What causes the human heart of some people to harden, over time?
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I would have to agree with Yellow Jacket-Compassion is learned not born with in my opinion."
My mother and father are compassionate people and so am I. In this current time period there is a smearing of that great trait and many are trying to say if you are compassionate and are for policies of government that take care of others then you are too soft, stupid, and naive. However if you are for taking care of others without using the government you are ok, normal. However the examples the latter give to describe those who are the former are lacking in compassion and insulting-so go figure.
I know I politicized the question but I think right now it is very hard to talk about it without considering that which is going on.
I have heard of some people getting a hardened heart as they age but I do not know any. I have heard of some who get sad about their life and heavily disappointed but I don't know any personally. My father tells me one of his Uncles became that way and died a "broken man".
Do you know any personally?
I just know people who started out lacking in compassion.
None of us start out as human beings with hardened hearts, in terms of our sense of our basic compassion and kindness, for our fellow human beings. And yet, for some people, over time, you will find that their hearts have become fundamentally harder and colder, vs. what they used to be, previously and in the past. We can see this in action and practically all the time, and on the Internet especially, where there is frequently a lot of flaming, bashing, bullying, and outright cruelty
What causes this hardening of the heart, exactly? Why does it happen to some, but not to others? Can it ever be stopped or prevented from occurring in someone, before it becomes an unchangeable and unalterable reality?
I think people who have a hard time forgiving a particular person can harden their heart over time. Maybe it's a way of protecting themselves from being hurt repeatedly. You can forgive from a distance and forgiving does NOT mean you have to become best friends with the perpetrator.
A hard heart can be prevented if an apology is made quickly and it is accepted. Sadly, many don't know how to apologize or they do and still continue with their bad behavior.
Imo, unforgivenss can lead to anger and health problems especially as one gets older.
Maybe they do feel something. Do you honestly think you are one of the few good men(or women) left in the universe?
No, I never claimed that I was morally-superior to anyone -- it is not my place to judge anyone else, on the grounds of morality and fundamental human goodness. I am certainly far from perfect...I am a flawed, imperfect human being, just like we all are. You will never see me making a public declaration of being more of a good human being than others, because that is an intrinsically-flawed premise, and an invalid position, for me to take.
My essential point, and the real reason I made this thread is, it would just be nice and a very beautiful thing, if we could gently encourage people to truly love each other more, and more than we see displayed publicly in society a lot of times...
Quote:
Do you think it's possible most of us also think we are good people too but others might have a different perception of us?
Yes, in truth, I think there are many, many good people out there...I no arguments, with the point being presented that the world has a lot good, caring people in it.
Compassion is learned not born with in my opinion.
Recent studies show that the evolution of altruism is complex, but that most children are born with an innate desire to be helpful to others. According to Dr. Michael Tomasello, a developmental psychologist whose findings are in a book called Why We Cooperate, "The helping behavior seems to be innate because it appears so early and before many parents start teaching children the rules of polite behavior." Dr. Tomasello's research at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has been corroborated at Harvard, the University of New Mexico, the University of Illinois, among others.
None of us start out as human beings with hardened hearts, in terms of our sense of our basic compassion and kindness, for our fellow human beings. And yet, for some people, over time, you will find that their hearts have become fundamentally harder and colder, vs. what they used to be, previously and in the past. We can see this in action and practically all the time, and on the Internet especially, where there is frequently a lot of flaming, bashing, bullying, and outright cruelty
What causes this hardening of the heart, exactly? Why does it happen to some, but not to others? Can it ever be stopped or prevented from occurring in someone, before it becomes an unchangeable and unalterable reality?
People become hardened when they get beaten down. When a person starts out being nice and trying to get accepted by others, or perhaps trying to be loved by others... and is constantly spurned... that's when the hardening starts. Such people either get tough, or commit suicide.
I should know. I'm one who got tough. I know that I'm nowhere near as romantic as I used to be... it's been beaten out of me. I tried and tried... for years... and just got tromped on... abandoned, abused, taken advantage of, you name it. These days I'm married to a wonderful woman... maybe I will soften up over time... but it hasn't happened yet, at least not to the point where I'm back to where I used to be.
People will just snap when an extended period of time goes by when they don't get what they want... especially if "what they want" is in no way illogical. For example, I had a friend in high school who wanted nothing more than to be loved. She had lost her virginity at age 12 and then the guy dumped her not long thereafter, so when I knew her, she was very protective of her body. She wasn't all that intelligent but she didn't care... in her simple thought process, "if I have sex with him, he'll leave me"... so she didn't have sex with the guys she dated. She broke that promise during her senior year of high school after she'd been dating this one guy for over a year and had become engaged to him... she figured it was safe enough to sleep with him after he proposed to her... nope... not long thereafter, he broke the engagement by cheating on her. I'll never forget how heartbroken she was.
No matter how hard she tried, she kept getting shafted by men. She eventually snapped... and became a prostitute. Talk about hardening your heart... you have to be hardened in order to survive as a prostitute. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that had she been loved, instead of spurned, she would have been an excellent wife and would never have turned to prostitution.
I would say that my heart is hardened; it is cautious. I hope that it never becomes hardened because that may mean missing out on meeting some decent people, who I know are out there.
I like the word "cautious." I think that experience and life lived does change us. I've seen some people become kinder and more generous of spirit in their old age, but the opposite seem to be more common. Some people do appear to be self-centered from birth, and even some children can be selfish. But, by and large, my experience with children shows them to be naturally kind. They expect fair play and cooperation. Think of how children react when they see someone in pain. They cry, too. And they try to help.
Perhaps we have a really bad reaction to having our early expectations dashed. When we experience deep disappointments, it does make us less willing to put ourselves out there for more bashing. And the older we get, the more we see that can give us a bad opinion of situations, things, and people. I think it's why some people seem to like their pets more than they like people. Animals don't demand much and give affection much more indiscriminately than people do. And I think many of us see the bad things in life as impossible to fix, so we give up to some degree or another.
I try to tell myself that people who are very hard-hearted — for example those who think there are no people who are genuinely underprivileged or needy, just people who haven't tried hard enough — must have had a lot of hard knocks in life to make them so unwilling to acknowledge other people's pain and reach out to help. I especially admire older people who are still in there pitching, those who still believe we CAN "fix" things, that life CAN be made more just and fair, and that lives can be improved if we lend our fellows a hand. On the other hand, I feel deep scorn for young people who exhibit an attitude of entitlement and show no compassion for others.
But I guess balance is the key. I am often reminded of Churchill's famous remark, "Show me a young conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains."
I don't disagree at all that love sometimes has to be hard -- you have an excellent point Certainly, "tough love" is a very valid part of what it means to love, especially as in guiding one's children to make wise and responsible choices, as you had mentioned.
OTOH, it would honestly be very sweet and very refreshing, to see something of a "softening of hearts", in general in society. Just for example, take the Internet: people always hypothetically could, if they wanted to and were freely willing to of course, be just a lil gentler and kinder to each other...not automatically assume the worst about someone right off the bat; give people the benefit of the doubt, until demonstrated otherwise. Use softer (rather than harder) language, in communicating with each other. I wonder if there were more people who did that -- if they were willing to think about or consider being just a lil more loving, in how they relate to each other -- if there would be much less of rather unpleasant things online such as bashing, flaming, etc. (Kinda like the popular saying that goes something like "A soft answer turneth away wrath", as I think it goes maybe?) To be more forgiving of each other's faults (especially since no one and none of us are a perfect human being anyway, lol).
Also, if people who sincerely care about each other IRL, were to actually say it more...to actually tell them, that you truly love and deeply appreciate them...to say, verbally and out loud, how much you love them. To not be afraid to generously show affection and human compassion to others, like to give someone who is hurting or suffering a hug and to comfort them, etc. I think maybe we all feel these kinds of emotions much more strongly and intensely when we are a lot younger, but as we gradually age and get older, society has a way of tempering and suppressing the direct display of human emotion (even the "good" emotions, like love, compassion, tenderness, etc.).
There is nothing wrong with forgiving. I have done it many times and it is done for me. However, I don't forget and that doesn't necessarily mean I will bring up the past and hold it against another person. What that does mean is that I learned from the past and will respond differently than I did before.
What causes the human heart of some people to harden, over time?
Once they realize that liberalism is a mental disorder, they become more pragmatic and less likely to pay attention to the mewling of simpering twits. Only to the callow does it seem that these persons hearts have hardened.
I hardly think that 100% of human suffering is self-inflicted and that 100% of expression of suffering is the "mewling of simpering twits" (whatever exactly that even means, I assume it is a pseudo-intellectual proxy for the childish pejorative "sissies"). Seriously, you don't have to be so afraid of empathy that you have to write off everyone who is struggling as wanting something for nothing, and deserving nothing.
I hope that when you turn 65 you are planning to decline social security and medicare. In the interest of ideological purity, ya know.
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Why does it happen to some, but not to others? Can it ever be stopped or prevented from occurring in someone, before it becomes an unchangeable and unalterable reality?
Certainly, "tough love" is a very valid part of what it means to love, especially as in guiding one's children to make wise and responsible choices, as you had mentioned. 
