As edited by chat gpt
Markendeya Yeddanapudi
The Extinction of Emotional Empathy
Edited Version
All organisms breathe. They smell, they sense, they respond. Each breath carries signals—scents, hormones, emotional states. One organism exhales its distress, and another inhales it, instinctively offering help. Emotions once flowed freely in the air, just as hormones flow within a body. The troposphere—the lower atmosphere of Earth—served as the hormonal system of the biosphere, which itself functions as a single living organism.
This is empathy in its purest form: automatic, reciprocal, and embodied. It is not merely observing pain—it is responding to it reflexively. Every living being is wired to feel and act. Emotional perception and action are natural. Empathy, when whole, is never passive.
We do not need James Lovelock’s gas chromatography to confirm that Earth is alive. Gaia does not require validation through analysis. We feel her in every breath. Our lives are shaped not in isolation, but in response to Gaia’s needs—through emotional and ecological symbiosis.
We are built to breathe, to sense, to learn through connection. We are not meant to block our perception with rigid definitions and static categories. The universe does not wait for us to define it—it continues creating, evolving, offering new phenomena. And we, as part of nature, are meant to flow with it, not to freeze it in frameworks.
But technology disrupts this flow. It solidifies definitions. It replaces the work of organs with machines, rendering our natural functions redundant. A machine that moves your limb does not feel what you feel. It doesn’t enter your bloodstream. It doesn’t create hormones. It cannot participate in emotional communication.
Modern economics, built on Newtonian mechanics, has pushed empathy out of human relationships. In a world designed for efficiency, empathy is treated as a delay. The air is no longer rich with emotional exchange—it is thick with industrial fumes. The troposphere no longer mirrors the internal hormonal flow. The emotional atmosphere has been poisoned, and empathy has vanished from the air.
Now we have robots that manufacture poetry. But the problem lies not in machines writing—it lies in what is valued. Editing today means removing feeling. It prizes precision over passion, conciseness over complexity, clarity over depth. Emotions are trimmed, cut, discarded. It is no wonder that robotic poetry receives editorial approval—because robots write the way editors now expect humans to write.
These are the days of Newtonian psychology—predictable, mechanical, emotionless. In this new age, even art must behave like a machine. Songs are sanitized. Poems are processed. And empathy is no longer welcome.
Conclusion
We are more than machines. We are not built to observe passively. We are meant to feel, to respond, to act through empathy. The extinction of emotional empathy is not just a cultural loss—it is a biological and ecological rupture. If we do not return to the natural rhythms of breath, perception, and response, we risk not only alienation from each other, but from Gaia herself.
Let us reclaim empathy—not as a sentiment, but as a biological truth.
Would you like a version formatted for publication (e.g. in a magazine, blog, or journal)? I can also help craft an abstract or subtitle if needed.