How does that title make you feel? :)
I first heard Barack Obama use the term, and thought it was shorthand for "People should care more about other people," which is pretty impossible to argue with.
However (Insert family nonsense here) has led me to chew this over recently, and I think the implications are much more profound than I'd realised.
I work in a setting where empathy is hugely important, and I work hard to promote empathy in my own family. It has not come naturally to me and for the first 5 years of being a parent I really had to "fake it." It was exhausting, but so very worth it.
Sometimes the contrast when dealing with my wider family makes my head spin. They are all screaming "What about ME, no-one understands ME" and yet not one of them has a clue how to begin to understand each other. "We are a very loving, caring family" is the headline, and woe betide anyone who marks the gloss paint on that. Negative or difficult feelings are denied ruthlessly in others, but lovingly cultivated in the self, resulting in a group of people who think they have it the worst and are at (completely redundant, because no-one is listening) pains to point this out.
This article rang a bell for me. Trying to learn empathy, if you have been raised with a lack of it, can be terrifying. If you feel like you are the only person in your support system who is willing to learn to empathise, that is a very tall order. If it's hard to offer empathy to challenging people in our personal lives, what hope is there for wider empathy problems, such as prejudice or even genocide?
If any of that made sense I'd be fascinated to know what others think...