Poor thing

[WinterHold]

The saddest, most haunting scene you will see
This monster is half human.

I think that issues of empathy are absolutely crucial to both art and religion. A number of religious writers see the lack of empathy -- what they call the Selfhood -- as the source of all evil, and the thing that their spirituality works to overcome. 

Here is something on William Blake, an antinomian Christian:

[For Blake] Satan is the lower boundary below which no one’s perceptual state may fall. To Satan, the world is literally opaque—his vision stops at the surfaces of things, so that he may not see their infinite connection to God, the universe, and all other things. It’s this extreme lack of vision which makes him satanic. He is not necessarily morally evil (a concept that antinomians don’t recognize) but because without vision of the interconnectedness of all things, he is selfish. In Jerusalem, Blake declares that Satan “is the Great Selfhood” (E 175). He is the state we are in when we think of ourselves as separate, as islands. Though the state of Satan-hood is unredeemable, people who are in it may be resurrected into more perceptive levels. 

Empathy is the ability to see/feel outside of our own boundaries. Without this, any evil is possible.

I agree with Blake's view to some extent; since the great sin that led Satan to the path of becoming Adam & Eve's enemy is jealousy -according to my faith-, or the exact words he said to God: "I am better than him -Adam-; you -God- created me from fire but created him from clay":

Sura 7, The Quran:
https://quran.ksu.edu.sa/index.php?l=en#...rans=en_sh

( 12 )   [Allah] said, "What prevented you from prostrating when I commanded you?" [Satan] said, "I am better than him. You created me from fire and created him from clay."

Jealousy is very related to the lack of empathy, you can even see it allover the Satan story -in both the Quran and the Bible- down to the simple example of a child feeling jealous of his/her friend at school; in an instance you see evil flying from their eyes and hate consumes them.
Did Satan love God to the degree of feeling "jealous" when Adam was created ?
Lack of empathy is a consequence of jealousy if in my opinion.

This radical cause of separation, hence of evil, Boehme called Selbheit [Selfhood], Winstanley the “selfish” aspect of fallen and fragmented man, and Schelling the finite Ichheit which is “the point of the extremest alienation from God.” “Evil generally,” Hegel said, when it is expressed as concept rather than in the image-thinking of religion, is “the self-centered being- for-itself [das insichseiende Fürsichsein] and good is selfless simplicity [das selbstlose Einfache].”

All these thinkers describe God as immanent within people, and thought that when our perceptions are fully open we are, essentially, seeing as God sees. For them there is no separation between God and people, except that which we impose through our illusion of separation. Empathy is the power which reconnects us -- or more properly, allows us to see the connection that has always existed. 

I think that a great deal of modern culture works against empathy. Mass media, particularly, helps us to forget that other people are people. Traditionally one of the ways that we expand and strengthen our understanding of others is through fiction. We see more of Julien Sorel, for example, or Hans Castorp, then we do of most other people, simply because the author tells us more about them than a non-omniscient narrator can know. The greatest writers, it may be safe to say, are those which reduce their selfhoods the most, and allow us to break down the typical boundaries we build up. This is contrasted to most pop culture, which flatters the viewer and looks for little more of a reaction than "Hey Cool." It makes us worse people. 

And you're right that the American military has been among the very worst forces of harm in the modern world. The anti-empathy messages of pop culture help enable their evil.

I believe that this is true also; since the Quran states explicitly that we humans have a part of God's soul blown into us; for me I believe that is why we have "consciousness".

Sura 15, The Quran:
https://quran.ksu.edu.sa/index.php?l=en#...rans=en_sh

( 28 )   And [mention, O Muhammad], when your Lord said to the angels, "I will create a human being out of clay from an altered black mud.
( 29 )   And when I have proportioned him and breathed into him of My [created] soul, then fall down to him in prostration."
( 30 )   So the angels prostrated - all of them entirely,
( 31 )   Except Iblees -Satan-, he refused to be with those who prostrated.

You have this deadly mixture that corrupts people:
1-Jealousy from others for their success/gifts
2- Jealousy escalates to lack of empathy
3-Lack of empathy escalates to pure evil

No wonder you see tactical bombing in wars without empathy to the bombed civilians. No wonder you seen imperialism in the past that murdered whole continents. No wonder you even seen a race toward atomic supremacy from all countries except for one or two.

Satan is thriving down here.