Tailored empathy in a world on fire reveals who we choose to save.

We are the species that cries. That is moved. That interrupts the course of its day for an image, a symbol, a face. 

But we are also the species of selective empathy. Of carefully selected consciousness. Of care conditioned by invisible filters—cultural, racial, economic.

And this, sadly, is not an accident of our civilization. It's a pattern. A moral syndrome. A silent algorithm that determines who is worth suffering for—and who one can turn one's back on. It's killing us. Not just as individual bodies, but as a human collective. It's undermining the very idea of ​​shared humanity.

Why does a burning cathedral in the heart of Paris ignite so much global mourning, while entire cities reduced to rubble in Sudan or Gaza barely merit a footnote? Why does the death of a polar bear in Norway arouse more emotion than thousands of climate refugees, swept away by the waters and forgotten under the weight of statistics?

It's not about the amount of pain. But about the identity-related proximity to the victim. If they don't look like us, if they don't speak like us, don't pray like us—or, even worse, if they don't add value to the market that sustains us—they become invisible.

Climate change is global. But climate empathy remains local. Racial. And deeply commercial.

Torrential rains in Germany spur action plans. Devastating floods in India generate speeches of blame and inefficiency. Hurricanes in Florida are treated as national tragedies. Cyclones in Mozambique receive the bureaucratic label of "natural disaster." 

Climate migration in Miami becomes a debate about the real estate market. In Dhaka, it becomes a statistic of overpopulation.

Even in climate finance, we see the moral abyss: the Global South must beg for help for crises caused by the Global North. The budget of empathy is defined by who fits within the framework of our affection.

We are addicted to the image reflected in our own mirror. We show sympathy when we see our own traits—or our own desires—in others. That's why a Ukrainian mother with a child in her arms seems "like us." But a starving Somali child remains, for many, out of focus.

Even activism often stumbles over this reflex. We fight more fervently for those who seem familiar to us—or more palatable to social media. 

Selective empathy is like choosing who to save in a burning house. But fire doesn't discriminate. It consumes everyone—unless we save ourselves together.

It is therefore necessary to build ethical and political systems that do not depend on fleeting emotional empathy. That data, not skin color, guide humanitarian aid. That voices from the Global South are not only heard, but lead the debates about the future of the planet. That the life of a refugee matters, regardless of the language they speak. That animals are protected not for their "viral cuteness," but for their role in the balance of the ecosystem.

And above all, let us learn to practice an inconvenient empathy. The kind that makes us uncomfortable. The kind that challenges us. The kind that includes the stranger, the unknown, the misunderstood. The kind that pulls us away from the center of the world.

Because in the end, inevitably, the mirror will break. And what we fail to love today will define what remains of us tomorrow.

We are all leaves and branches of the same tree, drops of the same ocean, stars of the same sky. When a branch breaks, the whole tree bends. When a star goes out, the entire sky darkens. I learned all this when I was only 16 years old, in July 1975. Fifty years have passed since then.