Benedict Anderson coined the phrase “imagined communities” to point to the way that humans believe they are meaningfully connected, by virtue of some commonality, to people they will never know, and may have very little in common with. He applied the idea to the nation. Why do all of the citizens of China, for example, have in common with other citizens of China? In some cases little, other than their citizenship. Yet, the fact that “we are all Chinese” can motivate many people to do and feel things.
In an RSA video featuring Jeremy Rifkin, sent in by Dmitriy T.M., it is argued that the human ability to imagine a community is a neurological capacity for empathy that has evolved, both neurologically and socially, throughout human existence. First, he argues, we identified with close relatives, then with our religious community, and later with our nation-state. Our future, then, he argues, is dependent on our ability to imagine the whole world as a community. New technologies may very well enable this and Rifkin has his fingers crossed.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 17
Bridget — January 30, 2011
I really like this. And it's true, the drive to belong is a central drive. However, we form identities -- this idea of who I am -- in opposition to ideas of who we are not. In general, a "We" requires a "They." At least that's the current understanding in sociology theories of identity.
Is it possible to have a "We" without a "They"? I'm thinking about his example of Haiti. If many of us came to identify with Haiti (a "we" being human beings), then I suppose there may have been no they. I don't know. I need to think about this and am wondering other peoples' thoughts along those lines.
Edwin Rutsch — January 30, 2011
My I suggest a further resources to learn more about empathy and compassion.
The Center for Building a Culture of Empathy
The Culture of Empathy website is the largest internet portal for resources and information about the values of empathy and compassion. It contains articles, conferences, definitions, experts, history, interviews, videos, science and much more about empathy and compassion.
http://CultureOfEmpathy.com
Let's Find 1 Million People Who Want to Build a Culture of Empathy and Compassion
http://Causes.com/Empathy
and more of Rifkin
http://cultureofempathy.com/References/Experts/Jeremy-Rifkin.htm
Kim — January 30, 2011
I have to say the animation really wound me up. The only time he drew women was as mothers (not even with a head), people sacred of spiders and the "database woman". Men took over all the other roles, especially scientist, thinker, controller. I know it's a whiteboard but they were also pretty much all drawn as white westerners apart from the specific cultural examples. A lot of the talk made enormous generalizations as well about what the whole world does - the whole world is not connected to the internet, and the whole world does not know about haiti.
I see where the talk was coming from but too much about it irritated me on a representational level, the first minute of man is scientist, woman is scared of spiders just made me eyeroll.
Creating New Empathetic Selves | Crimiology — January 30, 2011
[...] Soc Images put up this video: [...]
j-p — January 30, 2011
I totally agree about empathic civilization. But the video is candid about the radical changes required to get there. Our current civilization is so greedy, wasteful, hateful and violent.
But this has to be done.
larrycwilson — January 30, 2011
I'll stick with John Locke and William James.
MissDisco — January 30, 2011
National identity/empathic bonds didn't exist until the 19th century? I've seen plenty of old Irish stuff to suggest they had a long long national identity.
What's with all the stuff about England in Shakespeare then? Presumably people believed in themselves as having a national bond to go spark wars with the French and others.
je — January 30, 2011
Ugh. That's a misinterpretation of the "database" Adam and Eve. They're conceptual "individuals," not some singular convergence at the top of a family tree.
I mean, the point remains: we're all descendants of a small population that lived in Africa less than 200,000 years ago. But screwing up the biological description really irks me.
Meera — January 30, 2011
Given that he claims to be explaining a universal human bio-social phenomenon, I found it strange how often he kept repeating the idea that children realize they have "this one and only life." That's certainly not what the children in my community believe, nor do at least a couple billion other folks on the planet.
Xavier — January 30, 2011
Believing something doesn't make it automatically true for the entire population, however.
Uly — January 31, 2011
Shibboleths? You mean passwords that are easily pronounced by your people but not by your enemies, and so are convenient for separating the sheep from the goats, so called because the Hebrew word "shibboleth" was said "sibboleth" by their neighbors, who didn't have the sh sound in their phonemic inventory?
I do not think that word means what he thinks it means.
Rav — February 1, 2011
Would it not also be true that individuals are at the core of concentric circles that mark their faithfulness to different identities? If so, the one closest to us will always be blood ties and close friends, leading out to nationalistic pride, and further away, the greater feeling of humanity. If this is the case, it is simply not possible for one individual(energy wise) to feel as strongly toward other human beings as they would to blood ties.(or people they are geographically intimate with and relate to)
I think our level of commitment to these causes probably weakens as we move farther away from the core of our concentric circles. Except if we consider that all of us caring a little bit, will change the world.