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Local News & Opinion
01.04 Presidential Primary Election Deadlines in Maryland 12.12 City Takes Steps to Conserve Reservoir 12.11 Baltimore's Top 10 Sports Stories of 2007 Books, Art & Entertainment
01.03 John Bolton's Latest Tome Reads Like a Simple Datebook Health & Environment
12.13 Beyond the point of no return 12.12 Loans to Hunt Oil’s Peruvian Fossil Fuel Project Challenged Ref. : Single-Payer FAQ Ref. : Environmental Health News Ref. : What is Global Warming, and what can citizens do about it? Ref. : Global Warming Links Ref. : Health & Nutrition Links US News Media
01.07 9-11 Cover-Up, Treason and The Bomb 12.31 Breaking: Corporate Media Actually Report Some Real News! 12.21 USA Today Squeezes Edwards Out of Race 12.19 War Is Over--Say the Pundits 12.19 Payment-per-Placement for Public Relations: A Dirty Underbelly of Journalism 12.18 Huckabee Chairman Hid Payoff Secret 12.18 Corporate News Means No Real News Where Impeachment is Concerned 12.13 FCC Proposes Greater Media Consolidation 12.11 Gary Webb's Enduring Legacy 12.10 The Lou Dobbs Primary? 12.10 Just Give Us Some Truth! 12.04 US Corporate Media Deliberately Censors the News US Politics, Policy & Culture
01.07 Churches Should Stay Out of Government 01.04 Bush-Clinton Duopoly Loses in Iowa 01.04 Clinton's Embarrassing Flop in Iowa Exposes Dem Leaders' Folly 01.04 Horton Hears a Who in Iowa: Kitsch and the Caucuses 01.03 Four Types of Government Operatives: Bullies, Muggers, Sneak Thieves, and Con Men 01.03 Sen. Hillary Clinton: “It’ll be over by Feb. 5.” 12.27 Creeping Fascism: History's Lessons 12.26 The Abraham Lincoln Brigade - A Profile in Courage, Honor and Hope 12.24 Thinking about Renewal 12.24 Global Warming Will Save America from the Right...Eventually 12.22 Military Evangelism Deeper, Wider Than First Thought 12.21 Md. Sens. Cardin and Mikulski Assail EPA Blocking of States' Higher Emission Standards 12.21 Impeachment: Power of the People Moves Corporate Media to Do the Right Thing 12.20 Stand and Deliver: Democrats Take a Bow 12.17 Police State America - A Look Back and Ahead 12.14 Imagine a Campaign that Called for Slashing Military Spending by 75% 12.12 Advocacy, Intellect, and Common Sense 12.10 Riding a One-Trick Pony 12.10 Why the Democrats Could Lose 12.07 Who Says College Students Shouldn't Vote Where They Live? 12.06 Neocons Down, Not Out 12.04 Iraq 3.0 12.04 A Miracle: Honest Intel on Iran Nukes US High Crimes & Incompetence
01.07 CIA Tapes Destroyed as Pressure Mounted 01.03 Tipping Point on Impeachment is Approaching 01.03 All I Want For New Year's Is My Rights Back 12.31 Hillary Signals Free Pass for Bush 12.28 Pakistan Is 'Central Front,' Not Iraq 12.20 Complicity in the Use of Torture 12.18 Whited Sepulchre: Huckabee's Hook-Up With Reagan-Bush Crimes 12.17 Surprise! Mukasey Covers Up Torture 12.12 3 House Judiciary Members Call for Impeachment of Cheney NOW 12.12 Torture: Are Americans 'Better Than That'? 12.12 America's Judicial Coup 12.10 Cave Dwellers: More Democratic Deceit on War and Torture 12.06 Special Relationship: Global Snatch and Grab is the Law of the Land 12.04 Eating Iraq: Corruption Rules and Cholera Rises While Insurgents Surf the Surge 12.01 Henry Hyde: Mr. Cover-up Letters
Ref. : Letters to the editor Economics & Business
12.31 Thinking about 2008 12.17 Thinking about Sovereigns 12.13 Billionaire Bailout: Central Bank Socialism and America's True Values 12.10 Thinking about "Economic Conditions" 12.03 Thinking About Revenue International
12.31 Benazir the Matchless 12.13 Mobile Labs to Target Iraqis for Death 12.10 How The Iranians Stole The Bomb From Israel 12.10 True Aim of Annapolis, and Why It Failed 12.04 Venezuela's Social Democracy Hits A Speed Bump 12.04 Thinking About Venezuela 12.03 Annapolis Hypocrisy Hides Occupied Palestine Reality We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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COMMENTARY:Research on Human Nature is Cause for Optimism''We have a pending fortuitous marriage of science and morality of the most profound sort.''Scientists have discovered that altruistic acts activate a primitive part of the brain, producing a pleasurable response. Morality appears to be hard-wired into our brains.
The non-profit Edge Foundation recently asked some of the world's most eminent scientists, ''What are you optimistic about? Why?'' Neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni cited the new experimental work into the neural mechanisms that reveal how humans are hard-wired for empathy.Recall that empathy is more than compassion or sympathy with another's situation. Empathy requires being able to ''put oneself in another's shoes,'' make a distinction between self and other, and then act on that perception. Empathy recognizes the other's humanity.
Overwhelming evidence also indicates that the roots of prosocial behavior, including moral sentiments like empathy, precede the evolution of culture. Some 40 years ago, the celebrated primatologist Jane Goodall wrote about chimpanzee emotions, social relations, and ''chimp culture,'' but experts remained skeptical. That's no longer the case. According to the famed primate scientist Frans B.M. de Waal, ''You don't hear any debate now.'' The feelings of empathy identified in monkeys and apes are both the roots and counterpart to human morality, a natural inheritance from our closest evolutionary relatives. And, following Darwin, sophisticated studies within biology suggest that large-scale cooperation within the human species, including with genetically unrelated individuals within a group, was favored by group selection. There were clear evolutionary benefits in coming to grips with others. Because morality has biological roots and empathy is at its center, we have a pending fortuitous marriage of science and morality of the most profound sort. Of course the most vexing problem that remains to be explained is why so little progress has been made in extending empathy to those outside certain in-groups. Given a global society rife with violence, why doesn't our moral intuition produce a more peaceful world? Here I tend to agree with Iacaboni's suggestion that externally manipulated, massive belief systems, including political ideologies, tend to override the unconscious, pre-reflective, neurobiological traits that should bring us together. For example, the fear-mongering of artificially created global scarcity may attentuate our empathic response. Another is the military's refusal to allow putting a face on U.S. wounded and dead soldiers in Iraq. As Prof. Robert Jensen puts it, ''The way we are educated and entertained keeps us from knowing about or understanding the pain of others.'' This all conspires to make it harder to get in touch with our moral faculties and benefit from some valuable insights flowing from the new research on empathy. First, the insidiously effective scapegoating of human nature that claims we are only motivated by greedy, dog-eat-dog, individual self-interest is now scientifically undermined. This rationalization for predatory behavior is transparently false. Second, recent research indicates that economic inequality is linked to high rates of biodiversity loss. Scientists from McGill University suggest that economic reforms may be the prerequisite to saving the richness of the ecosystem and urge that ''If we can learn to share the economic resources with fellow members of our own species, it may help to share ecological resources with our fellow species.'' It's entirely consistent to draw more attention to the potential for inter-species empathy and indeed, eco-empathy. Finally, as de Waal implores, ''If we could manage to see people on other continents as part of us, drawing them into our circle of reciprocity and empathy, we would be building upon rather than going against our nature.'' An ethos of empathy is an essential part of what it means to be human. Is it too much to hope that we're now on the verge of discovering a scientifically based, Archimedian moral point from which to lever public discourse toward an appreciation of our real moral sentiments, which in turn might release powerful emancipatory forces? Gary Olson, Ph.D., is chair of the Political Science Department at Moravian College in Bethlehem. His e-mail address is olson@moravian.edu.
This article was originally published on June 24, 2007, in The Morning Call (Bethlehem, Pa.), and is republished in the Chronicle with permission of the author. Copyright © 2007 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on June 26, 2007. |
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