MARIE can interpret a range of facial expressions and gestures, and respond in ways that suggest compassion.
His smile is a line that barely lifts at the corners, an expression that suggests compassion and bemusement and perhaps a healthy dose of perplexed curiosity.
Conversations with her son, Hugo, trace still unresolved threads of self-doubt back to a dislocated childhood, and find the subject worrying about her own possible acts of unkindness in a manner that suggests compassion for everyone but herself.
Red traditionally means passion, pink suggests compassion, while yellow represents new beginnings.
Yet in the face of free choice arguments, cries for capitalism, and the excuses of social Darwinism (yes, I've even heard the argument that "dying junkies are evolution at work") I'd like to suggest compassion.
While more studies are needed to elaborate how compassion training makes us kinder, these results suggest that compassion can be cultivated through mental training.
And the work's final solo suggested genuine compassion for unfortunate people.
To me, it feels repugnant to suggest that compassion should stop at a national boundary or color line.
Chris Lonergan, the managing director of Lonergan Research, said: "A clear majority of Australians now support an increased intake of refugees, which suggests that compassion for true refugees now outweighs other concerns such as national security risks, or people taking advantage of the system.
As Darwin himself suggested, our compassion for other humans can be explained in evolutionary terms.
