It’s not even a matter of “brainwashing” it’s just strictly speaking not useful to “have empathy” (which here really just means having values, and ideally taking actions which are principally pro-social in nature), unless you’re a very specific kind of - I don’t know to describe it other than “high social value” - person.

I'm not gonna argue with your experiences, but I'm fairly certain human beings are social creatures. Meaning we literally survive more easily in groups of people we get along with. The survival of one increases the survival of the whole group, even someone who can't do manual labor can still contribute to the group in some way shape or form. I don't like defaulting to "human nature" arguments, but we literally evolved to work together. And not as isolated subjects of an Alpha Chief or whatever, but as a community.

Empathy is our ability to do this. It's our ability to be a part of a group of other people and not immediately kill each other like we're betta fish or something.

And despite our society being run by and for those with the least empathy, the average human being would still push a magic "Help Others" button if they felt like it wouldn't hurt themselves. People will take care of themselves first, but they also do care about other people by default, until it's beaten out of them by a society run by the worst of us.