After Sandy: The Most Highly Evolved Compassion Of All
NPRAfter Sandy: The Most Highly Evolved Compassion Of All Enlarge this image toggle caption Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Like millions of others, I've been heartsick this week at the loss of life and destruction caused by Superstorm Sandy, especially along the Jersey Shore near where I grew up. If, as the Dalai Lama suggests, the pinnacle of evolved human empathy is the desire to help those different from ourselves, isn't helping other species the most highly evolved compassion of all? Anthropologists like Pat Shipman argue that we've become the human by interaction with other species around us — via hunting, animal domestication and thinking symbolically with animals. Any good biological anthropologist knows that we can't predict future environments accurately enough to specify how a species may change over time.
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On Human Compassion: Encountering The Dalai Lama's Scientific Mind
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