Have you read Jeremy Rifkin's book The Empathic Civilization?

No, neither have I. But I do have it in my pile of books waiting to be read.

Now, if you want to get an idea of what the book is about, you can watch this excellent animation of a lecture Rifkin gave to the Royal Society of Arts in London.

This is what Baha'is understand

I got goose bumps watching this. To listen to Jeremy Rifkin is to hear exactly the Baha'i prescription for building a new civilisation restated, but based in scientific studies of the brain.

Rifkin is right. If we cannot manage to extend our empathy to the whole human race, we will not survive. As he says, this is not utopia. It is necessity.

This is how 'Abdu'l-Baha puts it:

O peoples of the world! The Sun of Truth hath risen to illumine the whole earth, and to spiritualize the community of man. Laudable are the results and the fruits thereof, abundant the holy evidences deriving from this grace. This is mercy unalloyed and purest bounty; it is light for the world and all its peoples; it is harmony and fellowship, and love and solidarity; indeed it is compassion and unity, and the end of foreignness; it is the being at one, in complete dignity and freedom, with all on earth.

The Blessed Beauty saith: ‘Ye are all the fruits of one tree, the leaves of one branch.’ Thus hath He likened this world of being to a single tree, and all its peoples to the leaves thereof, and the blossoms and fruits. It is needful for the bough to blossom, and leaf and fruit to flourish, and upon the interconnection of all parts of the world-tree, dependeth the flourishing of leaf and blossom, and the sweetness of the fruit.

For this reason must all human beings powerfully sustain one another and seek for everlasting life; and for this reason must the lovers of God in this contingent world become the mercies and the blessings sent forth by that clement King of the seen and unseen realms. Let them purify their sight and behold all humankind as leaves and blossoms and fruits of the tree of being. Let them at all times concern themselves with doing a kindly thing for one of their fellows, offering to someone love, consideration, thoughtful help. Let them see no one as their enemy, or as wishing them ill, but think of all humankind as their friends; regarding the alien as an intimate, the stranger as a companion, staying free of prejudice, drawing no lines.

We have to make this a reality in our lives, whoever and wherever we are.