The need for empathy is due to duality. The belief that "others" are sperate from you and therefore are in need of empathy. Empathy is a tool that can be used to find oneness and escape the illusion of duality. If you enjoy living in duality, more power to you, enjoy your life as you see fit, it's your life, you deserve to live it the way you choose.
Empathy can be practiced within, meaning Loving, forgiving, nurturing, and caring for yourself. When you make a mistake, tell yourself it will be ok and move forward. You can forgive your past mistakes and shame. You can motivate yourself and encourage yourself and push yourself to do things that you want to do. Always keep reminding yourself that everything is ok, even if it doesn't feel like it at the time.
Empathy can be practiced with anyone you consider to be "other" than you. Which includes ALL living beings, whether you believe something to be alive or not doesn't change the fact that it has a life force within. Humanitarians practice empathy towards humans. Vegetarians and vegans practice empathy towards animals, tree huggers practice empathy towards plants and wildlife, and people who work on saving the whales practice empathy towards the whales. We all have the capacity for empathy, most of us choose who and when we share that empathy with, deciding who is worthy of our empathy and who is not.
Psychology shows us that we mirror ourselves onto "others" and we project our own insecurities onto "others". We rarely see anyone for who they really are, which includes ourselves. What we see in "others" is simply what we like or don't like about ourselves. Think about this for a moment, think of a person that you can't stand, an enemy or nemesis. You probably have very little in common with this person, you could probably even say you have nothing in common. They remind you of the qualities that you don't like about yourself, so instead of facing those qualities and healing them, it's much easier to blame your "enemy" and not have to face yourself. The practice of forgiveness isn't about forgiving "others" it's simply about forgiving those parts within yourself that you see in "others".
Now think of someone who you really look up to, a hero or role model. You see qualities within that person that you would like to have. You don't see that person; you only see your potential within that person. Celebrities are a shining example of this. Most people don't want to get to know the actual persona of celebrities, they only want to worship them. When you worship "other", it stems from you believing you are lacking something within. The more you realize that you have the same capacity for greatness as anyone else, the less you worship "others", since you realize that they aren't any more special than anyone else, they just have a talent or skill that you believe you lack.
Have you ever been in Love with someone? I'm not referring to a crush or an obsession, but mutual Love, which comes from both sides. If you have been in Love, you have probably noticed that you have a lot in common, you tend to share a lot of the same beliefs and interests. You could probably say that you're almost the same person since you have so much in common. That's because that person reminds you of all the qualities that you like about yourself.
We avoid people that remind us of the things we don't like within ourselves, and we cling to people who remind us of the things we do like within ourselves. So, what can we do about this? Simply practice empathy. Keep practicing empathy and remind yourself that anytime you practice empathy, you are giving it to yourself, and anytime you withhold empathy, you are withholding it from yourself. I Love You and Peace Be With You!