Google “Spiral Dynamics”. We don’t see the world as it is. Who we are…and what we are capable of…colors how we see the world. When someone says, “Our thoughts create our reality”, this is what they mean. If you see the world mainly through a materialistic lens? Your friend’s description of empathy is “accurate”. Yes it’s pro-social behavior. So you get the support of your group, your children and family are more likely to survive. You get a survival benefit from it. But what about showing empathy to strangers. Today I watched a video of a guy who encounters a stroller with a baby. Mother had absentmindedly wandered off and left the child on the subway platform. The guy can’t find the mother. So he protects the child. Soothes it. Ellicits other adults to help…until mom comes running back in a panic. Grateful to find her child safe. What is the personal benefit of that kind of empathy and altruism? It wasn’t his child. It wasn’t the child of anyone he knew. In fact he arguably put himself at risk to aid the child, as mom could have accused him of trying to harm the child. As we mature emotionally and spiritually we see the world less in terms of competition, self-interest and transactional. We do things because we see ourselves in others. We are empathetic because we would want to be treated the same way. The result is we build bigger and bigger communities. “There was a monk one day trying to cross a river that had flooded its banks. He sees a scorpion slowly drowning in a puddle of water. He bends over to help it out of the water, all the while dodging stings from the scorpion. “Once it was safely out of the water, the scorpion looks at the monk and asks, ‘Why didn’t you let me drown. You knew I would try to sting you if tried to help. I couldn’t stop myself. It is my nature.’ “The monk replied, ‘I stopped to help you because that is MY nature.” Empathy is our nature as humans once we stop seeing the world through the eyes of fear.