Interesting article. The practical side described as negative effect can be examined on social media. If someone stubs their toe, people create some crowd funding campaigns and people rake in millions. The more efficient alternative would be to donate to organizations for toe protections. Some help organizations leverage the wish for personal involvement in forms of godparenthoods.

I disagree that too much empathy is the perpetrator. Like love you cannot spread feelings equally to everyone of course, but it doesn't have to stand in the way of anything.

My impression is helping others can also be a form of proving something to yourself, maybe also vicarious for humans in general, and I think people with low self esteem are more affected by this. Personal observation and maybe Monks just stand higher above it. I don't think positivism can help since it just isn't attractive for people that are less proficient in deceiving themselves. On the contrary, empathy is also needed to realize that there might be some others that stubbed their toes too.

The corporate empathy we so often saw recently would require a lot of positivity, but I am not sure if one wouldn't wander into blind faith territory. And it isn't really popular at all and has probably a net negative effect on both empathy and compassion. I would also think that both are still connected in most cases.