I don't think that it's necessarily a binary "empath" or "no empath" so much as differences in who a given culture says you should be empathetic towards, what y

I don't think that it's necessarily a binary "empath" or "no empath" so much as differences in who a given culture says you should be empathetic towards, what you should be empathetic about, how empathetic you should be, what obligations empathy entails, etc. So you might see a society that says that certain races, cultures, or "sinners" do not deserve empathy or deserve less empathy. Another example are highly free market oriented political philosophies which argue that businesses should be governed by maximizing profit rather than empathy.