My undergrad education was a mentored mix of sociology, psychology, and information technology (formerly my bread and butter) that eventually fused into evolutionary concepts that formed into my first, and introductory, writing on empathy: Spiritual Darwinism. I wrote this with the help of discussion groups on the Care2.com pro-animal and social activist community. Following that, I developed the Empathy Model wiki as an exploratory approach to understanding how humanity evolved into a highly responsible species and to show where and how, and most important, why, that responsibility fails. This was deliberately done as a clean room model, with material derived from the environment and popular conception, and not from established, and especially didactic sources. An important concept to abstract thought is the "layered" idea that shows how human activity and thought simultaneously strike on different levels. It was inspired by the Internet Protocol stack that abstracts the simultaneous actions of computers, networks, with computer users.
When I eventually pursued psychology as a masters degree, I found little in common between the Empathy Model learning and conceptions promoted by the psychological establishment. The few commonalities are not integrated into mainstream thought, let alone structured to show interrelation. Digital VS analog thinking, Lewin's spatial concepts, and self-concepts such as esteem and efficacy are a few ideas defined empirically, as is emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence, however is replaced with empathy logic which links the philosophies of all peoples is their very original developments with types of thinking all well-self-actualized people normally use and share every day. It is distinct from rational thinking that (in the West) descends from ancient Roman mathematical term ratio, and implies a business-type logic (devoid of psychological and social meaning), and is associated (in the Empathy Model) with cruelty of excessive exploitation. Rational thinking, of course, defines European thinking, and hence defines the conflict with original, or Aboriginal, thinking. Rational thinking's domiance over science as empiricism may explain the incompatibility of the empathy model with mainstream psychology. Mainstream psychology is alternately based on Plato's philosophy (carefully preserved and adapted by academia) and experimental behaviorism (which has evolved into a process of using actuarial statistics to create evidence-based treatment).The empathy model extends Rogerian experiential thought (along synergy and constructivism) but includes a down-side, which is that highly-evolved empathic neurology that is only found in a few species (but often along different evolutionary branches) has been in decay as rational thinking has increased. The "stack" is impleneted here to show that the "business logic" of capital requires that the social responsibility, or morality (that has evolved from Darwn's natural affection) must be halted through the genetic (or other) removal of empathic neural constructs.This is not limited to capital, as any cruel activity, such as hunting, requires limited neural activity to prevent "feeling" the emotional effects of one's actions. Lewis Mumford describes in Technics and Civilization the relationship between two distinct levels of society: the exploitative elite and wandering hunting bands. He describes them forming together modern combative nation states.
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