Have you received those e-mails forwarding photos of babies dressed up in costumes? Or depicting babies sleeping in flower blossoms?  Its one of those popular fads circulating online. I have to admit the photos are totally irresistible.  What is it about babies?  No matter my mood, when I look at one those cute smiling faces, I have to smile right back.

But even as I was smiling at a picture of a baby in a pink flamingo costume, I could hear the lyrics to one of my favorite Radiohead songs, “I Will” [Watch on YouTube] echoing in my mind.  Unlike the baby photos the song is not nearly as uplifting.

I will lay me down

in a bunker
underground

I won’t let this happen to my children
meet the real world coming out of your shell
With white elephants
sitting ducks
I will
rise up

Little babies’ eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes
Little babies’ eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes
Little babies’ eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes
Little babies’ eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes

While the song is intentionally written to sound like a lullaby, it refers to something much more serious: an act of transference which allowed us to shift a huge white elephant, all the fear and anxiety generated by 9/11, onto a sitting duck: Iraq.   This is part of the dynamic of scapegoating defined by René Girard, one of the most important thinkers on the relationship of violence and culture [more on Girard].  Girard explains: scapegoating allows us “to elude problems that seem intractable.”  It’s never a conscious activity.  We didn’t knowingly transfer all our emotional trauma onto the Iraqi people.  Its just that its extremely difficult to retaliate against terrorists, never mind bringing the problem of terrorism to some sort of resolution.  Instead we redirected all that tension onto an easier target and ended up doing to the Iraqis what had been done to us.

The idea that “shock and awe” would somehow spare the population was a delusion.  Not that we understood that at the time.  We convinced ourselves every step of the way: insisting that we were liberating the Iraqis, that there would be minimal loss of life, that our soldiers would return home quickly, safe and unharmed, and that the whole thing would be wrapped up in a matter of months.  As Girard says, “we are all prone to that delusion.”  This is proven by the paradox that “all of us can observe and denounce numerous examples of scapegoating we have personally observed, yet none of us ever identify past and, above all, present instances of [our] own involvement in scapegoating.” (Violent Origins, 74)

In fact its easy to identify other examples, wars or acts of genocide in which those who initiated the violence felt completely justified. It seems to happen all too often. How is it that an entire population can delude itself this way and what, if anything, has the power to break through such delusions?  For instance, what would allow us to recognize the incredible amount of suffering inflicted upon the Iraqi people, especially on all the innocent children who spent their nights in bunkers underground, as their world exploded all around them?  What, for instance, would we see if we actually looked into their eyes?

In the last decade neuroscientists have discovered that babies‘ eyes hold important clues for understanding the evolution of the human species.  Scientists now have evidence that we are hard wired for empathy, a capacity that begins to develop in the first moments of life. Its not just the fact that babies are so cute that compels us to smile; when we see a baby smile our brain has the same neurological response that the baby does.  This is due, scientists say, to mirror neurons.

To view a video clip describing  mirror neurons  [Link Here].

From the first moments of life, babies mirror their parents’ facial expressions.  Scientists observing the effects of this behavior on babies’ brains have discovered that all that imitation stimulates the development of the neurological systems which enable human beings to experience the emotions, the intentions of others, as if those emotions and intentions were our own.  The more I smile at a baby, the more it smiles back.  Before I know it I’m engaged in a back and forth game of imitation, poking out tongues and making silly faces.  Scientists say that this process of mirroring is necessary for social connectedness.

After testing babies, neuroscientists performed similar tests on newborn monkeys, and discovered that they have the same ability, but to a far lesser extent.  For instance, in the first day of life baby monkeys imitate their mother’s facial movements allowing their brains to adapt to their social environment. [Link to Journal Article]  Scientists see this as evidence of a crucial link in our evolution.

Indeed, some are labeling the discovery of mirror neurons as the most significant breakthrough in the last decade, with the power to transform other disciplines:  “Have you heard of neuroethics, neuromarketing, neuropolitics?  You will in the years and decades to come, and research in these fields will be rooted, explicitly or otherwise, in the functions of mirror neurons.” (Iacoboni, Mirroring People, 7)

While others, including a few New Atheists, have identified mirror neurons as a biological basis for morality [link] [link].  As tempting as that optimism might be, after all “it follows that good imitators should also be good at recognizing emotions, and so endowed with a greater empathy,” (Iacoboni, Mirroring People, 112), I can’t help but wonder…  If we’re wired for empathy, and if its true that’s its part of our DNA, then why aren’t we better off as a species?  Why, for instance, can Jack on 30 Rock state the truism, “human empathy, its as useless as the Winter Olympics.” (30 Rock, “Audition Day,” Season 4, Episode 4) 

In fact, Mark Iacoboni, neuroscientist and author of the popular book Mirroring People, says they have discovered a negative side to mirror neurons, which, I’ve noticed, the media has been far more hesitant to report.  The same neurons which allow monkeys to adapt so quickly to their social group and surroundings, have, over the course of human evolution, acquired some bad habits. Iacoboni believes that at some point in the development of our species we acquired super mirror neurons, which enabled complex forms of imitation, which are far more complex than the basic mirroring found in monkeys: “In which individuals observing aggressive behavior not only acquire complex coordinated motor behaviors that make them aggressive and violent but also become convinced in the process - in an unconscious way - that such behavior is a good way of solving social problems.” (Mirroring People, 211)  We resist such ideas, because “we are naturally inclined to think of ourselves as autonomous individuals who are not going to be influenced in any direct, slavish, monkey-see, monkey-do way by what we see. The data on imitative violence clearly threatens this precious notion.” (Mirroring People, 212)

Iacoboni says “we have seen how mirror neurons can undoubtedly be good for us, enabling feelings and actions of empathy for others, but they also provide a compelling neurological mechanism underlying imitative violence…” (Mirroring People, 211) We live in a world “filled with atrocities every day - and this despite a neurobiology wired for empathy and geared toward mirroring and sharing of meaning.  Why is this?”  Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that “the same neurobiological mechanisms facilitating empathy may produce, under specific circumstance and contexts, a behavior that is the opposite of an empathetic behavior.” (Mirroring People, 268-9).

Part of the answer lies in the fact that mirroring is pre-reflective, we respond before we are able to think about the choices we are making.  Iacoboni focuses, and rightly so, on the effects of video games, advertising and addiction, which exploit and reinforce negative imitation. But in my opinion, the neurological mechanism he describes is no more evident, and no more frightening, than in the act of transference described by René Girard, that which led our entire country to war in Iraq.

Iacoboni believes we can use our knowledge of the mirror neuron system and its automatic mechanisms “to prevent evil.” (210)  Some of the New Atheists would agree, that we can extend simple acts of empathy, like smiling at babies, to encompass the children of our so-called enemies.  But how is this possible, if we are unable to resist or interrupt, even for a moment, those more complex forms of transference and scapegoating which override empathy?  Especially given the evidence   that our evolution goes hand in hand with our ability to nurture and protect babies over the course of their development, when their mirror neuron system is being formed. As traditional social structures which historically contained violence with violence (war, for instance) prove so disastrously futile in solving the worlds problems; more and more children are exposed to traumatic events which interrupt the development of empathy.  When we consider the effects of war, of “shock and awe,” or starvation, ethnic cleansing, or even the plague of violence infecting our schools, on children’s brains, it becomes obvious that we need to find other ways to make the world safe for our children.  It is time to break free of the complex neural structures which allow for transference, but in a culture saturated with violence, its impossible to imagine where to begin.  In a sense we are brought to a standstill, to a deadlock in our own evolution.

In Mark 9:30-37 [link to text] the author says that Jesus “took a little child in his arms and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me, welcomes not me, but the one who sent me.’”  Jesus actually engages us in a trajectory, which is the opposite of scapegoating, because he identifies not only himself, but the one who sent him with the helpless, innocent children, the victims of our delusions.  But that’s not all…

The lyrics to the Radiohead song suggests that the bunkers built to protect people are really tombs.  Not only are they the underground, hidden recesses where so many Iraqi children spent their evenings, some even losing their lives (to this day, the trauma they suffered remains invisible to the rest of world), the effects to all of us are far reaching, for it guarantees that we will continue to mirror the motor responses that turn normal, rational human beings into violent and aggressive people.

As I read Mark, Jesus not only reminds me just how lacking our empathy can be, I see that babies’ eyes hold the key.  Not only do they engage us in the most basic acts of empathy, stimulating the neurons in our brains to smile at them, they beckon us, as ambassadors of the future, towards positive alternatives for the continued evolution of the human race, possibilities we have yet to imagine.  Maybe then we’ll compose some new lullabies to sing our children to sleep.  Isn’t it time to rewrite some of those traditional lyrics, at least the ones which tend on the morbid side: “Rock-a-by baby on the tree top…”?  Think about it, its no accident that the first lines of the Radiohead song echo the children’s bedtime prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.  

- Sue Wright

For more info on Mimetic Theory and Mirror Neurons: [Link here] to Imitatio.org and scroll down to the articles listed under Natural Sciences.

I highly recommend Marco Iacoboni’s book, Mirroring People: The Science of Empathy and How We Connect with Others (2009).