I strongly recommend the new book "Mind Wide Open" by Steven Johnson. He was the chap who wrote "Emergence", which is also superb.

Regards

Jonathan

From: owner-virus@lucifer.com [mailto:owner-virus@lucifer.com] On Behalf Of Walter Watts
Sent: 24 February 2004 23:43
To: virus@lucifer.com
Subject: Re: virus: Empathy etc

"The Feeling of What Happens" by Antonio Damasio is also a great read.

Walter

David Mullen wrote:

I agree with Erik though a severe impairment in emotional capacity extends beyond hypocrisy into the realm of the markedly handicapped. Antonio Damasio has described in considerable detail the profound life dysfunction experienced by someone who is incapable of experiencing day to day fluctuations in affect due to damage to the orbito-frontal cortex (see Decartes Error by A. Damasio). They cannot plan, they cannot prioritize activity and eventually require others to structure their lives for them. Obviously excessive emotionality or "affective incontinence" is not adaptive but an inability to feel emotion in some respects resembles the kind of morbidity observed in the presence of an inability to feel pain. DM
>>> erik@zoneedit.com 2/22/2004 12:17:43 PM >>>
Empathy is logically related to not being a hypocrite.
Emotions are useful information. People who ignore them are typically covering up deeper inauthenticites and hypocricy.
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Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.

"Reminding you to help control the human population. Have your sexual partner spayed or neutered."