So if everyone has empathy or compassion, why do so many people suffer or starve at human hands? Why is there genocide? There is a process that explains this.
Our mirror neurons give us the experience of others, even if we don’t want it. For instance, most men are biologically repulsed by the idea of partaking in a homosexual act. This makes sense, just for the genetic continuation of the species. But to see a man, or to even consider a man involved in a homosexual act is, in the mind, to participate in it. This is the source of what one might call “homophobia”—the repulsion of actually participating in a homosexual act oneself. The homosexual might say, “It’s my body, and they don’t have a right to tell me what to do with it.” This is true, on the first rule of ethics. However, the person who is repulsed by homosexuality inadvertently experiences that which others in his community experiences. However, he is sickened by this. This can be applied to any act. Watching an obnoxious drunk person. Observing a severely mentally ill person. Seeing a criminal hurt another. Watching a murder. In observing such actions, we can participate in these acts.
How do we not experience these repulsive acts, if our mirror neurons are so strong? Typically, we play a mental trick on ourselves. Suppose we see a gruesome murder in a movie. We tell ourselves, “It’s not real, it’s just fake. Look at the fake blood, the camera trick—see, it’s not real.” Thus, we separate what we see from something that we are personally experiencing. And this seems to work. We can easily kill ants and other insects because they are not a part of our collective experience. They are something different, something Other, and so our mirror neurons don’t count for them. On the other hand, if we had to personally shoot our dog—even for her own good—we find the act to be reprehensible and intolerable. Because we would be killing one of our own community, a part of ourselves. To kill our dog is akin to killing ourselves. To kill a spider is to kill the other—that which is outside our experience.
So what about other humans? If another human does something repugnant—like, suppose, a child rapist—then that human being is no longer a part of the communal experience. In fact, the communal experience needs to be protected from such a one—for the children are a part of our communal experience. And other adults must not participate in the raping of the weak. Thus, the child rapist, in our minds, becomes one of the other—an outsider, no longer human, no longer a part of ourselves. Because the other is outside of our experience, our mirror neurons are shut off from what the other does or happens to them. Thus the child rapist can be raped, maimed, tortured or killed with no effect on oneself. They are completely of the other and because of the damage that person had done to the communal experience—to the children who is a part of the self—then they deserve whatever punishment they get.
Now, suppose there is a person who is labeled a “child rapist”, but it is not true. There are witnesses called and declare the man to be a child rapist, but they were mistaken, or simply lying. The person then is called a child rapist, and the better the story is told, the more we believe it. Why? Because our mirror neurons are experiencing the story, even if the story is not true. And we experience this story just as much as if the story were true. Our mirror neurons are not truth receptors, they are just there to help experience other’s experiences, not to tell us what is true. And the more graphic the presentation, the more our mirror neurons experience it. Thus, we would make this man a part of the other just as much as if he had not done the raping as if he had. He becomes a part of the non-human community simply because of a story.
And this is what happened to Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler was a powerful storyteller. And his story included the dehumanization of the Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals. His story was told so well that most who listened to him were able to experience the acts that these groups did in their minds, even though such deeds never occurred. Because of this, the Jews became a part of the other, and worthy of whatever treatment they were given—the communal experience of Nazis didn’t experience their pain. They were the same as a spider that one kills because it is inconveniently placed.
And the Jews experienced the same other-making with the Palestinians. The Sixteenth Century Europeans other-made the Native Americans. The police other-make the criminal or the one who looks like a criminal. The Christians and Muslims other-make each other. And when a person or group is other-made, then anything can happen to them without compassion. There is no empathy, no feeling because our mirror neurons are shut off.
It is interesting that both Christianity and Buddhism agree on this one moral truth—that we must never other-make. Yes, we have the ability to do this, to dehumanize others, but we must not. We must always see a human as a human, no matter what evil thing they have done, or we suppose they have done. We must always experience the evil we do to others as if it were done to ourselves. We must see the evil done, but never use that as an excuse to make another person as less than human. Yes, this is painful and stressful. This may give us experiences we do not want. But the other alternative is clear to see: torture, murder, genocide. By othermaking, we become that which we despise.
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