In Part 1, DR DOTY explored the evolutionary advantage of compassion in human beings and its relationship with our physiological responses. In Part 2, he takes us further into aspects of human behavior that relate to compassion and collective social issues. ...
In conversation with
Dr James R Doty
JD: Another one of those collective social issues is this inherent desire to be tribal in nature, and again, there is an evolutionary reason. We talked about hunter-gatherer tribes as our primary survival strategy and we know that people tend to gather or connect with others who look like them, act like them and share the same socio-economic status, culture, religion and color. Why? When you are with people who are like you, what happens? Your sense of fear, anxiety or threat diminishes.
The problem is that this type of interaction can act as an echo chamber to reinforce negative behavior or a perception of fear or threat, which results in you being closed to the opinions of other people and groups. Or you may feel a desire to eliminate them because of this false notion that they are going to threaten your existence. It is often a self- fulfilling prophecy. This is a natural state of being, unfortunately; we know that it can be activated and we have seen this happen. You alluded to the political environment, where you see groups stoking fear and anxiety to engage this primitive part of us that responds to fear or threat. This results in individuals identifying with groups that think or act like them in the false notion that this is protecting them.
…in the context of our modern global society;
the reality is that what happens in one part of the world
can profoundly affect another part of the world.
Politicians and others have used this reality for their own purposes for millennia. The problem is that it is not a long-term survival strategy, and it is certainly not a long-term solution in the context of our modern global society; the reality is that what happens in one part of the world can profoundly affect another part of the world. We are no longer in this position of small hunter-gatherer tribes where we can engage in conflict in small areas and have no big effect on the rest of the world.
Frankly, our survival demands that we gain self-awareness of these issues. We need to understand this reality and also that, in fact, there are resources for all. If we change our behavior, look into ourselves, and understand the negative attributes that we have, and our biases toward others – we call these cognitive biases – it can actually lead to a society that works for everyone’s benefit, in which we care for those who look and act like us, our tribe if you will, and also care for others outside our close-knit group.
Technology and digital technologies have had a very profound positive affect in many domains and allow us to live as we do today. That being said, what we do know is that for some individuals, as you point out, these types of technologies do not truly create a connection with others.
As an example if we took one week’s worth of the monies spent every year on military technology, we could provide education for tens of millions of children from kindergarten to year 12. And that is just one week. Imagine what we could do if we markedly decreased expenditure on military technology and armies! How many people could we feed? How many buildings could we build? How many people could we educate? This ultimately has to be the paradigm as we look toward the future.
Q: I am curious about the effect digital technology is having on human compassion. I am reading in studies that as people are looking at screens so much and interacting with machines more and more, they have a diminished capacity for empathy and more difficulty reading facial and emotional cues from others and recognizing their own emotions. What is your sense of how the new digital technologies are affecting human compassion?
JD: This is a two-edged sword. Technology and digital technologies have had a very profound positive affect in many domains and allow us to live as we do today. That being said, what we do know is that for some individuals, as you point out, these types of technologies do not truly create a connection with others. It is a reality that we as a species are profoundly social and when we do not connect with others we are lonely.
As an example, in the United States one quarter of people when they are suffering, hurt or are in pain, feel that they have no one to share that with or be comforted by. Also remember that we have an epidemic in the West of loneliness, isolation, anxiety, stress and depression. You simply have to look at whether it is digital technologies or modernity in regard to what has happened.
Two to three hundred years ago we lived in multi-generational environments and most people grew up in one part of the country. Often times their parents, grandparents, siblings and children all lived in close proximity, if not the same building.
They stayed in the same place for the entire length of their life and as a result each individual knew that they were part of a community and that community cared for and nurtured them. It accepted them for the good parts of themselves and also the bad parts and still loved them.
In modern society many of us do not have that type of environment. When growing up we often move from city to city, so there is no stability and acceptance in the interactions we have with others. As we become adults we move away to go to college and then have a job where we are separated from siblings and parents. We go to places where we know no one. And that creates an environment for many people of loneliness, despair and anxiety. When we include then the effects of digital technology, which can make this even worse, it can have a profound negative affect.
We also know that when a person is lonely or anxious this leads often times to rumination and makes the situation worse.
That being said, we also know that there are certain digital or artificial technologies that can have a positive benefit. Some of these are technologies that allow us to connect with people who are like us and share our interests, which is wonderful. Robots are being used to interact with people who are lonely or elderly and can potentially even perform aged care, if you will. There is evidence that we can develop a positive relationship with these artificial entities. But these artificial entities are artificial entities. They will never replace a human, even though in certain contexts they can be beneficial. So, it is a two-edged sword.
As we see the evolution of artificial intelligence and machine learning, this leads into another potentially very difficult issue, because who is behind all this?Who are the manipulators? If we examine the issues of free will, we appreciate that many of the actions we engage in are related to environmental cues on a subconscious level. We also understand now that we can be manipulated. And when there are terabytes of data on how individuals move, and we have the ability to collect and analyze immense amounts of information about an individual, it potentially means that the subconscious cues can be manipulated in very negative ways. These may have no negative effect on the savannah in Africa – in fact they were part of our survival mechanism – but in a modern environment we can be manipulated by a small group.
In some ways it is already happening; there is a whole field called Neuromarketing, which takes advantage of our biases and utilizes this knowledge to motivate us or manipulate us to buy things or do certain actions for the benefit of others. This has to be kept in mind, because if there are no safety checks it will lead to a small group of people being able to manipulate large segments of our society.
Q: I am very interested and concerned about what you are talking about. It’s remarkable that there is worldwide warrantless surveillance by governments and corporations collecting data and keeping track of people. It is well beyond what George Orwell imagined. It seems people don’t quite realize this is going on. With so much information generally, people seem overwhelmed and interested in one topic for an hour and then something else happens and they move on to the next item.
JD: That is probably a discussion we could engage in for a long time.
To be continued.
Dr James Doty is the author of Into The Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart (Avery, 2016) and is co-founder of the Center for Compassion & Altruism Research & Education (CCARE) at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, USA.
John Malkin is a journalist and musician living in Santa Cruz, California where he also hosts radio programs on Free Radio Santa Cruz and KZSC.
Interviewed by JOHN MALKIN
Dr. James Doty
Dr. Doty is the author of Into The Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart (Avery, 2016) and is co-founder of the Center for Compassion & Altruism Research & E... Read More
