Yes apparently sensitivity and empathy is more useless than useful In the survival of the fittest sense of things, the world is just ugly and assholes will just squash sensitive, sensible, nice people out of envy or pure fun. I don't understand how we haven't been weeded out by natural selection.
It might be because those nasty individuals that you speak of are not acting out of the will of nature. The natural world is cruel, but it is cruel out of necessity. A predatory and carnivorous animal kills its prey not out of a sense of pleasure, but because it is hungry and must eat otherwise it will die - this is survival. In contrast: you have human-made violence and abuse which, for the most part, is pointless. It is born out of false ideologies that twist our already-limited perception of reality, it is fueled by negative emotions such as unfounded hatred. It is all very irrational, and unnecessary.
On the subject of natural selection: it is a common misconception that it is all about the strong culling the weak, because this is not true. I think that even Charles Darwin, who coined the term, said that the mechanism that we know as natural selection is unintentional; meaning that there is no real point behind it. That is why it is called
natural selection - the word "natural" in the term simply points to the fact that it is completely random, as opposed
artificial selection which is controlled by something i.e.: cattle breeding humans. This is why you have not been "weeded out", because you are not as undesirable as you think - of yourself and of others. Likewise: people such as bullies are not necessarily genetically desirable; from my own personal experience most violent thugs are degenerates.
Also: considering that human beings have evolved with the ability to feel compassion, it would not be too far-fetched to say that perhaps our true nature is of cooperation, and not one of mindless conflict. Evolution is about improving things over time, and that means moving away from the barbarism of our ancestors. The point of survival of the fittest, is to move away from survival of the fittest - in my opinion.