Archive

Episode 309: Empathy Is the Invisible Hand

Guest: Eric Boyd

KMO welcomes Eric Boyd back to the program to discuss possibilities for kicking the energy can down the road with cold fusion. Friend of the C-Realm, Joe S. joins the conversation to represent the viewpoint that free energy could be bad news, as it would allow humans to continue the project of constructing global dominance hierarchies and despoiling the biosphere. KMO plays a clip of Jeremy Rifkin talking about the ideas in his book The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis. Rifkin claims that advancing communications technology has allowed humans to expand the sphere of beings with whom they identify and for whom they feel empathy. With more time and energy at our disposal, might humans come to extend our empathic concern to include the entire biosphere? The conversation concludes with a discussion of the potential impact of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Music by Alexandre Tannous and Simon G. Powell.