Conventional wisdom has long held that humans are by nature materialistic and self-interested. But scholar and writer Jeremy Rifkin argues in his new book that science is forcing us to rethink this notion, and that the growth of human empathy could help solve the problems that confront the world. MPR News interviews Jeremy Rifkin, author of “The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis.” He is president of the Foundation on Economic Trends.
Posts Tagged ‘jeremy rifkin’
Can empathy save the world?
July 1st, 2010The 21st-century Enlightenment?
June 14th, 2010I 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.
The Empathic Civilization: Animated!
June 4th, 2010Bestselling author, political adviser and social ethicist Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society. Beautifully animated by the RSA.
Review and Critique: Jeremy Rifkin’s The Empathic Civilization and P.W. Singer’s Wired for War
March 5th, 2010
Jeremy Rifkin’s The Empathic Civilization and P.W. Singer’s Wired for War: Review and Critique
by Gary Olson
Two recent books on the future, both seeking to interpret selected aspects of a rapidly moving, technologically complex world, are each deeply flawed but well worth examining for what’s missing. One author fears we are heading toward global entropic destruction of the earth’s biosphere unless we reinterpret history in light of new scientific evidence that proves humans are an empathic species. The other, more narrowly focused, explores the advent of military robotics, the revolutionary technology that promises to dominate future battlefields.
The first book, The Empathic Civilization by Jeremy Rifkin, is the second major treatment of empathy to appear in recent months. It “outwords” Frans de Waal’s The Age of Empathy by a door-stopping 675 pages to a mere 304 [1]. The second book, Wired For War by P.W. Singer, is a disturbing but impressively detailed account of the American military’s current and anticipated use of robotic warfare.
Rifkin, a frequent advisor to CEOs, senior corporate management, and European Union officials, has authored 17 books on “big trend” topics, not infrequently self-proclaimed ones. His previous work has featured doom and Gloom warnings about imminent apocalyptic crises. Were Rifkin a meteorologist he¹d be drawing unemployment.
On occasion, an un-popped kernel of radical potential can be discovered. This was true about his early book on “pension fund socialism,” in The North Will Rise Again (with Randy Barber, 1978) and again in The End of Work (1995), both of which I assigned for my political economy courses. But his arguments are never carried to their logical anti-capitalist conclusion and that remains the case here. Thus he can accurately proclaim: “The ability to extend individual empathy across national cultures, continents, oceans, and other traditional divides is enormous, with profound implications for the humanization of the human race” (p. 427).
And further, although the social creation of surplus is a foreign concept to Rifkin, he does support ordinary citizens having access to a better quality of life and a more inclusive society. The problems arise when Rifkin attempts to operationalize his objectives.
‘Empathic Civilization’: Is It Time To Replace The American Dream?
February 22nd, 2010
From the Huffington Post, Jeremy Rifkin writes:
Surveys show that the millennial generation in the United States is much more likely than older generations to feel empathy for others. They are far more concerned with the planetary environment and climate change and more likely to favor sustainable economic growth. They are also more likely to believe that government has a responsibility to take care of people who can’t care for themselves, and are more supportive of a bigger role of government in providing basic services. They are more supportive of globalization and immigration than older generations. They are also more racially diverse and the most tolerant of any generation in history in support of gender equality and the willingness to champion the rights of the disabled, gays, other minorities, as well as our fellow creatures. In short, they favor a world of inclusivity over exclusivity, and are more comfortable in distributed networks than in old fashioned centralized hierarchies that establish boundaries and restrictions separating people from one another.
The new sensibilities of the younger generation are beginning to usher in a different idea about human nature and the dream that accompanies it. Today’s youth find little value in the Enlightenment caricature of human nature as rational, calculating, detached, and utilitarian. They prefer to think of human nature as empathic, mindful, engaged, and driven by the intrinsic value and interconnectedness of life. Homo sapien is being eclipsed by homo empathicus, as they shift their horizon from national markets and nation-state borders to a global economy and a planetary community. Even their preferred indicators of economic progress are shifting, from the crude calculation of gross domestic product and per-capita income to more sensitive social indicators — like health and longevity, social equality, safe communities, clean environment, etc. — that measure the well-being of the broader community.
Jeremy Rifkin on Evolution, Empathy and Human Survival (VIDEO)
February 14th, 2010From @Google Talks, Author Jeremy Rifkin addresses Google staff members…
I began watching this video and then realized it’s 50 minutes long, wondering if I would be able to last through his presentation. Although people familiar with Ken Wilber’s work might find his talk less illuminating, I was nonetheless impressed with Mr. Rifkin’s command of the material and noncombative perspectives about issues that others find extremely controversial. I watched the entire talk, and I’m glad that I did. I’ll be looking for more material to post from Mr. Rifkin.
The Empathic Civilization is the first book to explore how empathetic consciousness restructures the ways we organize our personal lives, approach knowledge, pursue science and technology, conduct commerce and governance, and orchestrate civil society. The development of this empathetic consciousness is essential to creating a future where we think and behave like the whole world matter.
Jeremy Rifkin is president of the Foundation on Economic Trends and the author of seventeen bestselling books on the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment. One of the most popular social thinkers of our time, Rifkin is the bestselling author of The European Dream, The Hydrogen Economy, The Age of Access, The Biotech Century, and The End of Work.
The Empathic Civilization: HuffPost Book Club Pick
February 13th, 2010From Arianna Huffington: For this month’s HuffPost Book Club, I have chosen a big book — both figuratively and literally. Jeremy Rifkin’s The Empathic Civilization clocks in at close to 700 pages and sets out to present nothing less than — as Rifkin puts it — “a new rendering of human history and the meaning of human existence.”
This alternative history focuses not on the conflicts, antagonisms, and power struggles that have marked human progress, but on “the empathic evolution of the human race and the profound ways it has shaped our development and will likely decide our fate as a species.”
Empathy, Rifkin tells us — and backs up with new scientific data — is not a quaint behavior trotted out during intermittent visits to a food bank or during the Haiti telethon. Instead, it lies at the very core of human existence.
