"I find it easier to project empathically on Eastern people than Western, on poor people than rich, on people from other cultures rather than people from my own, and on people from the past rather than people from the present."

[...] putting down the present is a back-handed way of putting down one's rivals: "Competition of praise inclineth to a reverence of antiquity. For men contend with the living, not with the dead."

Perhaps it could be that you find it hard to empathise with yourself; or, the self that you deny, run from.