Just to bring things together and up-to-date, by no means to stop the discussion, but to help refocus it, the following question occurred to me on re-reading all of your posts:

Question: It would appear that we all agree that "walking in another's shoes" is not something we can ever fully realize with one hundred percent confidence. That being the case, my next question is, is it still worth continuing to exert time and effort both individually, as people trying to help other people, and collectively, as a society trying to improve the general level of social empathy, mutual understanding, and peer-to-peer help and support?

In other words, do we keep striving, as individuals all our lives, as a society forever, to penetrate other people's minds, understand their souls, feel their pain, connect with their history? Or, because we can't totally effectuate any of these things, because we will never, with one hundred percent certainty, "walk in another's shoes," do we just let everything drop and walk away from it?

I ask these questions because, over the past three or four decades we here in the U.S. have heard, over and over, in a number of areas of society, and particularly in academia, that because we'll never achieve the ultimate aims of a particular project, and because we'll have to settle for less-than-perfect results, we should not only abandon the attempt, but treat any continuing such attempt with contempt and contumely.

What do you think? Keep trying or forget it?