shoes made for walking

The encouragement, "You can't understand someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes" has a lovely, empathetic luster to it. The socially-compassionate choir is likely to intone "amen!"

But as with many fortune cookies (eg. "there are no atheists in foxholes") the other shoe is seldom dropped. If I can't understand someone else without walking a mile in his/her shoes, may I infer that s/he will be equally ignorant, equally numbed, equally dumbed-down until s/he has walked a mile in mine?

And if so, why is that not also a matter of concern?