The Human Narrative bends toward empathy

If I had to narrow the goal of my writing to one thing, it would be empathy.   I try to make my readers feel what I feel or feel what it’s like to be in my subjects’ shoes. That’s why I’m such a huge fan of this video and of Jeremy Rifkin’s book, The Empathic Civilization.

Rifkin traces humans from our early day’s, trying not to be eaten on the African savannas, to modern day, and how we have divided the world into Us and Them.  First it was blood, then tribes, then religions, then nations, and so on.  Our Us continues to expand. It’s with some hope that our Us can expand to encapsulate all of humanity, the earth, and all of the other creatures on it.

What if empathy shaped our future, not wars?  Riffkin argues that it always has and it always will.

When he talks about the “empathic civilization” I hear him talking about Glocals.

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Some quotes from the video:

We are soft-wired for empathy.

Empathy is the invisible hand.