The monster called self-importance

[stinkyattic]

Sympathy, on the other hand, is what you'll find more of in the world. I view it as the evil twin of empathy. Empathy is totally understanding how someone feels, but sympathy is trying to assimilate the feeling from the one who is suffering. Sympathy feeds the ego. Another person's suffering can not be taken or copied to become your own suffering - that would fall into the category of coveting. Each person's suffering is unique, even if the same event causes their sufferings, total sympathy is not even possible.... it is a path to the dark side.

This is one of the wisest observations I have ever seen posted here.
And the concept of pity falls into this as well. By pitying someone, you hold yourself above them; the act of charity due to pity implies a feeling or knowledge that one has power over the well-being of another, and I feel it is profoundly insulting to the person being pitied.

And your noting that cooperation can itself become corrupted into competition- that, my dear Destiny, explains the wholesale failure of so many communal living experiments.