I was watching cable news very late one night, some years back. I don’t remember what channel (seems like it was a BBC feed.). The program switched to coverage of what later became Bosnia and several other countries.
They were interviewing people displaced by the war. One man was worried about feeding his children and taking care of his aged mother in law.
One man was simply looking for his family. Hadn’t seen any of them in days.
Then, they cut to a mass grave.
I broke down and bawled like a baby. I had never given much concern to things that weren’t happening to me or to people I actually knew. But… something about that foriegn correspondent interviewing the average man. Made me realize how every time I see a picture or clip of dead, beaten, tortured, or hopeless people, I was looking at a possible me.
Still a bit of narcicism there in me, what? Imagining myself in their situation. But, it woke me up. Has it made a difference in the world? Nope.
So, now I get sad when I read of or watch film of a tragedy. Doesn’t matter where anymore. Each of those people had a mother, maybe a spouse, friend, child, feeling the pain of their end. Or not knowing what has become of them. Or what may yet happen to themselves.
I’m not preaching. It doesn’t make you a bad person not to feel these things. It doesn’t make me a saint for pretending to have empathy. You asked. That’s all.
Sometimes, I’m convinced there is no gravity. The whole world sucks.
I care. The sufferings of others grieves me deeply.
It bothers me to think that the shirt I’m wearing might have been made by a slave in a sweat shop.
It bothers me to think my shampoos and body washes might have been tested on animals’ eyes.
It bothers me to think that the chicken I’m eating might have been kept in inhumane conditions.
It bothers me to think that in one of the richest countries in the world, there are children going hungry tonight.
So, I try to buy responsibly, and I donate regularly to charity. (In fact, it comes right out of my paycheck before I see it.) I volunteer, and I vote carefully. I do what I can. It may only be a little, but as my Grandma says, the ocean is made up of single raindrops.
I somehow picked up in the course of my (fairly normal, not-dysfunctional-beyond-the-usual) childhood the idea that my task in life would be to
end hunger
end torture
end war
end homelessness
end domestic violence
and so on until the world was perfect
Not surprisingly, I felt overwhelmed by all this responsibility and depressed by my imminent failure. By the time I was 19 I was depressed to the point of comtemplating suicide, hoping that my suicide note, detailing the all the bad things I couldn’t fix, would shock the world into shaping up (I think this kind of narcissim-in-depression is only possible before the age of 22).
In the course of getting better (no therapy, books) I decided that in order for me to stay alive, the world was going to have to do without my help, at least until I actually gained some skills that might be useful at world-saving.
I think maybe the reason that people “don’t care” or don’t want to hear that “one person can make a difference” is they can’t handle the responsibility. If one person has the power to change the world, then they should right? But if you’re the one person and you have no idea how to proceed it’s a pretty dreadful feeling.
I still mostly feel so overwhelmed by the demands of daily life that the idea of far off tragedies is too much to allow myself to be vulnerable.
But I still care. And I learned that there is something I can do. I pray.
I care…and I’ve gone through the stage of feeling hopeless upon my realization that I can’t fix everything that’s wrong with society as some other people. I find it interesting that some people can trace their “caring” back to when they had children.
Obviously, there are people who don’t have children (such as myself) who do care. Maybe it’s more about personal loss. I really am intrigued by the people who “can’t care”…there’s no judgement there from me, I just find it curious.
Maybe in some cases caring would require you to face feelings that you’re not ready to face. Or maybe you haven’t experienced a personal loss that someone else’s tragedy may remind you of. I just find it unusual and probably in the minority…I mean, I can’t think of a single person (besides those who have said so on this board) who can look at 9/11 and go, “meh”…there’s the perspective of the children who lost their parents, one thing that got me in particular were the people who jumped out of the window, maybe choosing the lesser of two painful ways of dying (my God, how horrific), the people who lost their family members, and on and on. And like many people, I’m sure, it still breaks my heart.
I wonder how the other end of the spectrum of your emotions are? Again, there’s no judgement, I’m just exploring. Do you feel intense joy at times? An intense appreciation of the world, ever? Do good stories (about people you don’t know) make you feel happy?
I say that it doesn’t make sense to care about things beyond one’s control.
I feel a lot of sympathy for people that I can help-- z.B., I have bought many lunches for homeless guys around where I live, and I talk with them.
I care a lot about my close friends and family, I care very little about those not so close, and I don’t care at all when I hear about some guy’s tragic death in the news. I find it strange that it’s me that doesn’t care, but really, I’m glad. My father easily gets emotionally involved in reality shows and is deeply saddened by strangers’ deaths. I live a mostly stress-free life because I only care about things that are actually important to me. I have no desire to start caring.
…I feel it’s necessary to say that I’m nice to everybody (unless they aren’t being nice back.) I realize now that this doesn’t make sense. I guess it’s selfish–I’m happier when everyone’s nice.
It seems to me that there is a big difference between “caring”, that is, feeling bad when you see suffering, and “doing.”
I have tried most of my adult life to care less, because my excess of care has made me clinically depressed (though you could argue I’m putting the cart before the horse here – that really I’m depressed and therefore care too much, but whatever).
I firmly believe that feeling bad, in and of itself, is worse than useless. You don’t win any awards in my book for moral superiority just because you care, and it doesn’t matter how terrible you feel if you just sit there feeling bad. This is extremely important to me. Guilt is not morally purifying.
But it does matter if you do something. I think of “raising consciousness by talking about it” as “something,” as well as voting, protesting, making selective purchasing decisions, etc. And I realize that one person’s isolated actions are dwarfed by the problems, but really… things have changed. Some things have got better. Some things have also got worse, but on balance, I think better wins.
So I think some of the responses to the OP are conflating “caring” and “doing something about it”, though I think it’s clear that the OP was only asking about caring, especially in light of Captain Amazing’s second post.
In fairness, Captain Amazing says “I don’t see what one [caring] has to do with the other [doing]” which is an unusual attitude: most people seem to take action to alleviate suffering they care about.
Reading the news is definitely a bringdown, particularly when you realize how few people it takes to have a negative impact. How many people did it take to bomb OKC, or the WTC? Two high-school students had a really incredible negative impact. One idiot forest service employee, acting for who-knows-what reason, burns down a significant portion of Colorado. What’s depressing is to realize how little positive impact one person can have as opposed to the negative potential.
But what can you do? Not have a negative impact, take care of your family, raise decent children. That’s all most of us have ever been able to do.
I said that this was MY EXPERIENCE. In MY EXPERIENCE, when I have volunteered I was treated as a fifth wheel, and ignored or given make-work along with several other superfluous volunteers. Perhaps I wasn’t in the right place.
Maybe some people are magical help-fairies that spread charity and love wherever they step, but most people are powerful enough to prevent this effect from spreading very far.
The day I was watching the news and heard about the earthquake in Istanbul , and my first thought was, “Oh no! I hope no museums were destroyed!” was the day I realized I had stopped caring about the average human being.
I don’t know why this is. I don’t know why I suddenly stopped caring about the human race. Because we are the cruelest, most wasteful, most horrific lifeform on the planet, maybe? I will cry over an abused kitten easier than over a murdered person (be he adult or child). Extinction of animals causes more outrage in me than genocide of a group of people.
I guess I don’t consider humans “innocent” anymore, while animals clearly still are.
Hmm. I’m fucked up. Or maybe just exhausted at what humans have become.
I’m a very jaded and cynical person. I don’t care. Every once in a while, something does affect me, and I start trying to care. I never lasts though, and eventually I don’t care at all again. Except if it’s about dogs. I care about dogs.
