I wasn’t trying to say one needs religion to look past oneself. I was instead tipping my hat to religion, in the sense that I think this is a thing religion very much gets right. And it is through religion that most people in our culture are exposed to the idea.

That being said, religion does a pretty poor job of spreading the gospel of loosing oneself in the service of others. It tends to focus on religiosity instead. But imho it does a better job than almost any other institution we have.

Which is to say that as a culture we are pretty terrible at it.