Where is empathy in a society dominated by the fear of the other?

In an age when entirely new forms of human socialisation have developed (online connections, social networks, the planetary circulation of money, tourists, knowledge and information), the capacity for empathy - considered the evolutionary building block of social interaction and cooperation - now faces new challenges. In the multiplicity of the political, economic and cultural “universes” that line up alongside each other and overlap, where individualism and the fear of the other dominate, does empathy still function at an instinctive level or has it become an exception? We know that empathy, namely the individual capacity for bodily and emotional resonance, is primarily active in settings of proximity and similarity. But in situations that imply conflict and dissonance, empathy requires a creative effort, which does not turn into an emotional response, and instead embarks on the adventure of exploring the world of the other, in various historical settings and cultural contexts and in different ways.