The Sixth Sense

<Spoilers> With or without ESP, PSI or whatever, humans naturally synchronize neurologically. It's not paranormal, and it's not even really 'the mind blowing power of love', as the Sydney Morning Herald charmingly calls it. From the article:

Psychotherapist Alan Meara, president of Gestalt Australia & New Zealand, who was a Phd supervisor for the research, said: ''This sixth sense isn't something that is magical. It is something that the human brain is wired to do. The research shows that we do have the capacity to understand people at a deeper level than we normally do in general conversation.''

So why the hell aren't our brains working as designed lately? Are we breeding out the empathy gene? Or is it more a matter of social (de)evolution? An interesting article from the generally tabloidish Daily Mail might provide indirect clues to the nurture side of the issue. The article ends with a quote from psychology researcher Darcia Narvaez:

'There's an epidemic of anxiety among the young,' she said. 'Kids who don't get the emotional nurturing they need in early life tend to be more self-centred. They don't have the same compassion-related emotions as kids who were raised by warm, responsive families.'

Sounds obvious enough...but maybe there's a darker implication here. Is the apparent rise of rampant narcissism a snowballing cycle of increasingly bad parenting? If one thinks of emotional detachment as a form of child abuse, it's easy to compare to studies showing that the abused tend overwhelmingly toward abusing their own kids.

Imagine if we gave physically abused children a pill to mitigate their symptoms, and left it at that.