Why do people not care about people?

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Hey, this is my first post. I am a NT, but have dated two girls with ASD, one will always be the one that got away, another story for another time. I have always had a very different thinking mind to most people around me, but based with rational thinking and too many emotions, which can make it difficult to explain myself to Nt's or aspie's on certain topics.

The topic i addressed was my ex is down at the moment and asked why do people not care about each other, i tried a full answer and felt it was rubbish, so i have come up with a larger answer, that still only begins to peel the skin of the question, but was curious how it would be received on here

so this is my answer up for criticism and debate:

When you are a tiny person, people want you to have a nice vision of the world. That you should care and share with others. That is to make you unafraid, but also a control from parents so when you are asked to do things you do, or if you do bad things you feel guilt & admit to it. At this age your personality develops, if your a good kid you do it, if your a sh***y kid you don't, and do sh***y things. The good ones go to school and act with care and kindness, and it burns them. You see cruelty, popularity based on looks, friends amount, and not being different. The good people learn that to care for anyone, be honest, kind is a risk and many choose to drop being decent to blend in the larger group, the sh***y crowd, and look up to others if they are popular, not based on if they are good.

Then you hit the real world... You are now told that success is getting a top job and having lots of stuff to show for it, and your on your own. Life conditions people to want that or feel they failed. So it becomes hard to be brave enough to care for others because respect is given to confidence, ambition and not looking out for others as they may be picked on and fall behind the rat race. The kids that chose to be sh***y rule, and their way of selfish being can make others bitter, revenge filled, feel not good enough, or selfish by guarding themselves so sh***y people can not use their kindness for self gain. So now many of the good are bitter too.

When everyone is born, they start idealistic and end up a dick, noone starts a dick, you end up a dick. A few don't let life, people or being different let them end up a dick. Oh and being different is seen as bad, so if you act, feel, or look different most mock behind your back or to your face. The fear to put yourself with the weird and risk being alienated means even if people care they choose to not be part of what is abnormal. To care, to speak to the shy child, help the deformed kid, to be part of it takes great courage as most want to be in the popular crowd and not have their status and emotions picked on for giving a s**t

Also people like to appear to be nice to get status, but if had to make a choice for self gain, be popular they will say and do unspeakable acts. If you are born different you struggle harder for that acceptance, or become angry twisted people. To feel good others seem to need to be above others and how they climb over people disgusts me, so i am incapable of being that way. As i also care and feel a lot, i feel let down by many people around me, and then feel i am not good enough inside myself. But i cannot be cruel unless cornered to defend myself+. Being a dick is a choice, or a result of experiences and most take the safer option to group with the vein and uncaring as it is easier and they seem to enjoy their own pedestal. Usually its completely undeserved



Sorry its long, but would love your responses, harsh, debating, or agreeing
- Chris

It is such a wide question that I can't provide a direct answer.

In what way did your ex mean what she said?

In general, people don't care about others as much as they do themselves. If something doesn't benefit oneself there is a only such a threshold of effort that it becomes too much. Examples can be seen everywhere. People value different things, and everyone is going to be seen as a 'dick' by many other people.

_________________
Unapologetically, Norny.
-chronically drunk

Careerism, extreme ambition etc are desired ways to be in the Western World (particularly the United States). This is not true for other parts of the world.

Norny:

It is to large a question, and i guess i if pick an angle such as career, ambition, and so many things that contribute i can get lost and make the answer non linear and generally confusing. So i tried to stay with how humans shape each other and for what personal gain.

The context was that she could not understand why people lie, shit-stir, manipulate, and do anything that they would not enjoy having done to themselves, and her follow up question was the topic title

but yes the short answer for me is self gain and what is different than usual is bad, and true a 'dick' is based on your own yardstick of expectations in another human, and there are endless values people hold to, whether it is based in any morals or not.

Did you like my answer or just raise an eyebrow and say, hmmm?



ASPartofMe:

I do agree that this is not the case for everywhere, but i can only observe the world as it is presented to me, so i do biasly base my answer on the uk, but many places i have travelled i have seen little to alter my view, and yet some places where community is far more important than the individual.

Seeing as every selfish person is doing better in life, maybe i should take a page out of their book, but i prefer to help and understand and not tolerate twatish behaviour

I don't intend this to sound negative but things that I say sometimes come across more bluntly and unfriendly than I mean them to, so please keep in mind my intent is to help you by offering my experience of reading what you wrote and the problems I found in understanding/interpreting it so that you can decide for yourself if you'd like to try to address those issues in case she strikes them too. If you're really happy with your own description and don't want to change a thing then that's your choice too.

Firstly, I find generalisations very unclear. It's something a lot of people with ASDs find, if things are too vague and general a lot of us really struggle to make any sense of them. If I were in your position I would give some more concrete examples to illustrate your point. I am extremely intelligent but ambiguous abstractions will leave me caught up in a lengthy stream of "but" and "what if" and "how does that work when" type of thoughts. If your ex also finds clear statements easier to understand without spiralling into confusion and conflicted perspectives then you might want to refine you definition further.

Secondly, I found the way you phrased some things, particularly the bit about childhood to be rather patronising. You probably didn't mean it that way, so please don't think I'm assuming you were trying to come across as condescending - Just know that's how it reads to me. If your ex is not easily patronised this may not matter but if she is intelligent and just mystified by the odd behaviour of others who do not share her (typical ASD) view on how to treat others then you might need to reword that part.

Thirdly, I disagree with quite a lot of the content of your assessment. This is just a personal opinion and my own experience. Your experiences will be different so you are most definitely entitled to your own opinions. I just suggest that you make sure she understands that these are merely your own thoughts and feelings on the topic, not ultimate truisms that you know to be fact and she somehow missed. Some Aspies/Auties tend to take things people say as being absolutes, so you need to make sure she doesn't think you are giving her a standard, commonly held reason but rather sharing your own personal thoughts.

If you'd like to know my thoughts on the actual topic of why people do not seem to care about others then please ask as I am happy to share them: I'm just trying not to monologue without direct invitation quite so much as people have said some extremely hurtful things to me lately about it so I'm feeling rather sensitive and overly cautious.

Good luck.

Chameleonkeys

Not offended, it explains why i am not wanted by this girl. I thought communication and sharing ideas was key, but now i think she probably thinks me a cruel idiot, but it helps explain

As for your response, i am not offended, thank you for saying as you see it. If you have your own answer, then i would love to read it

- Chris

Someone who is down asking someone relatively friends with why people don't care about each other seems like it's more a request for caring and validation. Possibly followed by a concrete suggestion of how to proceed in difficult circumstances.

I would think she may not mean the question to start a philosophical discussion.

I'm with Waterfalls--this was a rhetorical question.

I found your definition very confusing and unclear it just didn?t draw a clear picture for me. Relating back to what ?chameleonkeys? said generalizations are not good especially when drawn out. As for my opinion on why people do not care that itself is far too generalized. There are specific reasons why a person doesn?t care based upon personality and then based upon situation, environment, etc. So there are many contributing factors and as a whole it would take a very long and boring time to list them all.

Something that I have found helpful for dealing with this question, in my opinion, she has to understand that not everyone is like her. We are not born knowing how to care so some people have never learned how to care and even for those who do know how to everyone in the world has different definitions for it so some might think they are when they aren?t based upon your definition. For example to some people beating another and inflicting pain equals love, caring and compassion yet to me it does not it is a simple difference of opinion. This is especially important to note for it deals with theory of mind something a great majority of us struggle with including myself. The ability to understand others. The definition, a quote from Tony Attwood, is ?The ability to recognize and understand thoughts, beliefs, desires and intentions of other people in order to make sense of their behavior and predict what they are going to do next.? For me personally I greatly struggle with understanding that not everybody is like me perhaps developing this perception will help her I am not sure. So some don?t know how, some people don?t share the same definition and finally some people just find hurting others far too enjoyable to stop. So I class people into those three general categories. It is a very superficial answer but it does help me make a little sense of it.

If the question was indeed rhetorical and she is looking for emotional regulation rather than information then a probable response is the generalization ?some people are just a**holes, I?m sorry? or maybe you even strike the a**holes comment and just open your arms and say that ?I?m sorry you?re hurting? then offer to listen somehow I have no clue how to do that one though. And the reason you open your arms is because you want to hold her as she self regulates this is because holding her creates an environment of safety in which she can self regulate that?s kinda your job you just create the safe environment because it?s quite difficult for her to do what she needs to do in a threatening environment. But then of course it changes based upon how the female self regulates the above is for crying but not every female regulates in this way. It is socially accepted as the more feminine way to regulate but I guess you have to adapt for how each female achieves the objective by figuring out what your role is in her particular path.

Cuddlehug, Waterfalls, ArielHawkSquill

Thankyou for your responses. Well the response they are all a**holes was in there somewhere, i guess because we got on so well for a while, i believed i communicated well, but after seeing how i misjudged a request for comfort tells me how wrong of the right kind of guy I am that she needs. I rarely have ever not known what to say, but today i don't know what to say to all that :/ I guess i live so deep in a world of having to consider peoples feelings, and thinking if i do this they will react that way, its hard to not do that with her. I really wanted to get how her mind worked and be the right person, i already thought i was, but i have been questioning a few things and realised i had walked on eggshells in areas as i just couldn't guage how she might react. Not a good way for anyone to be.

My answer is generalised, but it covers a lot of truth, tried to make a microcosm of what i have seen happen to many, but yes there are a few people who have unique circumstances for themselves, and i know generalising is wrong when done in subcultures, but with large theories i guess i see it done a lot and go well thats okay, but then if i didn't it wouldn't be a theory, it would be an individualised case study.

I have sat here for 10 mins watching a cursor blink, so i'm gonna say thank you for the responses it has gave my brain so much to chew on. I have been reading topic threads here for 3 weeks, and thought i was starting to fully understand, but now i am quite sure i'm so far off.

Balls

I saw nothing wrong with your reply.
You answered in a typically male brained way which is to try and explain the question analytically instead of giving an emotional response.
It sounded a lot like things I have read here on WP.
It was your interpretation of things based on your experience and not everyone would agree with you.
Your friend may have appreciated your answer and your perspective or she may have been looking for emotional support.
Either way, I don't think it was something that would make or break a relationship.
Sometimes giving a practical well thought out explanation is a way of giving emotional support.

As for what I think about your answer, even the question was a generalization.
I think most people do care about other people, but a lot are too caught up in their own struggles.

I think you're explanation of why people don't care is quite apt. It is the way I see the world and the way psychology has come to see it too. People who act out in anger and decide to be mean often have a root cause where they were either mistreated by others or their loved ones, or had a bad start in life. Yes, it can be in a response to a threat or other factors, but I think usually people "act out" when they are sad and disappointed with the world and people around them. I don't mean to discredit what everyone else here is saying, it's just that I have read a lot about psychology, and this is the general consensus. I know it is a generalisation, but all people meet people with anger and are mean when all they have experienced is continuous pain and let down - it's a defence mechanism.

In saying that, it does sound like a rhetoric question. Like something I would say if everyone was picking on me lately and I needed someone to tell me they care and understand.