So Heartless

How can people be so heartless?" is a common refrain when dealing with the issue of gossip. How can people be so hard on others and seemingly feel no guilt or shame?  More to the point, what exactly is immaturity?

Human beings begin life as children and then grow into adults, this process comes to a head in the formative adolescent years but one of the more defining traits that is supposed to develop during this period is a greater sense of empathy and compassion.

A person should be able to see outside themselves and think of others. But this is not always the case. Many people never make this leap, either fashioning a dark worldview for themselves and answering any moral questions with the idea that because they've had it so rough it's okay whatever they do, or, the person simply never arrives at the question in the first place.

In the case of the later, a person may still, on a certain cognitive level, still be a child or adolescent and secretly see themselves as the center of the drama of their lives. These people don't care about hurting others because the other person, quite simply, doesn't matter. Only they do, because it is they who are the main actors in this play, or at least that is what's going on inside their heads.

Too many people today only ever think of themselves. And this is why.