Jeremy Rifkin's above explanation of the Emphatic Civilisation is an excellent watch. I haven't even watched it all yet - I just now stopped at 4:46 because I was strikingly compelled to immediately capture the following trenchant thought:
"Empathy is the opposite of Utopia. There is no empathy in heaven, because there's no mortality."
I've always been particularly fond of the thoughts behind the 'Architect speech.' Essentially this is an exercise in exploring the thoughts behind the 'brain in a vat' questions raised by neuroscientists of the 1970's (and philosophers across the ages) that manifest in the Wachowski production of The Matrix. This dialogue in particular brings up the Architect (the architect of the brain-in-a-vat matrix)'s initial frustration with trying to create utopia. "The first matrix I designed was quite naturally perfect. It was a work of art: flawless, sublime. A monumental triumph equaled only by its monumental failure."
Rifkin's above empathy quote (and the discussion leading up to it) concisely captures what it is about heaven/utopia/want/perfection that is fundamentally flawed: none of these things account for our critically essential need to experience and empathize with the bad, painful, and suboptimal things in the world.
If I could circle, underline, and highlight 'critically' a hundred times over, I would. Empathy drives understanding ('relation,' to put it properly) drives development drives cognition drives everything.
Update: the rest of the video only gets better: historical neuropsychological evolution, networked communication, metasocioculture. (Oh and also, much more on mirror neurons here and in audio form at the Stuff You Should Know podcast on synesthesia)
