The Empathy Switch: Binary Selection in Action


A number of years ago I had the amazing good fortune to meet the legendary blues piano man Cornbread Harris. Though severely hampered by arthritis, this 86-year-old phenom still makes his living playing some of the most soulful music you’ll ever hear.

Although he didn’t—and still doesn’t—teach piano, I managed to talk him into giving me a few lessons. As you might expect, I ended up learning far more from Cornbread than just piano music. 

Once I showed up at his house on a particularly bone-chilling Minnesota winter afternoon, knocked on his door and waited. And waited. And waited.

After what seemed like an eternity, Cornbread finally opened the door. I rushed inside only to find Cornbread clad in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. He summed it up thusly: “Hey, I can either open the door or put on my pants, I can’t do both.”

What Cornbread had articulated was a perfect example of binary selection.

One of the reasons it’s so hard sometimes to order off a menu or pick a wall color is that the human brain is only designed to evaluate two options at a time.

It’s a simple concept—not necessarily graceful, but it gets the job done. This is a well-known principle in human brain evolution, where limited storage and electrical voltage makes ‘good the enemy of better.’ Natural selection doesn’t ensure the most elegant solution, just one that keeps you alive long enough to pass on your genes. The primitive notion of fight or flight is but one example.

Neuroscientists at the University of Valencia recently used fMRI technology to demonstrate that the responses for empathy and violence share the exact same neural circuitry. In the same way a piece of train track can only accommodate one locomotive at a time, your brain can trigger empathy or violence, but they are mutually exclusive.

This has wide-ranging implications. During the moment an individual chooses to make an attack, they literally can’t access empathetic feelings. Conversely, someone acting on empathy is briefly incapable of attacking.

Why these two conflicting impulses would share the same circuitry is hard to say. But what is clear is that the teaching and practice of empathy is of vital importance to a society torn apart by aggression.

Empathy under this scenario is not just a blunt to bloodlust, it actually shuts down the possibility of violent behavior altogether. Such is the beauty of a binary system in action.

Fish or chicken. Pants or door. Understanding or violence.

Choose wisely.


Check out Robb’s new book and more 

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