Our brains have been designed to blur the line between self and other. It is an ancient neural circuitry that marks every mammal, from mouse to elephant.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the interconnectedness of all living beings, emphasizing that our brains are wired to recognize and relate to others.
Frans De Waal's quote reflects on the evolutionary design of the mammalian brain, suggesting that all mammals share a common neural architecture that fosters empathy and social connection. This ancient circuitry blurs the boundaries between self and other, allowing creatures from the smallest mouse to the largest elephant to forge deep social bonds and emotional connections, thereby promoting cooperation and understanding within species.
In practice
In a discussion about species conservation, this quote can highlight the empathy shared among all mammals.
As in a Russian doll, however, the outer layers always contain an inner core. Instead of evolution having replaced simpler forms of empathy with more advanced ones, the latter are merely elaborations on the former and remain dependent on them. This also means that empathy comes naturally to us. It is not something we only learn later in life, or that is culturally constructed.
Sometimes I read about someone saying with great authority that animals have no intentions and no feelings, and I wonder, 'Doesn't this guy have a dog?'
Experiments with animals have long been handicapped by our anthropocentric attitude: We often test them in ways that work fine with humans but not so well with other species.
Being both more systematically brutal than chimps and more empathetic than _x000D_ bonobos, we are by far the most bipolar ape. Our societies are never completely peaceful, never completely competitive, never ruled by sheer selfishness, and never perfectly moral.
If you look at human society, it is very easy, of course, to compare our warfare and territoriality with the chimpanzee. But that's only one side of what we do. We also trade, we intermarry, we allow each other to travel through our territory. There's an enormous amount of cooperation.
Human morality is unthinkable without empathy.
Remember this: once the human race is established on more than one planet and especially, in more than one solar system, there is no way now imaginable to kill off the human race.
The name of peace is sweet and the thing itself good, but between peace and slavery there is the greatest difference.
The blind have no notion of time. The things of time are hidden from them too.
I am often asked the question How can the masses permit themselves to be exploited by the few. The answer is By being persuaded to identify with them.
Those who think of freedom in this country as one long, broad path leading ever onward and upward are dead damned wrong.
Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own.
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