Widening Our Circle of Compassion

During his years at Princeton, Albert Einstein received letters from people everywhere, asking him philosophical questions and for solutions to their personal problems. They may not have understood his physics, but they knew he had revolutionized scientific thinking and they commonly regarded him as “the smartest man in the world.”

Here’s a response he wrote to a rabbi who had asked him how he could explain to his nineteen-year-old daughter the reason for the death of her sister, whom the rabbi described as “a sinless, beautiful, sixteen-year-old child.” Einstein wrote:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest ~ a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner security.

Einstein reminds us that our preoccupation with our own lives will ultimately deprive us of the interconnectedness we share with the rest of existence, if we let it. A wise man, indeed.

Violent Video Creates Emotional Numbness

A scene from "Manhunt 2"  for Nintendo's Wii system.

Evidence continues to mount that violent movies and video games numb people to the suffering of others, as well as affect someone's willingness to offer help to an injured person.

"These studies clearly show that violent media exposure can reduce helping behavior," says Brad Bushman, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. "People exposed to media violence are less helpful to others in need because they are 'comfortably numb' to the pain and suffering of others, to borrow the title of a Pink Floyd song."

Video-game Numbness

In one of the studies, 320 college students played either a violent or a nonviolent video game for approximately 20 minutes. A few minutes later, they overheard a staged fight that ended with the "victim" sustaining a sprained ankle and groaning in pain.

• People who had played a violent game took significantly longer to help the victim than those who played a nonviolent game ~73 seconds compared to 16 seconds.
• People who had played a violent game were also less likely to report the fight. And if they did report it, they judged it to be less serious than did those who had played a nonviolent game.

Violent-movie Numbness

In a second study of 162 adult moviegoers, researchers staged a minor emergency outside the theater in which a young woman with a bandaged ankle and crutches "accidentally" dropped her crutches and struggled to retrieve them. The researchers timed how long it took moviegoers to retrieve the crutches.

• Half were tested before they went into the theater, to establish the helpfulness of people attending violent vs. nonviolent movies.
• Half were tested after seeing either a violent or a nonviolent movie.

Participants who had just watched a violent movie took 26 percent longer to help than either people going into the theater or people who had just watched a nonviolent movie.

Click here for the complete Science Daily article.