I introduced a new approach to solve our mental problems in an earlier article (this article). We can use our logical sense instead of relying on spiritual methods.
To explain why we cannot control our empathy, today, I will introduce its origin.
How to treat our empathy
Sometimes, we want to know how to treat our unique natures. Strange qualities often torment us because we don’t know how to use them.
A typical example is empathy. It is a mental function for imagination and emotional activities.
Despite its usefulness, we often have a hard time with it. Too much empathy makes us worry about the future. We cannot control our emotions. We are forced to feel others’ negative emotions. They exhaust us.
That is why we want to know how to use our empathy. We want to know what we can control and what we cannot.
However, we don’t know them.
Today, I will explain them through the origin of empathy. It tells us that religion, spirituality, and the concept of time are brothers, and we cannot control our empathy.
The origin of empathy
Religion, spirituality, and the concept of time are brothers to whom empathy gave birth. We cannot control their generation consciously. In other words, we cannot stop them even as long as we focus on empathy.
To understand why, let’s look at how empathy was born.
Sociality gave birth to it. Some animals lived in groups. The primitive form of empathy was born for them to gain efficiency in learning.
Mirror neurons made it possible. It is a brain function that makes us imitate others’ behavior unconsciously. For example, when someone close to you yawns, strangely, we yawn as well. That is the reaction that mirror neurons caused us. Perhaps you know this phenomenon.
Originally, it was to improve learning efficiency. Assume there is a group of monkeys. They live together. One monkey discovered an effective way to use its fingers to pick fruits.
However, they don’t have enough intelligence to explain it with words. The discovery will be in vain if the monkey dies.
Mirror neurons
Mirror neurons allowed them to share it with others effectively. Mirror neurons make them imitate others’ behavior unconsciously. When one monkey uses a different fingering, the surroundings naturally imitate it. That allows them to share the new skill efficiency.
They naturally observe the behavior of others. If someone acts differently among the group, other monkeys imitate it unconsciously. Then, they choose efficient methods. That allows them to narrow down the efficient one without language.
It means we are animals that imitate others naturally. Mirror neurons are the function that makes us ‘copy’ the others’ behavior.
Of course, individuals with less functioning of mirror neurons are necessary. If they all just imitate, they cannot do anything new. That is why there is a variance in the strength of empathy.
That is the origin of primitive empathy. Mirror neurons are the core function for it.
The twice evolution of empathy
Empathy has developed from that.
Mirror neurons evolved twice from there.
The first evolution
One is that empathy allowed us to understand others’ emotions. Mirror neurons had become able to ‘copy’ the opponent’s expressions. If the opponent had a sad facial expression, our mirror neurons made us reproduce it with ours.
That allowed us to feel others’ emotions. That is why empathic people can perceive others’ moods.
They have naturally started to help others. Feeling others’ emotions makes us so. If they suffer, we also feel suffering. If they become glad, we also feel happiness. We naturally try to help them.
Helping those people has prevented the decline of society.
Although society didn’t need many who helped weak people, it needed some. Society valued such empathic people and protected them to some extent. That is why empathic people remained, and they are the minority compared to less empathic ones.
That was the first evolution, which created the basic work of empathy.
The second evolution of empathy
The second evolution brought humans revolutionary intelligence. It gave humans religions, spirituality, the sense of art, preparation for the future, and the concept of time.
It was about 50,000 years ago. Humans lived on hunting and gathering. It was before the start of agriculture.
Mirror neurons had suddenly become able to perceive the emotions of imaginary images. Until then, they can only feel others’ expressions. However, this time, they become emotional even from unreal images drawn in the brain.
It means some people with high empathy realized that there are possibilities of different realities. If they were in a different situation, they had different emotions.
They felt fear, even though it was imaginary. If they imagined the situation that they lost all of their food, they felt the emotion of fear as if it were real. The image of dying must have caused intense dread.
That surely made them try to convey that to others.
To explain it, they created the concept of time. People became aware of the existence of the future and the past.
Impacts of the concept of time
The concept of time changed everything. It has allowed the culture and intelligence of the people to flourish.
First, religion was born. When we know the existence of the future and the past, we naturally think of the following two things. One is what happens to people after they die. The other is how this world was created.
These questions brought about the prototype of religion: the afterlife and the world creation. Those two are common to all primitive religions. That made people begin to bury the dead.
Spirituality is a collection of our empathic work: helping others, thinking of the future and the past, and how to use our emotions efficiently.
Religion had systematized spirituality. It was an attempt to explain an invisible phenomenon in the world. It is when people have become able to perceive the existence of the gods.
In an era when empathy was rare, those with strong empathy were treated as shamans, who could feel the future. Fortune-telling was also born.
Becoming more empathic as generations progressed
By the way, women tend to have higher empathy. This would be because they were spending more time on raising children. Children are weak. They probably needed to understand the emotions of children.
That would be why many female shamans in that era. That trend still exists today. For example, women tend to like fortune-telling. It would also be a sign of empathy.
Humans started to cherish these empathic genes. Although there was a variance, many people had become more empathic as generations progressed.
People began to enjoy imaginary worlds. Stories and arts were born.
The second evolution of empathy brought humans revolutionary intelligence. People began to worry and prepare for the future. Perhaps that led to the start of agriculture 12,000 years ago.
Three points of empathy
That tells how to deal with empathy. There are three points, as follows:
- We cannot control empathy.
- Empathic people tend to worry about the future.
- Religion, spirituality, and the concept of time are brothers to whom empathy gave birth. They are ways of using empathy efficiently, not to suppress.
The uncontrollability of empathy
First, we cannot control the activity of empathy. This is because it is based on mirror neurons. It is something that triggers unconsciously. It is beyond our control.
It is the same as shamans. They are unstoppable when they enter a trance state. Empathy can only be demonstrated; we cannot use it to stop itself.
To limit the activity of mirror neurons, we have to use another brain function. We cannot use mirror neurons to suppress it.
Empathic people’s common natures
Second, empathic people have the following natures:
- Thinking of the future and the past naturally.
- Worrying about the future.
- Preferring preparation rather than living only now.
- Being able to understand religion and spirituality.
- Choosing to help others rather than focusing on one’s satisfaction.
- Liking emotional imaginations.
- Tending to like stories and emotional expressions.
- Easily influenced by the others’ emotions. It means they are prone to losing the boundaries of the self.
- Remembering emotions strongly. This means they tend to act based on past emotional experiences.
That is why empathy gives us stability. We imagine the future risks and prepare. We try to continue past successful and comfortable experiences. At the same time, we drag past failures. We are easy to traumatize with failure.
In other words, empathy makes us live consistently. Even if we have duality, it tends to lean only to one side.
They are the natures of empathy.
Religion, spirituality, and the concept of time
Third, religion, spirituality, and the concept of time are brothers to whom empathy gave birth.
They are ways of using empathy efficiently, not to suppress. In other words, relying on them will not work if we have too strong empathy.
For example, spirituality introduces a way to feel gratitude. However, it is an activity that creates an emotion. In other words, we are using empathy. We cannot limit the activity of empathy.
Even if it gives us a calm mind in the short term, it will not solve our intense empathy. Rather, it could worsen our mental states.
To restrict our empathy, we need to rely on other mental functions: logical sense or sociality. I will explain the logic at some point.
Conclusion
That is the origin of empathy.
It tells us that religion, spirituality, and the concept of time are brothers, and we cannot control empathy by using empathy.
That might tell us what we can control and what we cannot.
I will explain how to limit the intense empathy in a later article.
Thank you for reading this article. I hope to see you in the next one.
