The Age of Empathy
Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society
1
Biology, Left and Right
What is government itself but the greatest of all
reflections on human nature?
-james madison, 1788
Are we our brothers' keepers? Should we be? Or would this role only interfere with why we are on earth, which according to economists is to consume and produce, and according to biologists is to survive and reproduce? That both views sound similar is logical given that they arose at around the same time, in the same place, during the English Industrial Revolution. Both follow a competition-is-good-for-you logic.
Slightly earlier and slightly to the north, in Scotland, the thinking was different. The father of economics, Adam Smith, understood as no other that the pursuit of self-interest needs to be tempered by "fellow feeling." He said so in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, a book not nearly as popular as his later work The Wealth of Nations. He famously opened his first book with:
How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and r ...
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