Thanks for your comment. Your work sounds fascinating. You are right that the political problem is that people tend to feel empathy more readily for familiar others. There are probably good evolutionary reasons for that. But it seems maladaptive in the contemporary world.

Reviving the Left is an attempt to think through how we can expand the role of empathy and compassion within institutions and between people who are not otherwise related.

The fact that in your research you can build empathic capacities is encouraging and very important.

I have sent numerous letters to members of Congress explaining the need for them to become familiar with the neuroscience of mirror neurons in order to help them with their obligations.

I do believe we should have a standard for empathy and compassion as prerequisites for political representatives and other leaders.

However, the problem is that even Republicans may have empathy and compassion, only with and for those who disagree with us.

Were Hitler’s emissaries and generals only able to put themselves in the shoes of their Fuhrer?

It would appear that sociopaths in politics have the ability to “appear to care about the people.” Whether they do or not is another story.

In the training of an actor by those who use the Actors Studio Method, there is often reference to an inner “bull shit detector,” a feeling that what the person is declaring on the outside is not what s/he is feeling on the inside, a sort of incongruence between the internal and external representation.

I suspect it takes a particularly sensitive use of mirror neurons to make such judgments.

But in my work in both the world of acting (particularly with good actors) and the world of neuroscience (particularly with Autism), I have found that one can be trained to enhance one’s “bull shit detector.”

The actors job is to learn to use his/her “bull shit detector” on him/herself in order to achieve authenticity in performance.

The autistic’s job is to learn to use his/her emotion detector on others in order to be able to relate with others.

I have seen evidence during the past ten years that both are possible and can make dramatic differences in the lives of those in whom these skills are developed.

Now, whether you can get politicians to take the training, that’s another story.

Ange Lobue, MD, MPH, BSPharm
American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology
Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
trinidadca@gmail.com