There is an area of the human brain which has been scientifically identified through brain scanning techniques as being the centre of empathy. It has been shown to become activated when a person recognizes a fellow human being as such. This activity is typically absent in people with autism. They tend not to differentiate between people and objects. Its absence is also a common characteristic of bad acting; often presenting as "acting over the shoulder." In the stress of performance, it is not easy to allow your colleague on the stage to be much more than an obligatory item of talking scenography. The ability to recognize an independent parallel universe lying behind another person’s eyes is sometimes referred to as “theory of mind.”
This might also explain why portrait photographers will often insist that their subjects look into the eyes of a real human being, and not at some dead piece of studio equipment.
The initiating neurological protocol that occurs when we "find" each other is referred to by brain researchers as “handshaking,” a term borrowed from computer engineers who use it to refer to a similar process that occurs when separate sections of a computer, or for instance a computer and a printer, prepare to establish communication, declaring their ports open and ready to receive data.
(Computer engineers in turn, no doubt, derived the term from their observation of small-town politicians and used-car salesmen - gentlemen well known for their firm handshakes and excessive empathy!)
That there is a physiological (i.e. genetic) basis to empathy is one of the most important scientific discoveries to occur during my lifetime. It points to care and cooperation as being fundamental to our species. It puts the lie to Stephen Miller's claim that "we live in a world (...) that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time."
But as a physiological property, like all such properties, it is subject to the zig-zagging of natural selection. Whether, when it is not naturally present, it can be taught or simulated, is an open question. But one has heard of "dark empaths!"
And again, as an emotional response, it can lead to over-identification, burnout and numbness. For this reason, compassion, which includes a rational aspect and operates at a safer distance, offers a more sustainable approach to the same desired ends.
"What do we know but that we face
One another in this place?"
- William Butler Yeats - "The Man and the Echo"
And then there is the condition that so often brings such grief to our species; those times when empathy is seen as an encumbrance to the goals of the intellect:
LADY MACBETH:
Come you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood.
Stop up th'access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th'effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts
And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers.
-William Shakespeare - "Macbeth," Act 1 Scene 5.
