Why don't we care about strangers? and is that ok?

It is obvious that most people do not care about the misfortunes of those who they don't know. Said people include; starving people in Africa or random homeless people we see. The farthest they are in distance both physical and mental... the least we care. Of course there are exceptions, but that isn't the question. Why is that? Why do I care more about a crying kid who is homeless who I happen to run into than 1000 kids I never met who are starving in a foreign country?

Do you think it is good that we are like this? Should we try to change it? Even if you argue that we cannot mentally process things that are distant from us... shouldn't we act anyway since we understand we can't process those things and these people need immediate help? What do you make of all this?

I remember reading a study about this a while ago. The reason why people care about who is in front of them or nearby more than who was far away has something to do with the way our ancestors lived close together and that led to a sense of companionship. People today remain the same way to a certain extent.

I am not saying we should excuse apathetic patterns of behavior. All I am saying is when we as a people do not study our own psychology, I think history repeats itself.

Yes, it is good we think like that. If everyone cared about everyone, the entire world would just be extremely depressed. Bad stuff happens to people all the time. It's best for your health and mood to not pay attention to most of it.

most people have issues of their own so they can't be burden with other people's problems.

you can't change the world you can only change realities.

I wonder what people like Mr. Rogers did when they saw a homeless person.

Caring about strangers to the point of activism is noble and all, but it's also one of the most exhausting, unrewarding things you'll ever do. It's not for everyone.

I care about everyone.

although im also fairly clinical in how we accomplish helping those people. which isnt exactly, a buncha hippies donating a couple dollars, but a reform of the entire economic system.

We need to reform the economy before helping anyone, afterall a dysfunctional charity doesnt do anyone any good.

I do care about everyone, I secretly care about people that no one else would, because I know people who have done bad things are also suffering in their own way; not just victims. I want to be able to care about people in the same way that god does. The problem is, I am human and there is really not much I can do for everyone on the planet in my current situation or ever; so I simply care about everyone, but there is nothing I can do for them because I am only one person and it would require almost everyone in the entire world with the mentality of me and the ability to help each other, to make a miraculous difference in this world; this will obviously never happen. I am disappointed that there is nothing I can do for everyone on this earth, but that is simply the way this corrupt world works and I will have to endure this disappointment of myself for the rest of my life.

Because of the Dunbar Number. There is a biological limit to how many people we are able to conceptualize as actual people. The actual number varies a bit base on context and people don't all agree on the number, but it seems to be 150-200, max. Absolute best case scenario, you've got room in your head to consider 200 people as actual people. The rest are just objects, or things that you have to interact with.

Is it bad? Well, it has a BIG impact on human behavior, so you've gotta figure that it would have been weeded out by natural selection if there wasn't some reproductive advantage. There's definitely a clear advantage to it: it made us more concerned with the people in our direct circle of influence. For most of human existence, cities were not a thing. We were hunter-gatherers living in tribes of maybe a hundred or so people. There's just enough room in our brains to see our own tribe as people, we're emotionally distant from the tribe across the river who is competing for our resources. In times of scarcity, when there literally aren't enough necessities for everyone, you don't want to be as equally concerned for the tribe across the river. Someone's gonna have to die, you want the losers to be from their tribe, not yours.

So yeah, there's a benefit. However, things got a little bit f***ed up once civilization became a thing, and we started making cities that couldn't operate on just a couple hundred people. Back when "us" only consisted of about 100 people, everything was easy. But then "us" became thousands or millions of people. That left us biologically incapable of empathizing and understand the vast majority of people who we need in order for civilization to continue. Now it's not resentment against "those guys", it's resentment against "OURSELVES".

There is a solution, though. Sure, we can't care about a million people as individual people. If a tsunami kills a million people, it's impossible to care about them. What we can do, however, is to think of all of those people as ONE PERSON. It's like, think about how you felt when that recent tsunami killed a $hitload of people. It's a horrible tragedy, no denying it. But in a different context, we'd probably say that many of those locations that were affected were hellholes that were populated by scumbags. A news story comes out about horrible rapes and pirate-based murders occuring in some country, and people say, "savages, the lot of them. That place is full of monsters." But then a tsunami hits that same area, and everyone but the sociopaths says, "that's awful. We need to help." Well, WHY? It sounds cruel, but statistically speaking...if that place was full of scumbags then the tsunami probably rid the world of a bunch of horrible people. So why is it that we can instantly label an entire group of people as trash when one of them does something f***ed up, and then have sympathy for the whole lot of them when they're victims of a horrible tragedy?

It's because you're STILL not looking at them as people. You're forming an idealized picture of the standard person in that group, and applying it to the whole group. And that's how you "care about everyone". By forming a mental picture of someone who you DO care about, and then applying that picture to the whole group. Cancer patients? Everyone cares about cancer patients, but let's be realistic here...lots of cancer patients would get f***ing spit on if they were described as "TSA agents" or "telemarketers" instead of cancer patients. But we know that cancer can affect anyone. We picture ourselves or our kids getting cancer and we project that onto the whole group and say "leave him alone, he has cancer". That's fine and well, but the problem is that this is also the EXACT same reason why stuff like racism exists. No white supremacist knows all blacks, that's f***ing impossible. So what they do is they picture a black person who is a piece of $hit, and then imagine all black people as that one guy. That's really the exact same f***ing thing that people do when they care about AIDS patients or starving third world people. The only way to escape the limitations of the this is to stereotype the living $hit out of people. And while that sometimes results in charity and goodwill and understanding and kindness, it's just as like to result in treating people like $hit just because they happen to fit into some arbitrary group (black, religious people, homeless people, lawyers, etc). You're gonna do both. You're gonna stereotype people, I f***ing promise you. Sometimes that's gonna result in kindness, sometimes it's gonna result in you being a total f***ing douchebag. And you're never gonna totally figure itout because society is constantly changing. All you can do is to constantly challenge yourself to think about WHY you think what you think.

I do care about strangers, so the question does not apply to me.

I always found it interesting the human race is more sympathetic towards animals than other humans.

Some people might see a lost dog and let that dog into their home, but I doubt the average person will ever let some homeless man shower, sleep, and stay the night in their home on a cold winter night.

I think I'm more of a realist. I recognize the issues, but one man can't help the entire world.

We put dogs and cats to death for being homeless.

If you commit an unlawful premeditated killing on a non-human animal, it might get you a few years in prison. If you commit an unlawful premeditated killing on another human being, you're a lot more likely to be punished with either life in prison or the death penalty.

We live in a society where pople don't care about other people.

The answer is complicated, as there are numerous explanations. For example, here in NYC, there are plenty of resources available to help the homeless, such as shelters, food pantries, and back-to-work programs. However, some homeless people choose to not use these programs and - instead - beg strangers for money, which doesn't actually help but only enables their homelessness. Hence, some people choose not to help them.

Nothing is relevant unless it affects 'murica

well, when people get older, most of them have to worry about money and paying the bills, hence caring about themselves

@MrGeezer: Good post. You bring up good points.

i held the door open for someone that was struggling with boxes that was trying to open the door yesterday.

I constantly think about this situation...and it sucks.

A dog can't mug you, a homeless person can. No matter how low the probability, people would rather not put themselves in that situation. Also, people feel a homeless person could do something to try and better their situation, a dog can't.

It's a matter of priorities. I care more about my wife and kids first. Next would be relatives, including in-laws, Then, there are friends and coworkers and so on.

By the time I get to strangers, my life is already full and I only have a finite amount of resources available for sharing, be it material stuff or something as simple as my attention. If you have the time to spare for strangers, more power to ya.

It's a basic human trait to feel, to some extent, the emotions of those around us. It's a lot more difficult to feel the emotions of someone mentioned in a line of ink in the newspaper.

I'm assuming that you're talking about how people don't care about strangers, rather than about why most people wouldn't let a homeless man shower in their homes. That being said, it kind of sucks, but it's also kind of good. Sure, people's inability to care for strangers results in a lot of cruelty, but it also results in a lot of charity. If I didn't stereotype Republicans so much, I probably wouldn't have treated that Republican like trash. But if I didn't stereotype cancer victims so much, I probably wouldn't have donated money for breast cancer research.

The ability to consider every single human being as an individual person is biologically impossible, so there's no reason to feel good or bad about it. That's like a snake feeling bad for not eating enough salad. You work with what you've got. And if something is IMPOSSIBLE given what you've got, then "sucks" doesn't need to enter the equation. Good or bad, it's just necessity.

But the haters and the humanitarians are both working off of the same basic set of skills. Those skills are necessitated by our biological limitations as human beings. Saying that it sucks seems like shame, and there's nothing to be ashamed of about being limited by nature. What we DO have control over is how we APPLY that set of skills. It's context-specific. We need to stereotype and generalize, it's inevitable. Whether or not the results of such stereotyping and generalizing result in good or bad consequences requires us to make the correct stereotypes and generalizations at the right time and in the right context. You use applied science, you analyze the situation, and then you do the best with what you've got. But you can't effectively use what you've been given until you've gotten some awareness of who you are. Being conscious of your strengths and limitations allows one to better fit those strengths and limitations into a productive lifestyle. As a child of the 80s in the USA, I grew up on the propaganda that we can be anything. And I think that that has been somewhat detrimental, as it made "who am I" a secondary concern. "Who am I?" People would say, "Who gives a $hit...if you dream big, you can be whatever you want." And that's a little bit f***ed up, because that's telling people that who they are is $hit and making them feel like trash when they fail at things that they couldn't possibly ever do. And I think that's sort of f***ing wrong.

Anecdote: I used to like keeping lizards and snakes as pets, until I realized that they spend most of their time not doing jack $hit, and just sitting around being boring. Browsing around for information on lizards, I came upon multiple accounts of people doing $hit like feeding their monitor lizard dog food and then wondering why it's sick. Do you know why it's sick? Because it's a f***ing LIZARD and people are feeding them $hit that's meant for DOGS. You take an animal that was biologically designed to be an insectivore, and then feed it a constant diet that was specifically formulated for dogs, and you're somehow surprised when that pet starts dying from fatty liver disease because you're pumping it full of $hit that its body can't handle over a long term basis? Really?

At my place of work, there's a mentally retarded man who is going to school to be a chef. He has been doing this for at least a few years. He's personally told me that it's "too much work" and that he's failed all of his classes. So I don't know who "his people" are, who is paying his rent and paying for his classes, but that sort of struck me as kind of f***ed up too. You're seriously gonna make THIS guy go take classes, despite the fact that he's in his 40's, will never succeed in any such career, and apparently dislikes it enough to complain about how much work he has to do? That is just SO f***ed up. Accept that the dude is severely mentally handicapped, let him decide what HE wants to do, then help guide him best from that aspect. But dicking him around and making him do $hit to be someone who he will never be, probably just to keep his ass occupied? That's kind of f***ed up.

But yeah, man. Self awareness. I'm not against self improvement, but we improve ourselves within the parameters of what we potentially CAN do. Some people are ill suited to ever be doctors or artists or teachers, but that's fine. Stop telling people that they can do anything. Start promoting an understanding of who people are and what they can do, then help them to reach the best potential within those parameters.