I think you've got it wrong. Why would you care for someone that doesn't affect you at all? You can't compare empathy in earlier years and now. Communities were smaller and you kind of got to know and benefit from one another.
You almost hit the nail on the head. See what I said above about group loyalty. [pathos arguments from another "i living in rich socialist country but i'm great cynic" member]
Another "mommy's expert"
Why i don't like nerds? They pretty good at technical parts of something, but because they have very poor social experience, their conclusions about any relationship between peoples are wrong.
Of course, i could be wrong, and you're not nerd, but self-made millionare from one of the Jack's London novel. Who hard working day by day to get his money, who grew up on the street and know all about this life and people. In that case i take my words backward. Such people have right to think in such way. BUT NOT A NERDS!
No, not really.
Yeah, but you're just theorist and i'm practitioner (i could be wrong as i said before). For example, post-USSR prisons. Our (i mean Ukraine, russia and other former republics) society don't have any "empathy" for criminals. If you got into the prison once, your life ruined at all. And what happens after prisoner go free? Yeah, he makes another crime and go to jail again (mostly). Because we don't have mechanism to rehabilitate such kind of people.
Yeah, maybe it doesn't have any associated with empathy, but sounds cool and pathos
Also, Renaissance was one of the most darker part in human history. Occultism, great wars, unsanitary conditions, Witch Hunt, Black Plague. We just modernized meaning of "humanism"