Emotions and empathy
From civicintelligence
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Discussion of the capability in individuals
Within our brains there are structures called mirror neurons, which are evolutionarily designed to create empathy when we see someone feeling a certain thing, whether its the bliss of a virtuoso performance, or a big hairy spider crawling up your friends arm... We are hard wired for empathy, and the ground breaking research of modern neuroscience is showing us that there are many reasons why as a culture, we are instinctually a more sharing, peaceful, and balanced people than what many of us have experienced over the last several thousand years. There are many explanations for why this is so, and yet for now, check out this animated video of a talk by Jeremy Rifkin called: The Empathic Civilization