How do we talk to each other when we've been trained to see each other as problems to be solved -- instead of as real human beings?

I've been searching on this question for more than two decades now, and reading book after book on communication, conflict, and how to speak the truth without erasing the truth of other people.

Of course, I've also been studying emotions and empathy.

At this time, when our emotions, our empathy, our attention, and our ability to connect to each other have been for sale to the highest bidder, how do we retrieve ourselves and reconnect to each other? How do we take an off-ramp when the entire machine is making money and gaining power by pushing us onto a road that goes nowhere good?

It will take some deep thinking, some deep feeling, and some deep work to retrieve our better natures, but ...