HELLO NEIGHBOR!
That's me waving from the center of the bottom row with my dad and sister looking from above, amongst my neighbors and family friends. I grew up in an eastern European midwest ghetto in the 50s when most things were learned through osmosis and eavesdropping. Discussions worldwide? Who would have thunk?
I invite you to join my neighborhood of thought and I will be honored when you do. If anything you read on this page propels you to want to add something to the mix, please let your presence be known by placing your message on the comment form below. Please include questions and sparks for future entries you would like to see, related to all things social/emotional and, frankly, what isn't?
THANKS!
BLAME THE BRAIN!
Here's a pretty ample reason why active understanding of NUANCE and a certain kind of EMPATHY remains the exception...blame the brain!
Read what Antonio Damasio, the David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience at USC and the director of USC's Brain and Creativity Institute said on NPR's "All Things Considered:"
"It probably took longer in evolution to get to a stage in which human beings could look at another human being, not see anything externally wrong with them, but imagine that there was something quite "wrong" (my quotes) in terms of their feelings, in terms of their mental pain," he says.
Damasio says people still aren't born with this sort of compassion. They have to learn it...
...the USC team found that the brain had to work a lot harder to react to another person's psychological pain than to physical pain.
Damasio says brain scans showed that even the most complex psychological emotions engaged many of the same brain systems that responded to physical states.
That suggests these emotions "go deep in our brain and they also go deep in our body, in our flesh," he says.
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang,(a cognitive neuroscientist and educational psychologist who studies the brain bases of emotion, social interaction and culture and their implications for development and schools), notes that it took the brain up to six seconds to react to a complex emotion like emotional pain, while reactions to physical pain occurred almost instantly. Reactions to emotional pain also took much longer to dissipate.
That raises questions about the effects of news programs and video games in which a traumatic psychological event may flash by in a just a second or two, Damasio says.
He says that might not be long enough for children who are still learning compassion.
"What if it is happening to a child who does not have parents or a guardian around who can say, well, 'Wait a minute, there are terrible implications for the person who just underwent that particular event'?" Damasio says.
Without that sort of help, some children may not acquire the full range of compassion for other people (or themselves, says I), Damasio says. They also might not develop admiration for people who do virtuous things.
Damasio says that would be a big problem because compassion and admiration help anchor moral systems — and society itself.
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Still with me? What do you think about adding brain work-outs to a Global Fitness Program, so we can achieve self-empathy and out of control kindness on the planet?