Empathy: Utopian Pipedream of the Left or Neurologically Sound

Growing up in the United States you come to understand a few common sense concepts growing up. The outside world is a Hobbian dystopia, where greed, lust, and tragedy run rampant. Interrelationships only occur out of forced necessity, not genetic in nature, but a product of governments making us behave or face consequences. Imagining getting along with someone outside your culture, let alone another nation state, is merely a utopian fantasy of the left that ignores reality. Individuality is what makes our species so unique, communication only needed to exchange money at a cash register. What if however, that those previously widely held assumptions were incorrect. What if, those characteristics describe were not scientifically sound, but instead wishful thinking of the right to secure their position of power?

As research continues to expand in neuroscience the answer is beginning to look like an astonishing yes. In 1996 a scientist named Rizzolatti found that when a monkey moves a certain part its body, its relevant brain sector becomes active. For example, when a monkey grabbed a peanut their premotor cortex became active. This was to be expected since those neurons, nerve cells, are responsible for the movement of that body part. What was unexpected however was when the monkey saw a human grab a peanut, the set of neurons became active in the part of the brain. They activated whether the monkey was seeing or doing.

These neurons called mirror neurons are much more developed in humans. Have you ever wondered how a person can become so emotional due to a movie or get so worked up in a sports game? One key cause is mirror neurons. Human beings are unique creatures in the world. If a mother feeds her baby but refuses to touch it, the infant will die. There is more to life for humans then basic food, water, and shelter. Social interaction is critical in brain development as well as a healthy life style.

Mirror neurons, nerve cells, allow us to connect with other people. When you see someone carrying a large box you understand their pain, when you see someone get kicked in the leg, your mirror neurons activate. This allows us to relate to other people, to tune into others, in two words, create empathy. Humans have an innate mechanism within them that gives us the ability and desire to communicate and do so with an intention of love and understanding.

FMRIs, brain imaging machines, show that when showing a patient a picture of a man or woman making a face the same parts of their brain activate as when they make that face. This connection helps us understand a bigger picture. Mirror neurons help explain why men will fight for women’s right to vote, why we American’s will protest for Palestinian rights, and why seeing any child suffer causes us intense discomfort even if it is not our own.

To see what happens when these mirror neurons are nonfunctional one only has to look at autistic children. Autistic children are otherwise brilliant, functional humans. Lacking in their repertoire of abilities however is inability to socially interact. Children suffering from this neurologically disease find themselves misunderstanding questions, avoiding eye contact, and otherwise isolating themselves. FMRI analysis shows that unlike a typical human, an autistic child’s mirror neurons do not activate.

For children with fully developed brains, when a child opens his hands a set of neurons fire, these same neurons activate when they see someone else do the same action as expected due to mirror neurons. In autistic children unfortunately the mirror neurons do not fire when they see others open their hands. Their empathetic sector of their brain as well as the sectors designed to be in tune with other’s feelings are nonfunctional. This is much of the cause of Autism.

In a way these mirror neurons allow us to read other people’s minds. Not in a psychic sort of way but an understanding of another person’s intentions, dreams, and situation. We feel as they feel and their pain is our pain. So when hearing politicians or conventional thinking presented to you remember that we are physiologically built to relate to each other. While certain institutions and divisions we created work against our true nature, the concept of the mysterious other, working for himself at the expense of others, absent of feelings is not a genetic trait but an environmental circumstance that is fostered by a culture that makes us an antagonist of our true self. As neuroscience continues to advance, the left will continue to win scientific arguments, while the right will be forced to cling to alternating theories based in ignorance or as they have done in Arizona, ban textbooks that dispel their myths.