Alternate Worlds: in which empathy is literal

Everyone feels everyone else’s pain, hunger, fear, joy, etc, at a level of strength inversely proportional to the distance between them. If there is a hungry person nearby, you feel their hunger. If there is a happy person nearby, you feel their happiness as your own.

Would this world be better, or worse? People would certainly be more kind to each other–feeding the hungry, and helping the injured as quick as they can to stop the pain and hunger in themselves… or would they just run the other way to escape that feeling?

Fear and anger would spread like fire, leading to mob insanity…

Feeling sexually aroused might lead to an orgy…

Would this world simply end up with every person as far away from every other person as possible?

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