I enjoyed this post about an emerging worldview from Madeleine Bunting at the Guardian UK:
Taylor’s faith in empathy is widely shared, for example by those campaigning on aid for the developing world. An example often cited of growing empathy is the greater tolerance on race and sexual orientation showing dramatic progress in the course of just one generation. But, as Taylor concedes, over the same time period we have created a media culture of savage contempt for a range of public figures, from celebrities to politicians. Does the stock of empathy increase or simply get redistributed from time to time? More disturbingly, is empathy always benign? As John Gray pointed out in his Guardian review of Rifkin, it can lead to cruelty just as much as compassion. Empathy is not an easy recruit to this march of progress: the plight of others can prompt withdrawal, denial or willed ignorance instead of the impetus for global co-operation.
