How can we create empathy, compassion and understanding in today’s society that is full of division and conflict?

Question from the Internet:

“How can we create empathy, compassion and understanding in today’s society that is full of division and conflict?”

This is something we all have to learn. By default, we have no ability or even a need for true empathy, compassion and understanding.

By default, we are all born with a 100% egocentric, subjective and individualistic worldview and approach towards life. All our calculations and interest are centered around our instinctively self-serving and self-justifying “pleasure/pain” calculations.

We observe and perceive from the world – and from other people – only what is interesting for these self-centered calculations and worldview.

In order to become capable of true empathy, compassion and understanding of others, we would need to rise above and go beyond our instinctive calculations and our inherent perception of reality. We need to learn and practice how to sense and understand reality through the desires, needs and viewpoints of others while we completely forget about ourselves.

What do we gain by this?

If this is all learned and practiced in a closed, mutually supportive and mutually complementing environment, where everyone commits to achieve the above, then we would all receive exactly what we need and how we need without even asking for it. We would not need to worry about our necessities at all, since all the others are catering for whatever we need in the best possible way.

Moreover, by going above and beyond our inherently egocentric and subjective perception of reality – with its limited coordinates of time and space – we could start realistically and tangibly sensing existence beyond time or space, independent of physical life or death, without the “need” to die from the physical life first.