Have you ever explored HINAYANA Buddhism? You strike me as extremely intelligent, considering your lack of empathy (in the context of "not really feeling" or "empty bias" or "don't care") - I am curious how you learned so much to the point that you could be a Professional lecturer on (History, whatever)? What was the "secret" to your "study"? Books?
You seem sort of Buddhist in one way...
The cane story was interesting. I have known every sort of person imaginable and unimaginable, including what might fit into socio-psycho in "paths" or boxes, but the later type did not fit into an "empty empathy" model, they did engage a lot with others though in the example of one he was convinced the government or CIA types were watching him. You do not fit that model.
But the cane immediately made me think of a (originally) New York based cult leader who started off becoming sort of a "street celebrity" who could debate with anyone, with an audience watching as his style became so popular, and always, always defeated the other. He had one bad leg and was often in pain and went about using a cane. I guess you could call him a "sick genius" because his ability to "mind connect" by way of words and speech while at the same depersonalizing them, to the gullible he was so effective at this that he became a cult leader with a commune out in the snowy mountains and went about with armed guards and in a car with his huge, pet German shepherds, would get into trouble and get in the news but eventually ended up in prison.
One day someone in the prison broke his cane. Suddenly, as he told the media/news, in his own words and using the same word 'empathy', these might not be exact words but approximate:
"... after that sassy monkey broke my cane, I had a revelation. I realized that at some point very early in my life, the cane and myself, that thing called 'I', switched places. The cane became me, and I became the cane...."
"...but the cane has no feeling. And when I became the cane, that explained it. I lost my empathy when I became the cane..."
"...It can hold a cripple up, and in one sense we are all cripples. There is a giant cane that also holds the entire world up..."
"...but one day the world may call the cane great. They will worship the cane. Because it holds the crippled world up..."
"...They will worship the cane. And by mistake, pooof... they become the cane..."
"... and have lost their empathy."
"...The cane is just, a cane, empty.... If you let the cane become you, and you the cane, the next thing you know you're calling yourself a Buddhist."
Something like that.