I really struggled over choosing a picture for this diary. I went back and forth between Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder trying to find something that fit my mood. But in the end I decided it would be irresponsible to spread despondent thoughts, so I went with a tranquil image of Buddha.
I read an interesting article in The Atlantic (shared on facebook) about how power corrupts on the neurological level.
Power Causes Brain Damage
Everyone has heard Lord Acton’s axiom: Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. A researcher has now offered a physiological explanation for that truism.
Sukhvinder Obhi, a neuroscientist at McMaster University, in Ontario, primed test subjects to feel powerful or powerless. He then determined motor resonance using transcranial-magnetic-stimulation, as the test subject interacted with another person.
. . . he found that power, in fact, impairs a specific neural process, “mirroring,” that may be a cornerstone of empathy. Which gives a neurological basis to what Keltner has termed the “power paradox”: Once we have power, we lose some of the capacities we needed to gain it in the first place.
Mirror neurons are those that fire when an animal acts and perceives the same action performed by another. Mirror neurons are believed by a number of researchers to be involved in the capacity for empathy.
The powerful are adversely affected by their position in two ways. First, their subordinates provide few reliable clues and secondly, the powerful stop mimicking others.
Laughing when others laugh or tensing when others tense does more than ingratiate. It helps trigger the same feelings those others are experiencing and provides a window into where they are coming from. Powerful people “stop simulating the experience of others,” Keltner says, which leads to what he calls an “empathy deficit.”
A previous study asked participants to draw an “E” on their foreheads. Those feeling powerful were three times more likely to draw the letter so that it was correct from their point of view, but backwards to an observer.
If you want to read the scholarly publication in the Journal of Experimental Psychology:
Power Changes How the Brain Responds to Others
A lot of people writing about survival in the age of T___p have said how important it is to get out in meat space, interact with people face to face. It looks like there may be a scientific basis for that good advice. Gotta keep those mirror neurons tuned up.
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Some kittehs to help you transition back
To the T___pocolypse.