Thread by @MettaBhavana1

Let's discuss empathy. Empathy is hard wired into human beings. It's the result of our evolved societal bonding where we survived because we recognised mutual advantage in pair bonding, cooperative child raising and forging close interpersonal connections.

"Scientists recognise two kinds of empathy -- affective empathy and cognitive empathy -- and studies strongly suggest that babies experience both." parentingscience.com/do-babies-feel…

Newborns routinely become distressed when they hear other newborns cry. "Babies cry more when they hear the cries of a real infant" (Martin and Clark 1982; Sagi and Hoffman 1976; Simner 1971).

So what happens to adults, such that some, particularly on the right of politics, it seems, as evidenced recently, seem to need "empathy training?" Some psychologists suggest that "Empathy Deficit Disorder is a pervasive but overlooked condition." psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-ne…

The key may be in our political landscape. "In fact, our increasingly polarised social and political culture of the past few years reveals that EDD is more severe than ever." Douglas LaBier Ph.D.

"EDD grows when people focus too much on acquiring power, status, and money for themselves. Nearly every day we hear or read about more extreme examples: People who go over the edge in pursuit of money, power, or recognition..."

This kills empathy - the thing we had in natural abundance as babies - because we begin to duffer the "delusion that you're completely independent and self-sufficient. You lose touch with the true reality, that all humans are interconnected and interdependent."

Maybe more later... #metta @threadreaderapp Unroll please.

Babies have it hard wired. Adults lose it. There's a wide gap in between where socialisation and everyday culture conditions individuals to act in certain ways over time. That gap is where politics and economics live.

Loss of empathy may be a trade off - an integral human "commodity" nonetheless replaced by other conditions that seem more appealing, a trait driven into the corners by greater pressures than the intrinsic urge to simply demonstrate understanding of the needs of others.

As if aware of my post on empathy... He posts this...