Then we’d be stone-age hunter-gatherers. At BEST. At worst we would have simply gone extinct.
This. I believe we evolved “shallow empathy” because of the obvious advantage it confers. We use that skill to hunt animals, to train animals, and to get along with each other.
“Deep empathy” probably started as an evolutionary accident, just a strong dose of shallow empathy genes. But tribes of people who had this trait took care of each other and out-completed neighboring tribes that had weaker social bonds.
Being an intensely social animal has up sides and down sides, but more up sides than down sides. You care for your ailing old mother, and she survives another year. And when a 50 year drought rears its head, she remembers where her tribe found water during the horrible drought of her childhood. Things like that.
“No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
-Hobbes (not the tiger)
Well, supreme leader, 
you need to see this now classic explanation of how we should consider ourselves (All humans) to be part of an emphatic society and how useful that is.
The drive to actually belong to a group would not take place if empathy was missing in Humans.
Empathy and the related mirror neurons in our brains allows us to feel what others endure, so we relate to others. But if you think about it that also goes for learning from each other. What Rifking points out is that with no empathy we would not imagine or model our minds and bodies to follow what others have done; but most importantly, empathy also tell us what to avoid and with a memory/model in our brains that requires no need to endure ourselves a bad experience that someone else had to. We “felt” that experience from the one that stepped on a trap. Empathy allows one to have a memory that also includes an emotional factor to help us remember really, really, really well how to deal with the dangers and bad situations the other person endured.
While many do have to learn that one can get painfully burned in certain areas of the kitchen, if we did not have empathy we would always had to burn ourselves to learn, or reinvent the wheel; we could be constantly in danger of affecting others by not being aware of what all others consider to be bad behavior or actions. Luckily, we developed empathy and so we can have large societies.
First week of Sociology/Psychology class done already?
Then my first order of business would be to team up with other people who want to team up with me – because one antisocial guy may be more ‘fit’ than any of us, but he’s going to lose a fight against all of us, because our team is the fittest and so survives.
And being able to see colors is, presumably, odd to the color-blind. So what?
Imagine a free-for-all world with no empathy – the strongest individuals take what they want, in mates and food and other resources, and survive only until their skills and strength degrade or they meet someone stronger. Imagine this state of affairs for centuries and millenia.
Then imagine some group develops the ability to work together with real trust and bonds, and cooperate, defend each other – together they are stronger than any of the zero empathy and strongest individuals outside. That empathetic and cooperative group would have greater success and thrive better and live on and grow for as long as this ability to cooperate and work together was carried on by offspring and recruits from outside.
Some individuals within such a society might be able take advantage of trust for their own small benefit, but this would do little to take away from the society since there would be few who would do so. If, at any point, some significant number within this society was taking advantage of trust, the rest of society would notice and organize to fight these parasites, and overall they would inevitably be stronger (for the reasons above).
So these sorts of parasites might pop up from time to time, and individually some of them might thrive, but if they ever grew strong enough to actually threaten the cohesion of the group they would be swatted down by the group collectively.
Just IMHO, anyway.
Does the lack of empathy extend to one offspring? If a human expresses total indifference to the problems of his or her children (and nobody with a working empathy system steps in), I expect those children are at a distinct survival/reproduction disadvantage, hence lack of empathy is not a trait likely to be retained or reinforced.
People with a vested interest in upholding the laws outnumber you and have more power than you.
Empathy is advantageous because social animals have survival advantages over solitary animals. We have division of labor, and can engage in violence on a larger scale. As a result social animals have massive advantages over solitary ones.
Psychopaths, who do not have any loyalty to society, will only have an advantage as long as the society at large does not realize what the sociopaths are doing. When they find out, the psychopaths may have criminal, social and professional sanctions that limit their options in life.
Actually, I have wondered if empathy is a little like female orgasms. I wonder if we feel for other people as sort of an overflow of the necessary ability to feel for our children in order to want to care for them. Human children have extended childhoods because our big brains cause our babies to be born while still relatively fetal, compared to other mammals. We need to feel empathy for them, and love them, or the species would die out. Since it’s rather too neat for nature for us to feel perfect and overwhelming empathy for our own children, and NOT have anything spill over onto other people, it has. That gave us tribes, societies, and civilizations, and those worked to a very great advantage, so here we are.
But as someone said upthread, there’s something like a herd effect with empathy, kind of like with vaccinations. We need a certain percentage of the population to be able to feel empathy, platonic or charitable love, agape, or whatever you want to call it, and once we reach that percentage, society hums along.
I do NOT have ASPD, but I feel a lot of the shallow empathy someone talked about, while missing the deep empathy for all but those very close to me. HOWEVER, I have a deep sense of responsibility for other people, because I understand that part of benefiting from living in a society is upholding my part of the social contract. I give a lot to charity, I do volunteer work, I work at the polls on election day, I show up for jury duty, and I get my flu shots. I’m not really sure what that says about me. Sometimes I think that my husband and my son and the aunt who raised me are the only people I’ve loved more than the pets in my life. Again, I do not have ASPD, but I may have been improperly socialized somewhere along the line, or maybe there is some condition where you are a bit of a loner, and that’s normal, and doesn’t distress you, but you still have a need for society.
Anyway, I think I understand the OP’s question a little differently than maybe some other people do. He doesn’t feel guilt at reaping the benefits of society without contributing. I would.
Empathy doesn’t “bog you down,” because that suggests it’s something you have to haul around. It isn’t. That is not a metaphor that resonates with people who experience empathy. Empathy is more like glasses that help you see more clearly. Imagine being at a 3D movie without the glasses, then putting them on. That’s how empathy helps you understand other people.
I wonder what I miss sometimes by not experiencing deep empathy. I am not moved by global tragedies. I am very cynical about things like smartphone apps that let you make disaster donations. I know when to keep my mouth shut, though, because most people cherish this kind of activism. I’m also very cynical about things like teddy bear displays at the site of car accidents. But I do sometimes wonder if I’m missing something that could be a bonding experience with other people.
OTOH, there are lots of other people who share my cynicism about some of these things, so I do get to feel a bond with these people. I somehow doubt that two people with ASPD feel a kinship, but I could be wrong.
FWIW, not everyone with ASPD is a criminal-- in fact, I think most are not. I believe a high percent of incarcerated people fit the criteria for ASPD, but that’s not the same thing. Plenty of ASPDs choose to avoid prison and other sanctions and lead law-abiding lives. ASPDs on the whole are more impulsive than non-ASPDs, but it’s a continuum, and the least impulsive ASPDs are less impulsive than the most impulsive non-ASPDs. Very high impulsivity and poor risk-reward analysis lead to criminal behavior. Some ASPDs are excellent at risk-reward analysis, and become workaholic CEOs.
Then, of course, some people have really effed-up sexual fetishes. If that is coupled with ASPD, you get a Ted Bundy or a Jeffrey Dahmer. But if it’s not, you just get a shmo who pays hookers a lot of money to let him do bizarre, often uncomfortable, but not ultimately harmful, things to them.
Empathy keeps people from saying and doing shit that will get them killed.
As with anything, though, I think society benefits when there’s some variety. If everyone was super empathetic, we wouldn’t be able to get shit done because everyone would be too worried about hurting someone’s else feelings. Doctors wouldn’t be able to help their patients without suffering along with them. Judges would have a hard time being impartial. We’d have a hard time finding people willing to fight wars.
It’s interesting, isn’t it? If I lacked empathy, and found myself in a society where folks kept (a) talking up empathy and (b) enthusiastically teaming up against enemies of the state who lack empathy – well, then, I’d presumably do my best to talk a good game about empathy, and act the part as convincingly as I could, because as soon as I break character I’d be on their radar, wouldn’t I?
And I’d always be wondering, hey, how many of them are faking this likewise?
There are many enjoyable things that I will never be able to do. Through empathy, I can watch others doing those things or listen to them describing those things and acquire some of the joy.
The other side of the coin is that there are things I can do which are trivial on my part which make others quite happy. It feels quite good to do so.
I think that fundamentally, the part that the OP doesn’t get is that other people exist, and are the same manner of entity as himself. His empathy benefits others, and others’ empathy benefits him, and those are fundamentally the same thing.
IMHO many that are anti-vacination were faking that empathy bit. I also think that most people that are bigots and racists and favor authoritarians also have trouble with their “emphatic system”.
Empathy is a useful strategy because reciprocity is generally hardwired in.
Even the fittest would be living without the comforts and conveniences that can only exist because modern civilization exists.
Yay, you’re the fittest guy in the jungle, so you get to live for thirty-eight years, whereas the less fit tend to only last for twenty-eight.
Big whoop. Here in civilization, I’m not even particularly fit, and I’ve managed to hit sixty.
I thought that was Harlan Ellison…
To a certain extent. But it’s usually a short-term benefit. If you act on the opportunities offered by your lack of empathy, you’ll be violating social mores. Society, which values empathy among its members, will oppose you. It could be as extreme as being executed for committing murder to as mundane as finding your name getting left off invitation lists.