’s emotions. You don’t learn emotional literacy facing a
screen. You don’t learn emotional literacy with emojis.”
The
second reason could be the constant push to succeed. To be rich, at any cost.
To acquire material possession- at any cost. And to be happy at any cost- as if
happiness is a physical entity and one can buy it with loads of money. This
misguided and fallacious notion of success and happiness is making us soulless
morons.
Empathy
is the bond on which human civilization sustains and thrives. Without empathy
the bond slackens, and so does the growth and advancement of the civilization.
Without empathy, we stop growing and gradually regress. Presently we are in a
peculiar situation- call it an existential crisis. Our body and science are in
twenty first century- poised for even further develo0pment. But our mind is
regressing to the middle ages. A me-only existence will give rise to a hollow
civilization.
Therefore,
we need to practice empathy- at individual level, at family level, at community
level and at societal level. Nature has endowed with empathy. We need to let
the feeling flow and translate it into action.
Hathras
Hathras in UP is presently known across the
country for the gruesome rape and murder of a dalit girl and the way Police and
the administration mis-handled it.
Hathras should have been known for quite
different reasons.
It was in Hathras that Swami Vivekananda
(Narendranath Duttta, then) found his first disciple at the Hathras railway
station. It was in
1887, on his way to Kashi, Vivekananda stopped at
Hathras. It was here that he met the Assistant Station Master of Hathras
Railway Station Sharat
Chandra Gupta. He became the first disciple
of Vivekananda. He later became
Swami Sadananda of the Ramakrishna Mission. Thus Hathras railway station
has historical importance in the life of Swami Vivekananda and formation of
Ramkrishna Mission. In fact,
Hathras station should be refurbished to highlight its association with Swami
Vivekananda.
Hathras is also the birth place of one of the finest Hindi satirist and humourist
Kaka Hathrasi (1906-1995). Born as Prabhu Lal Garg, he wrote under the pen name
Kaka Hathrasi. He also wrote several books on Indian classical music under the
pen name "Vasant".
 |
| Kaka Hathrasi |
In 1935, he started publishing a monthly magazine
Sangeet, which is the only periodical on Indian classical music and dance that
has been continuously published for over 78 years.
It is a pity that Hathras is now known for the
wrong reasons.
Tailpiece: Corona
What’s the difference between COVID-19 and Romeo and
Juliet? One’s the coronavirus and the other is a Verona crisis.
***
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