Animals: Tradition - Philosophy - Religion Article from All-Creatures.org



The 'Empathosphere' and Compassion's Light

From Dr. Michael W. Fox, OneHealth.com
August 2024

One dog at Deanna’s refuge, Bruno, would insist on observing every surgery being performed on an animal and would lie attentively beside them during their recovery. Mania, an adult Bonnet macaque monkey, gently held an infant monkey while being treated for burns after swinging on electrified wires.

Monkeys and Dog Whitey
Monkeys playing with Whitey

Without empathy there can be no coherent ethical basis for society, and no moral consistency in our lives and in our relationships within the broader life community of the planetary ecosystem. In many ways, nonhuman animals are more empathically connected and aware than humans. They are more attuned to each other and to their immediate environment, a vital survival strategy being less self-preoccupied and lost in thought than we, which could have fatal consequences in the wild. As we become ever more deeply connected through empathic knowledge and associated feeling, we enter the empathosphere, or realm of fellow-feeling and understanding. In this realm our consciousness becomes reflexive, conscience and consciousness are born and we become a more caring, whole, and healthy species, culture, community, family, and person.

In my book The Boundless Circle where I first outlined my initial understanding of the empathosphere, I linked it with the boundless ethic of compassion. This boundlessness is evident in the invisible ripple-effect of good works or some new idea spreading from community to community. Two animals demonstrated the boundless nature of the empathosphere at the Animal Refuge in the Nilgiris, South India established by my wife Deanna Krantz. Somehow, they knew that the Refuge was a place of security and relief from suffering. How else to explain these two animals coming several miles to where they had never been before? One was a dog who dragged himself after being hit by a vehicle for over a mile to the Refuge with a broken back and with his testicles hanging out.

Another was a water buffalo whom staff found one morning waiting at the Refuge gate. Her condition was quickly recognized and treated, which was an infected vagina seething with flesh-eating maggots.

One dog at Deanna’s refuge, Bruno, would insist on observing every surgery being performed on an animal and would lie attentively beside them during their recovery. Mania, an adult Bonnet macaque monkey, gently held an infant monkey while being treated for burns after swinging on electrified wires.

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Posted on All-Creatures: August 2, 2024
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