What do you know about mirror neurons?
on empathy
I’ve been learning about mirror neurons as it relates to empathy. Human beings are soft-wired with mirror neurons, meaning that if I’m sitting with someone and observing their sadness, anger, happiness or joy, the same neurons will switch on in me — and it will feel like I’m having the same experience. I love that there is a scientific explanation for me tearing up watching Lizzo’s Grammy acceptance speech and her moment with Beyoncé, and it isn’t just that I’m a psycho fan.
It’s so easy to look at the world and think that humans are some extraordinarily messed up people doing some monumentally messed up things. But it’s heartening to know that we’re not made for aggression, violence and individualism — we’re actually soft-wired by a desire to belong, or as Jeremy Rifkin, who I learned this from, put it — we have an “empathic drive”. There’s this thing that a lot of people say in wellness circles that everyone is just a mirror — I’m always looking for the backup for these types of tropes because sometimes I’m like AM I REALLY A MIRROR FOR THE RLY ANNOYING PERSON PLAYING VIDEO GAMES ON THE SUBWAY? And in some ways, I am, though I’d rather not be.
But what does empathy really mean? I have felt my empathy quotient go down in recent years from isolation, too much time on the internet and heavy doses of grief from the world's terrors. It’s hard to care about everything when so much is happening all the time. How do we stay human and stay connected to what we’re wired to experience?
The truth is that our natural affinity for sociability is affected by the systems we live within: our education, our family system, the government, and capitalism. These systems don’t always foster an environment for us to be empathic towards one another. It’s easier to gravitate toward narcissism, materialism and aggression when those natural impulses are repressed.
How do we rail against it? How do we grow this ‘soft-wiring’ towards empathy when there is so much in our path that pulls us away from that? Thinking here about social media, Covid, lack of community, productivity as king. I don’t have the answers. The more I learn, the less I feel I have any answers at all about anything. (Great feeling when you have a weekly newsletter).
But here are some things that I’m going to try this year in an effort to up my empathy muscle:
Go into my community to volunteer with a mutual aid group doing food justice work. Every time I am in this community, I feel better and more connected to others through service, and it helps me to remember that I’m not a tiny piece of dust in an infinite universe (though technically I am, it’s nice not to feel this way).
Create for no reason — make some lousy art for the fun of it, and don’t try to do anything with it. Just let it live in a notebook no one will ever see. Let it click me into my natural affinity for sociability by letting it remind me of all the artists I’ve ever loved.
Read. I am reading a lot, all the time, right now because I’m in grad school. It’s awful in some ways because I’m always reading or feeling like I should be reading when I’m wasting time on Tik Tok. But this reading also teaches me a lot about systems, people and ideas. Luckily, I’m also in a book club and can do some reading for pleasure, which gives me a reason to connect with a group of people who love literature.
Make food for friends, make food to share with people, make food just to make food.
Sleep more. It makes me a better person, less of a dickhead, and hopefully, will make my body feel more alive.
Things that may deteriorate my empathy muscle:
Looking at social media for longer than anyone in their godly right mind needs to.
Not going outside because I think I have too much homework and work to do (I do, but it will serve no one to stay inside all day, even in January in NYC). Aka isolation.
Focusing for too long on the evils of the world. I want to live in solution. I want to live in service. If I spend all my time focusing on the problem, I will not have the energy to be part of the solution.
Insomnia. I don’t really know how to avoid this one, but hopefully, my insomnia will hear about my aim towards sleeping more and will go fuck itself.
What are some of the things that will build and deteriorate empathy for you this year?
With love,
Nora x
GREAT question! We relly do need to exercise the empathy muscle, or at least give it a short walk. (But who is walking whom?) I agree with all the routes to dismantal empathy; I also know there are times when it feels like empathy can paralyse you. That's why surgeons tend to have a hard little heart that can disengage from the job of cutting into people. So yay for that detachment. Too much empathy can be corruscating when you look at the insane behavior and cruelty of the pychopaths, sociopaths, and narcissists who are willing to climb the greasy pole to power by stepping on their own grannys to get what they want. Because only they matter, only power and money satisfy the giant yawning abyss inside. But there is no filling that hole with selfish pleasure and vicious destruction. I've been watching a lot of Viking history and although I am riveted by the Early Middle ages--the culture, the art, the hard lives--but to study the stories written then is to wade through lakes of blood, hand to hand combat--the wars were described as minutely as the battles were fought, hand to hand in the middle of terrors one could never forget. I often think of what we really are at heart--good or evil--and I realize who we are is what we chose to do everyday. I chose empathy, even though as I say, it hurts. But the other choices are ...unthinkable. Thanks for always inspiring in me the energy to respond to your wise musings. Your're right--for me, creating things, badly made and creatively bewildering, practising new crafts, developing clumsy skills is the happy place I go.