ABSTRACT
And so, even with all our new scientific toys, we still know as much about fellow-feeling as our friends, the Ancient Greeks. Someday soon we may, indeed, locate the seat of fellow-feeling but unpacking how it actually works within us will no doubt continue to challenge our understanding. A marvelous mystery whose solution remains just out of our reach. Regardless of our inability to fully locate and articulate the neurological nature of fellow-feeling, we have become a hypertrophic culture of empathy. Throughout this section, we have seen Western culture veering back and forth between embracing and rejecting the power of emotions. Our current culture’s total reliance on empathy as the major mode of communication is perhaps without precedence, never before has technology and the marketplace worked so relentlessly to arouse and maintain this particular human dynamic. Everything we encounter asks for our implicit and immediate emotional response; from our daily news to the ubiquitous advertising that insinuates itself into every facet of our lives. A constant, unstoppable, and insatiable demand is directed upon the most vulnerable part of ourselves: our feelings. We are asked to imaginatively feel for everything from starving children to a person deprived of extra-soft toilet paper.
