We lack empathy.
Long ago when I was a student the traditional question was to ask what the implications of the statement ‘I have a pain in your leg’ meant. Apart from the obvious implications for identity there is also for me, the residual understanding of empathy and why we lack so much of it. We can never feel anyone else’s pain. But that doesn’t mean we have to inflict pain as much as we do, that would seem to me to be quite another facet of our character. You see we need to ask why we cannot feel another’s pain, and it is not only to do with not having a neural pathway to another’s body, it is also to do with self interest.
We do not have the power to anything nature does not permit to be done, and our characters are part and parcel of what nature wants them to be. By making sure we are disconnected from another’s pain it means we can function in a painless way. As far as nature is concerned the species goes on even if one individual is incapacitated.
However we need to feel more if society is going to work. We need to bring every individual with us if society is going to prosper. Society is still about the survival of the fittest, luckiest or strongest. And we are still indifferent to each other which is why we cannot make the shift from community to civilisation.