" Feeling personally vulnerable and seeing the vulnerability of everyone else, peoples normal sense of difference and privilege is melted away, and an uncommon generalized empathy emerges. This could be a natural state of mind, if we could only envision the vulnerability and mortality of others as not separate from our own.
The more we can create this visceral connection to people through our common mortality, the better we are able to handle human nature in all its varieties with tolerance and grace. This does not mean we lose our alertness to those who are dangerous and difficult. In fact, seeing the mortality and vulnerability and even the nastiest individual can help us cut them down to size and deal with them from a more neutral and strategic space, not taking their nastiness personally. "

― Robert Greene , The Laws of Human Nature