Notes on Jeremy Rifkin book:
Empathy as a driving force in the unfolding human history speaks to our deeply social nature.
Much of what is written about history revolves around the pathology of power.
The importance of reframing the human narrative.
Evolution of emphatic consciousness – which is the underlying story of human history – has not been given the attention it deserves.
Unlike sympathy – empathy is active.
The underlying dialectic of human history is the continuing feedback loop between expanding empathy and increasing entropy.
Misc: Oral cultures are steeped in mythological consciousness; Script cultures give rise to theological consciousness; print cultures are accompanied by ideological consciousness; Electricity cultures spawn psychological consciousness. (Source – Ilya Prigogine?)
Kristen Buckley 