This is the sort of conversation where I quickly stumblIe over definitions. What do you mean by compassion? Is it related to empathy? I do recognize when others are experiencing suffering or difficulty, and try to help when I am able. I also get frustrated when it becomes clear that someone's troubles are a result of their own actions and poor decisions, especially when they seem unwiling to recognize that and work to improve the situation. It is easy for me not to invest emotional energy in such situations, or in situations where there really isn't anything I can do to make a difference.
I cannot say how or from whom I developed this perspective. It goes back as far as can remember. I do recall that the people around me - relatives and others - often seemed rather two-faced about compassion, saying they cared about others but not taking the corresponding actions. I have no respect for this. As for personality I am definitely a more closed type. I suspect this relates more to how and when I exhibit compassion rather than to whether I do at all.
My perspective is similar to this, or rather it being that over time I have developed more into this perspective. I think it's largely to do with maturity, as opposed to going back to a young age, although I am still sometimes an emotional softy, much to my chagrin.
This is also somewhat to do with conflict avoidance. People will too often avoid the emotional discomforts of certain situations and hiding under the umbrella of kindness or compassion is an easy escape route.
I think people have to be very careful on where, how and why someone is throwing out those terms as well, as you put it with those people who pay lip service without any real action to demonstrate it.
As a more direct example from my job, there are a lot of thieves and shoplifters, who when confronted, will spin a story of pity and pain. However many others who know the same people and have lived in the same area growing up with them, often tend to give conflicting accounts of those stories. Both are to be taken with the appropriate level of skepticism of course.
There are also colleagues who continually frustrate me when they endlessly complain about their lives or the job & yet, upon examination & questioning, never seem to take any responsibility for their own role in their personal miseries. One particular individual called me 'horrible' because I am occasionally quite blunt and will question the logic or thinking of certain claims. However (and forgive me the virtue signalling) I've twice now had to run up the top of the council estate our shop is located on, with the outside defibrillators in order to place them on someone who is having a heart attack.
On one of those occasions this person was present and claimed she "couldn't leave the shop" despite there being several other senior staff members (some more than her) who could take responsibility of it's management, and so she wasted time running in the back to get me instead.
This is someone who will openly claim they believe themselves to be compassionate and kind and how they hate how horrible the world is. Yet no action is taken to help rectify this, in whatever small way one can manage.
That mild moan of my own aside, there is also the problem of being too kind and compassionate and being taken advantage of. I'm someone intrigued by fictional stories where a 'fish out of water' naive but kind character is thrust into a dangerous or rough area, usually a city. Having known and been to plenty of cities (as well as just general life experience involving people) I found it incongruent that such naivety should result in a happy go lucky outcome with the trope of previously cruel individuals suddenly revealing themselves as simply misunderstood, all thanks to the compassion and kindness of the protagonist.
For me, it is much more likely that the main character would become disillusioned once they had been taken advantage of and abused multiple times by the cynical people around them, but that is my bias.
However I believe that there is a healthy point between good and bad faith when dealing with others and that this is the closest point towards a realistic outlook I can think of. One that involves contextual and relevant information for decent decision making. Something that allows a person to take the steps towards actual thought in how to act or whether or not one should extend compassion and kindness.