The empathy enhancer
A few years ago I was reading an excellent book that advocated for dolphin “personhood.” The author noted some fascinating aspects of cetacean brains; for instance, they possess a paralimbic lobe (which humans do not possess) that effectively fuses their limbic brain (the “emotional” part) with the cerebral cortex (the “thinking” part) so that the two parts are far less segregated than they are in a human brain. This implies that dolphins can integrate their emotions and cognition in a way that humans simply cannot, as evidenced by our constant tug-of-war over whether “feeling” or “reasoning” is the path to true knowledge. For dolphins and other cetaceans, perhaps that dichotomy doesn’t even exist. If nothing else, it’s quite possible that dolphins, due to their greater neuronal connections between the limbic and cortex parts of their brain, have greater emotional processing and self-control than humans or other primates.
Another interesting aspect of dolphins lies in the fact that they are more auditory than visual, gleaning greater information from echolocation than from sight. They even practice what is called “echoic eavesdropping” in which they can listen to the echoes from another dolphin’s clicks, effectively “hearing” exactly what the clicker hears and thereby forming nearly identical images in their separate minds. An analogous experience for humans (since we are primarily visual) would be to actually see through another person’s eyes (not merely in the metaphorical sense of understanding another person’s experience, but quite literally as well). What if such a thing were possible? To not only conceptualize what someone might be seeing based on their location and their field of view, but to genuinely see as if you were in fact standing in their body and looking through their eyes? Now imagine having the ability to truly see, hear, smell, taste, and—most importantly—feel what another person does. Surely such an experience would enact a seismic shift in how we perceive our sense of self and how we treat others.
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Dolphins are celebrated for their altruistic behavior—often assisting each other or their fellow cetaceans, and sometimes even helping humans who are in distress. What if much of this altruism derives from an expanded sense of self? Given that dolphin brains seem better evolved to process emotions, and given their ability to more fully experience the environment exactly as their fellows do, maybe they define their “selves” as more than their own individual body. Maybe dolphins often think not in terms of “me” but in terms of “us.”
Altruism is “the belief that the well-being of others is equally, if not more, important than the well-being or survival of the self.” Humans are certainly capable of altruism but it remains uncommon enough to merit notice, and most evolutionary psychologists postulate ultimately selfish reasons for it—it could be something as simple as kin selection (i.e., in the ancestral environment, most humans around you were relatives of some sort so it made genetic sense to be helpful to them), or perhaps because altruism demonstrated your wealth or strength (and therefore increased your social status or sexual attractiveness).
But what if it’s different for dolphins? What if they are altruistic to their fellows and even to humans because they don’t see them as “the other”—as something truly separate from themselves? Because of their expanded emotional processing, perhaps they are better able to get inside the head of a fellow being and experience its distress in a first-hand way. And now imagine if you, a human being, somehow suddenly developed the ability to fully feel what another person felt. If that person became distressed, could you really ignore them or refuse help, given that you’re now experiencing their situation viscerally instead of just intellectually?
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Imagine if humans could somehow develop an “empathy enhancer.” (For some reason I initially imagined this as a Cerebro-style helmet but it would much more likely be a tiny neural implant.) A person with the enhancer would have their emotional state and their physical sensations broadcast to others, whose own enhancers would allow them to experience the other’s feelings identically. (Note that this is not a “mind-reading” device—the content of your thoughts would remain your own, only your emotional and physical states would be “public.”) Given this arrangement, if you injured another person, physically or emotionally, you would feel their pain or suffering as acutely as they would.
Consider how radically this would change the way people interact. Say you pass a homeless person begging on the street or a child crying from hunger. Given that you experience their suffering as if it were your own (even if the enhancer dampens the sensations so you only feel them at something like 1/4 the potency that the owner does) could you continue to just walk on by without intervening? Then on the flip side there is joy: when your friend finds a great new job or gets engaged, instead of feeling a detached happiness for them (perhaps tinged with a bit of resentment over their good fortune?) you would feel the full force of their delight and could genuinely celebrate their happiness as if it were your own.
Would the spread of empathically-enhanced people make the world a better place? In Star Trek: The Next Generation, ship’s counselor Deanna Troi, thanks to her half-Betazoid heritage, has empathic abilities that allow her to fully sense the emotional states of others. While this renders her vulnerable at times to intensely powerful waves of emotion coming from outside herself, it also makes her an excellent therapist to her fellow crew-members, since by feeling what they feel she can genuinely understand their emotional state and establish a sense of solidarity. Her abilities also makes her a fine diplomat and peacemaker, since she can accurately read the emotions of the opposing sides and help translate their feelings into an effective rapprochement. So indeed, breaking down the barriers between our “selves” and others could be the key to greater harmony and peaceful coexistence.
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In Buddhism, there is the idea that all things are tainted by dukkha (i.e., dissatisfaction or suffering) and that one reason for our dukkha is that we labor under the illusion of the individual self, a thing existing independently and remaining separate from all other living and non-living things. Along with dukkha, another “mark of existence” in Buddhism is anatta or “non-self.” Anatta entails the realization that there is no rigid, unchanging “self” or “I” that is separate from the world; instead, our sense of self is an illusion that causes dukkha because it leads us to treat our fellow creatures and the natural world as “the other.”
One of the main goals in many forms of Buddhist meditation is to break down the ego and dissolve the sense of self by examining it critically. Upon careful examination, one often realizes that everything we identify as our “self”—our bodies, our thoughts, our emotions—is not as subject to conscious executive control as we like to think. Additionally, one recognizes that our bodies, thoughts, and emotions are temporary constructs that change over time and typically incorporate things that were previously “outside” us: the plants and animals that we eat become part of us; the stimuli that swirl around us generate conscious and unconscious thoughts in our heads; the attitudes of others greatly influence our own emotional states. To paraphrase the philosopher Heraclitus, “You cannot step twice into the same river.” The idea here being that “the river” is an abstract concept—the waters are constantly changing, the fish are constantly being born and dying, the riverbed is constantly shifting. The idea of “the river,” like the idea of “the self,” is useful but ultimately an illusion.
Much suffering can arise from such an illusion. The human tendency to insist on a self that is separate from all other selves can lead to cruelty at worst and disinterestedness at best. Meditation (as well as psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin, but lets save that for another post) can succeed in dissolving much of the ego and showing people their greater connection to the rest of the world, both living and non-living. Is it possible that technology—through an empathy enhancer, virtual reality, etc.—can provide another means of freeing us from the prison of the self and allowing us to fully experience the existence of others?
Postscript:
A world full of Deanna Trois (thoughtful, kind, respectful) wouldn’t be bad at all. Of course, it also occurred to me that there are other types of folks in the world, including sadists and masochists. An empathy enhancer might actually serve to reform sadists a bit, since the pain and suffering they enjoy inflicting on others would bounce back on them, and that might serve to discourage such behavior. Masochists on the other hand…well, that could potentially lead to some unpleasant results!
Addendum (04/21/20):
Just finished re-reading the Bhagavad Gita and came across this quote which I think perfectly sums up the ideas above: “When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others as if they were his own, he has attained the highest state of spiritual union.”
