i feel for ya

Can we talk about empathy?

It’s a funny thing.

We’ve got brain regions galore that respond to input about humans in particular. Regions for processing human faces. Regions for processing human body structure. Regions for processing human body motion. Regions for processing human vocal noises.

We are creatures designed to empathize. With our own kind, of course.

This is weird. Think about it. We probably don’t have a special place in your brain for processing houses, clouds, or coat hangers. But humans are a different story.

Super Fun Thought Experiment: Get In Touch With Your Fusiform Face Area.

You see a duck. The duck waddles away, and then another duck shows up. Or is it the same one? Who knows? They all look the same, right?

Now imagine the same scenario – but instead of ducks, people. (Of similar ethnic background to you, in particular… but that’s another story.) If you see two people, are you really going to have any trouble telling them apart, assuming they aren’t identical twins?

Of course you aren’t. People are just so distinct, it seems. That subjective feeling of seeming “distinctness” of faces is because your brain has an entirely different way of processing faces. It has nothing to do with human faces actually being any more distinct than duck faces or houses or clouds. It has to do with the way your brain responds. Your mind is your reality – so as far as you’re concerned, humans are distinct and everything else just blurs together.

Now, to be fair, apparently this region responds not just to faces, but also to general areas of expertise. So if you know a ton about cars, this region might be activated when you see pictures of cars.

Fine. Some people are car experts.

But we’re ALL human experts.

That’s pretty cool. And it makes sense evolutionarily, right? Humans are what we care about. Humans are the entities with which we have to cooperate, compete, and coexist. Humans are the entities in which we ultimately find companionship. Sure, if we work hard at it every day, we can become experts at pretty much anything. But to become a human expert – you don’t even have to try. You just have to be alive and in the social world.

Social pressure is unavoidable. And by “pressure” I don’t mean it in the “peer pressure” sense. I mean that we have no choice but to live in a world full of complex social structure, patterns, and forces. These forces aren’t good, bad, or evil. They just are, and they define human experience. And these forces are what drive us to become “human experts” from the day we’re born.

So maybe we aren’t designed to empathize. Maybe we’re forced to.

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