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Empathy in the Time of Technology: How Storytelling is the Ke...

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As the world grows smaller and more connected, humans will grow ever more divergent because of their possession – or not – of a multitude of transhuman technologies, and so the role of empathy grows larger and more important than ever.

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n theory, sensory/media input stimulates mirror neurons, which enable empathy.Practically, empathy is created through storytelling, which is not only the most successful remote means of creating social empathy, but has actually been the engine of social/cultural liberalization and change

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mirror neurons are:

 

…a set of neurons in the premotor area of the brain that are activated not only when performing an action oneself, but also while observing someone else perform that action. It is believed mirror neurons increase an individual's ability to understand the behaviors of others, an important skill in social species such as humans. (Iacoboni et. al. 2005)

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Empathy and technology have been linked for millennia. As a long time social and tool-making species, both abilities are evolutionary adaptations for our collective survival. Empathy and technology became inextricably linked when information technologies developed. The first great wave of transformative information technologies happened with the birth of written language, allowing thoughts to be recorded and referenced later, enabling one to experience the thoughts of another at any time. The next wave came with the advent of the printing press and the popularization of vernacular literature as a mass-medium (Davis 2004). This allowed the mass dissemination of counter-cultural and liberalizing ideas throughout Western civilization. Some of the most powerful ideas were distributed through printed stories as novels, the first great mass entertainment medium.

 

But what is it in a story that makes us empathize? I believe it is the imaginative act of the reader translating the words on the page into thoughts and feelings, enabling them to see the world through the characters’ eyes and feel their feelings. It is also the recognition that humans share common needs, goals and aspirations and that these are either met or unmet in the story of every life, be it real or fictional. Whether the story is a comedy or a tragedy only depends on the point of view. There could be an entire essay in what will happen to storytelling itself if H+ technologies allow human consciousness to achieve a global or cosmic perspective. Regardless, what makes literature such a potent brew is that we do not suffer these virtual travails in our own reality. We survive the vicarious experience, which might be devastating to us in reality, and emerge relatively unscathed, packing storytelling’s virtual punch.

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Storytelling is both the seductive siren and the safe haven that encourages the connection with the feared “other.” As a reader, I know that I don’t really have to go to Japan, be sold into human slavery and train to be a geisha to feel for a geisha’s existence. I don’t even have to speak to a geisha and risk the mutual embarrassment of cultural or linguistic misunderstanding. I just have to read Memoirs of a Geisha and somehow, my appreciation for the travails of women in another culture that is so alien to mine will grow in ways usually impossible without intense human contact. 

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non-visual story h

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s a deeper psychological impact

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According to this theory, the more senses employed to experience the story, the weaker the story’s potential empathetic influence

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might negatively affect the empathetic response derived from the virtual reality technologies transhumanist are relying on for their vision of an empathetic future.

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They feel this will increase empathetic responses in people, putting them in another’s shoes in a simultaneously virtual and visceral way, allowing them to actually experience being ‘the other.” T

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how we deal with our present media technologies may be a better indication of our future

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What is the motivation to read a work like this now, when we have television’s mega-channel universe, iPods, the Internet, gaming, movies and an Amazonian selection of printed material to choose from, most of which do not challenge our beliefs of what our, or any other society, is really like? 

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Individuals can select from a vast cyber-sea of media and utterly saturate their information space exclusively with information sources that reinforce existing world views. Each of us can create our own personal media walled garden that surrounds us with comforting, confirming information, and utterly shuts out anything that conflicts with our world view.

 

This is social dynamite, for shared knowledge and information is the glue that holds civil society together. It is the stuff that caused people to change their opinions and to empathize with others. (Saffo 2005)

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They feel this will increase empathetic responses in people, putting them in another’s shoes in a simultaneously virtual and visceral way, allowing them to actually experience being ‘the other.” This is part and parcel of the beautiful techno-utopian vision of a harmonious and transcendent future. But I do not believe in holding one’s breath and waiting for a technology that does not exist and may never fulfill its function to save humanity from itself. 

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He notes a study by Lada Adamic and Natalie Glance, whose research has found that there is almost no overlap between the blogs read by liberals and conservatives. Even more frightening, this personal media trend has spread to fiction as well.

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At the end of the drama (which was designed to convince the game player that a real victim was really getting hurt), the victim cried for help. Those who played the violent video games were more reluctant to help the violence victim, taking an average of 65.6 seconds before they would get up and see if they could help, as opposed to an average of 16.2 seconds by the players of the non-violent games

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we must always be aware that the emotional response we get from our empathy is from our own evolutionarily (both culturally and genetically) derived values. We could just as easily evolve beyond these values, if we haven’t already. That could make them untrue in the new scenarios of the future and invalidate empathy (Allbright 2006).

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Now he wants to help create empathy in the family and friends of these soldiers before they return from combat, because as families welcome home their traumatized loved ones, they will immediately have to deal with the laundry list of social and behavioral difficulties these vets face.

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Therefore, the only hope is for all of us to tell stories. Lots and lots of stories. Both our own stories and the stories of others. Both true and fictional stories.

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