This lack of empathy, realising that people have completely different situations etc, etc lies behind so many problems that people and society have. When you have a baby, friends and family think their way that they did things with their particular children and put all your difficulties with your children down to the wrong way you are doing it, as after all their babies didn't mind being put down at 6 o'clock and slept for 12 hours, or they cried for hours but they realised no one came and were happy to go to sleep ever after. They smacked their children and had to otherwise they'd have turned into hooligans, after all, they were smacked and how right their parents were, they would have turned into hooligans otherwise and yours will do because you're not smacking them, right through to thinking that every single mother is feckless and idle, rather than she fled a violent husband, that every homeless person has somehow brought it on themselves, because they'd never have ended up homeless, the PTA mum whose family live 150 miles away is just lazy because she can't commit to doing xyz, well I managed a full-time job and still did it, that the woman suffering deep depression is just lazy, because she should just pull herself together, that immigrants are just here either to take their jobs or to skive on benefits, that someone who cuts themself off from a family that has mistreated them for years, or turned a blind eye to abuse of one of the members, is in the wrong, sure isn't the mum a sweet old lady and the dad just a bit of a character, that a woman complaining of sexual assault is just attention seeking, that a raped woman was responsible somehow, they'd never have worn clothes like that or gone out after dark; if that woman had paid more attention to her husband instead of getting too bogged down in looking after the children, if she'd kept the house cleaner, if she'd not let herself go, her husband would not have beaten her up and left her for another woman.
I'm alright Jack, and society's ills are because people do not behave just like I do. And yes the criticisms of people who are having difficulties with violent dementia, and everything else people have mentioned. The lack of empathy that deprives an old man of benefits because he is blind and did not read the letter, or sanctions someone for not doing the thing they had to because they were in hospital seriously ill.
Interestingly the ex never could read fiction, or watch programmes or films, not just fiction but history presented in a story form. Neither could his parents, at the time I just put it down to personal choice but in retrospect, none of them could understand looking at things from someone else's point of view. Not interested in museums that were about people, interested in museums about things, but not what the things meant for people, so think transport museum - they liked trains, cars, buses, but not how they affected the lives of those who had access to them. Weirdly the inlaws were heavily into movie making, but the movies were about them and what they were doing, so they could show people. They took footage of the children over the years, but if it didn't fit into their film, they just discarded it, never thinking to ask would we like to have it - at the time we didn't have the equipment.