The qualitatively higher, conscious Human empathy
Opinion from the Internet on the topic of Humans being special in nature through their ability to empathize with each other:
We will just have to agree to disagree.
“Not only, that the roots of human morality can be found in the empathy between some social animals (elephants, dolphins, dogs, other social primates, etc.) … I take it one step further and define human morality as empathy-driven behavior. Anything else is ritual, rule, or reason — driven or justified (for example … tradition, law, algorithms — or when the social primate begins to swarm, violence).
To bring this to a more immediate and human context … I live in Japan, a secular land of a thousand gods. One reason the right-wing LDP government now has such a low level of public confidence is the corrupt gap between what is moral and what is legal.
Toshio Agagi, a mid-level bureaucrat working for the Ministry of Finance, was pressured by the top Finance Minister to falsify documents regarding the land sale to friends of the Prime Minister. When he refused to break the law, he was bullied and forced to work overtime hours that are medically defined as above ‘karoshi’ levels (death by overwork). He eventually committed suicide.
His wife is now suing the national government, specifically the Finance Minister … and the government’s defense is ‘public servants’ should not be held accountable while in office.
Ha. A pig in lipstick is still just a pig and the chief Finance Minister … who both knowingly broke the law AND drove a lower-ranking inferior to suicide … was not acting as a public servant. He was serving Mammon and private interests.
I would argue that there is an ultimately unbridgeable gap between what we do out of love (empathy), and what we are compelled to do by ritual, rules, or reason … and if I had to choose, I would go the way of dolphins and chimpanzees.
I fully agree with you.
We are creatures driven by empathy, love — which by default works only for our own sake.
Thus by default, we are worse than animals, as animals with their natural, instinctive empathy are instinctively integrated with other animals and the whole Natural system, inherently sensing their place in it.
We on the other hand, only feel ourselves and when we say we empathize with others we just project their state into ourselves and feel sorry for ourselves sensing how we would feel in their place. But we can’t feel others.
We try to cover, balance, correct this with all kinds of rituals, laws, social norms to make society liveable, but since even these rituals, laws, and norms are also devised, built by our inherently self-loving, self-justifying and individualistic nature, we fail again and again.
So why are we considered “Human”- the qualitatively highest creatures in evolution?!
Because we have the potential to consciously, methodically develop “true empathy”, “true love” towards others above and against our inherent nature. We can achieve the same level of mutual integration, belonging, “mutual guarantee” as animals not only among ourselves but towards the whole Natural system.
But since we have to do it against, above our egos, self-love, despite the instinctive mutual distrust, hate, exploitative urges against others, we gain unparalleled insight into nature’s perfect system animals do not have, since they do not have anything to compare that perfection to.
This is how an inherently lowly, egotistic, exploitative, self-destructive Human can b become the perfect, selfless, objective observer, partner of Nature through the unique contrast only we can achieve as evolution “created” us with the original “faulty” software which we can consciously upgrade, complete.
We are now in the generation where this transition from blind, instinctive, worst than animalistic development towards a “truly Human” form can unfold, starting with those who already see and accept that first of all they need to change themselves as they can’t stand their own inherent nature any longer.
(Only the pig with lipstick who looks into the mirror and see the pig in lipstick can reach the truly Human form, as they start hating that pig in lipstick that smiles back at them from the mirror!)
