The same is true of what we see in the faces of football fans, mobs, and moviegoers. These responses are coexperiences. The brain is not simply watching. It is participating. I haven’t seen anyone suggest it, but it seems to me that double-sided mirror neurons may be the primary mechanism that makes us and our children so manipulable. I would speculate that when mass manipulation is effective, it is because of double-sided mirror neuron circuits. When someone on TV has fun with a new toy, the child watching the TV coexperiences the fun, and wants it to continue.
The same strategies that give us greater positive influence will help us counteract the negative ones. So how do we manage to maximize the good of double-sided mirror neurons, and do what we can to control negative influence?
Learning, knowledge, thinking – along with the emotions that power and direct them – these are the most important tools we have. But in my worst moments, I believe the forces opposing learning, knowledge, and thought, crushing our drive and our emotions, threaten to turn us into consuming, reproducing automata – double-sided mirror who buy stuff and hatch kids who buy stuff.
It’s tempting to think of the negative implications of co-experiencing. Lately, I watch the apparent dea[r]th of learning and of thoughtfulness in our worldwide culture and in the institutions that shape and transmit that culture, and I find myself despairing for our lovely little planet.
What about this pessimist’s version – all those influences of the double-sided mirror on your child that you wish weren’t there, and which sometimes threaten the most basic values you hope to instill? The thing is, these influences are the flip side of a powerful adaptive mechanism which is the base for our ability to empathize, and the powerhouse for cultural transmission.