I feel that, in our need to maintain our sense of self in a world of globalization and population explosion, we human beings are losing our sense of empathy and replacing it with self-righteous narcissism. If a person can’t or won’t try to see the world from another’s perspective, they will fail to understand anything but what they believe to be true. Belief is not reality.

Empathy is not the same as pity. All of us want to be understood, no matter who we are and how bright or bleak our lives may be. To understand why a person says or does something that goes against our beliefs, we must learn their motivation, their background, their environment, their goals. To gloss over another’s opinion as simply wrong sells both parties short.

Sometimes, it’s very frightening to delve into the mind of someone whom we fear or possibly hate. But the sad truth is all of us are equipped with the same giant brains, so very capable of being very conscientious and very malicious. The brain is a vast dense jungle of neurons, chemicals, hormones, all waiting for some event to trigger a reaction, prompt a response to the outside stimuli that feeds it, dictates its processes, molds its reality.

There are those scientists out there that still hold to the theory that evil is genetic. I’ve born witness like to rest of you to the media soup that proves time and time again that awful acts know no genealogy.

To me, it will always come down to this. If you fail to perceive the notion of others, you fail to understand them. In doing so, your perception of the world will be narrow minded and deluded by the beliefs that bring you comfort at the expense of others. Unfortunately, we are all compelled to this state. It takes a courageous act of will to be otherwise.

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