I'm reminded of a story I recently read about an elderly woman who was mean and churlish to everyone. Her community never even tried to get to know her, they just judged based on her biting manner. And then a home.health nurse discovered she had horrible, deep and painful ulcers on her legs that were not healing. The poor woman was in ridiculous amounts of pain pretty much 24/7. After she got help and started feeling better, she was a different person.

Assigning negative labels and tearing people down is the dead common path of least resistance. People who genuinely care and try to help seem to be rarer than hen's teeth these days.