Empathy v ?

[coffeedaiv]

Empathy is understanding other people are different. What is the unshakable assumption that everyone is the same? Not all the same in the sense of deserving rights, respect, and understanding. Not all the same in being of common genetic stock and fundamentally shared biological inheritance. Not all the same in that we are all unique in our experience and expression and processing of reality, with limited but shared overlap in common understanding of events. All the same in the sense, the assumption that anyone, given a particular set of circumstances, would act in the same manner. Anyone with power would use that power to advance only their own interests. It is the fundamental assumption that, everyone is exactly the same, is as selfish and short sighted and dismissive of other peoples needs and the consequences and impact of ones own actions. Psychopath is, I think, an overused term (the fact I watch a lot of Criminal Minds and other psychologically focused crime drama TV is probably influencing my assumptions there). On the other hand, quick googling seems to support this idea. That said, I am not sure I am articulating my question as well as I would like to. What, after all, do I mean by Empathy? If I assume that it is a spectrum (my understanding of psychology is that nearly everything is a spectrum; personality is not a series of binary choices), and that empathy is on one end of that, what is that opposite end of that spectrum?