Can You Feel It?

I am very very worried about something, and I hope you can help. Over the last twenty years or so, there has been an observable decline in the ability of the average person to understand and care about the condition of other people, what is correctly called empathy.

I began to notice this around 1985, when I first started to reflect upon such things, and since then I have become increasingly alarmed. That was a time when video games were taking off, VCRs were getting common, and the earliest cell phones, ones the size of small houses, were being put in cars. It was also a time when the data show that single mother homes were increasing at an extraordinary rate.

In my classrooms I cannot understand why it is necessary for me to ask my students to not text, to arrive on time, to stay for the whole class, and to not chit chat during our precious time together. I can barely contain myself when, after saying that electronic media is disruptive to the development of real connections between people, that a cell phone "goes off" in the class. Are these indicators of declining empathy?

In congress, we see the erosion of empathy at the highest levels. Never has there been such a lack of understanding of and connection to the condition and needs of the common person. It almost seems that the truest American values have become: The One With the Most Toys Wins, along with Every Man for Himself. Am I wrong about this?

Are these things linked? What's going on?

There is no question in my mind that empathy has declined, and the research backs up this assertion. Studies consistently show a dramatic drop in empathy since 1990 or so. What can we do? What should we do?
In my classes, I promote the following:

Experience a wide range of people

Look for similarities

Practice taking another perspective

Look at famous empathic people

Read good fiction/Watch deeper movies

Be non-authoritarian

What else is there? Are we doomed? 'Cause I know what's coming next.