You would think it would be obvious: people should want to be classy. Classy is respectful. Classy is elegant. Classy is the high road, and pettiness is the low road.

Yet there are still people who have mistakenly decided that pettiness is cool, ignoring the fact that EVERY TIME they act with pettiness as their ultimate motive they are simultaneously shaping their characters to continue being petty. Every time someone makes a choice to act inappropriately, they are more likely to act inappropriately in that fashion in the future. This is the basic definition of a habit.

However, if I am going to be fair, there are most likely some role models like television characters, movie characters, and various celebrities that may have inadvertently influenced these people to think that pettiness is cool. After all, if millionaires can afford to be petty, some people may be mistaken to think that pettiness is exactly how millionaires acquired their millions.

Now, some people may be confused about the definition of petty. The definition of being petty is focusing on the superficial materialism instead of depth, calling people names, purposefully trying to sabotage other people for the sake of a useless ego and spreading vicious rumors about other people in order to illegally defame their characters out of sick envy. Someone is acting petty when they become obsessed with someone else's hair and try to spread rumors about it saying that it must be a wig. Someone is acting petty when they decide that because they do not like someone, then everyone else should not like that person either. Pettiness is making fun of someone else for being ugly or ignoring the fact that it is more important to have firsthand knowledge of someone instead of assuming gossip is always true. Pettiness is immaturity. Pettiness is the opposite of co-existence

However, we do live in a world where there can be some competition or a false sense of competition: some people like feeling superior to other people. When people are consumed in a mindset of competition, they dehumanize the people with whom they are "competing." It is mostly when people are desperate when they become petty. If they are jealous or envious of someone else or do not feel like acting in a respectful manner, they resort to pettiness to feel superior to another person.

Class, in opposition, is all about humanization and respecting the humanity of other people. Classy behavior is resisting any temptation to get even, gossip or insult someone based on superficial characteristics. Classy behavior is acknowledging that everyone has strengths and weaknesses and not pretending to be superior to other people based on that. The difference between classy behavior and pettiness is that classy behavior is maturity and pettiness is immaturity.

So why should we want to be classy and mature instead of petty and immature? In all social situations, classy and mature behavior is respectable and leads to better opportunities than pettiness and immature behavior.

For example, let's say someone goes to a party and decides to be petty by insulting the host because they are jealous of the host. Well, that petty behavior is not attractive to other people: people do not enjoy watching someone insult someone else for no reason except to be mean. Watching someone hurt someone else without justification is not entertainment because it's bullying and cruelty. Also, that person just ruined good relations with another person for no reason. Now, those two people may never be on good enough terms to collaborate or associate with one another. If one of them happened to be interviewing the other for a job several years after this incident, the memory would taint the interview, and one of them would most likely not get the job. We never know where we will end up ten or twenty years in the future. Therefore, it is better to have good relations with as many people as possible and a strong social network. Burning bridges with pettiness does not allow good relations to persist in the future.

Pettiness burns bridges and respectability. It does not look good on anybody.