I’ve seen workers increasingly use technology to avoid confrontation. We spend less time interacting in person and more time managing our relationships through technology. In our busy, hyper-digitalised worlds, we have less and less time for face-to-face conversations. This notion first struck me reading an article in Forbes in which, a study of college students by University of Michigan researchers revealed a decline in empathic skills over an eight-year period. But in 2019 is empathy already lying in ruin? It’s enough to make anyone dance in the streets… and not in a good way.Įmpathy is essential to improving lives and societies, and to building meaningful relationships. We live in volatile and uncertain times a revival of far-right politics, the threat of water supply terrorism, nuclear proliferation, rising tensions over borders, climate emergency, the end of privacy, the rise of antimicrobial resistance and noncommunicable diseases, such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease, and more than 1.6 billion people living in fragile settings. In many aspects, modern society is also under severe stress. Recent studies of disasters and conflict zones, where there is the very immediate presence of real danger show that mass panic is rare.īut where there is a perceived threat, outbreaks of MPI become more be prevalent. Orphanages, hospitals, graves and shelters were overflowing. Social and religious conflicts, smash and grab raiders, terrifying new diseases, harvest failures and spiking wheat prices caused widespread misery. In 1374, Europe was an extremely volatile place. It seems more likely that the outbreak of psychogenic illness was related to rising perceived threat and distress, leading to a heightened level of suggestibility. “Spirit possessions” was one explanation. Reports from the time resemble a nightmarish scene from a painting by Hieronymous Bosch - over the period of about one month, many people collapsed and died of heart attack and exhaustion, further fuelling the shared sense of panic. In 1374, in dozens of medieval towns along the Rhine valley, hundreds of people were seized by an agonising compulsion to dance for days without rest. Mass hysteria cases are not a modern phenomenon. Essentially the episode was a mass outbreak of panic or Mass Psychogenic Illness (MPI) which, he says, usually occur in people who feel that they don't have a lot of power or control over their lives. Hempelmann of Purdue University, has theorized that the episode was stress-induced. In all, 14 schools were shut down and 1000 people were affected.Ĭhristian F. The epidemic spread to the neighbouring villages. For some children the symptoms lasted 16 days.Īlongside laughter, reports were accompanied by descriptions of fainting, respiratory problems, coughing, crying and screaming, and of course exhaustion. The laughing epidemic spread rapidly throughout the school, affecting 95 pupils, all laughing uncontrollably. Three girls started laughing… and they didn’t stop. In January 1962, at a mission-run boarding school for girls in Kashasha, Tanganyika, modern-day Tanzania.
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