Empathy

An odd piece of information came my way: Empathy, an ability and willingness to relate to the emotions of others, increases when the hippocampus--the brain's region that modulates emotional responses--deteriorates. 

Thus empathy, studies show, can often be at its highest level in patients suffering from Alzheimers. Such patients are most susceptible to "emotional contagion," emotional contagion, a term that refers to the way we sense the emotions of others through their facial expressions, tone of voice or body language, and reflect them without being conscious of doing so.

Does this mean that an ability to remember, or be aware of the convergence of the past, present and future in a moment of time, obstructs empathy?

But then again, as we learnt from a story on empathy in the New Yorker, empathy isn't a wholly positive response to conditions of suffering in the world.

I'll take that up later...

How to think Holmesian

Literature has always provided valuable fodder to the human sciences.

The basis of much of Sigmund Freud's theories of psychoanalysis was literary. According to the Freudian scheme of things humans are fundamentally ruled by animalistic sexual drive, and none emblematized this more forcefully than the Greek mythical figure of Oedipus.

If sons display an overt love for their mothers (and by default wish to be in their father's shoes, in a manner of speaking) then they are in the grip of an Oedipal complex.

In her new book that explores the intersection of literature and psychology, Maria Konnikova claims that if we are in the habit of stereotyping, seeking confirmation for our biases and are not prone to question our assumptions, then our brains are in the grip of a Watsonian complex, Watson being the famous sidekick of the legendary Victorian sleuth Sherlock Holmes.

What then are the evidences that our brains are on the side of Sherlock? When we don't just "see" but keenly "observe" as well. When we are attentive, mindful, self-questioning and rational.

According to Konnikova, our brains have both systems--System Holmes and System Watson and we spend most of our time running System Watson, so we jump to conclusions, travel along familiar cognitive paths and bungle when the chips are down.

But it is possible to train ourselves to run system Holmes by practicing the following on a daily basis:

Pay mindful attention, think twice, question your own assumptions, be methodical, and if you're stuck on a problem take time out to let it percolate through your unconscious while you go for a stroll / do some knitting / chase the cat round the house with a Nerf gun. Be aware, above all, of your own fallibility.

Come to think of this, actualizing the System Holmes part of our brains sounds like an uphill task, yet to the owner of that brain, it's "elementary".

A Quote

We evolved in a world where our survival depended on an intimate knowledge of our surroundings. This is still true, but our surroundings have grown. We are now trying to comprehend the global village with minds that were designed to handle a patch of savanna and a close circle of friends. Our problem is not so much that we are stupider, but rather that the world is demanding that we become smarter. Forced to be broad, we sacrifice depth. We skim, we summarize, we skip the fine print and, all too often, we miss the fine point. We know we are drowning, but we do what we can to stay afloat.

Courtesy W. Daniel, Hillis, Physicist, Computer Scientist, Chairman of Applied Minds, Inc.; author, The Pattern on the Stone.