Empathy. You either have it, or you don't. I mean, most of us have it, except for the ones who don't, and they are scary people. How many of us are the scary types? Who knows?
So we choose to empathize with others, or we do not. And we make choices, we draw distinctions, we decide who we will empathize with, and who we will not.
We hope our empathy for others will be reciprocated to us. It doesn't always work that way. Sometimes you are one of the ones left out of the empathy loop. And that is hard.
We are all human, we were all born, we all live and die. We grow old. We will all succeed at some things, and fail at others. We aren't perfect. We are all the same in all the essential ways. But some of us choose to see the things we share, and some don't.
We can build a society together that rewards the empathetic ones, or we can reward the narcissistic ones. We choose.