Yes, if you intend to be a functioning member of society. The only people who truly don’t care what others think are the severely psychotic, and zealots. They aren’t exactly people to emulate.
A base level of conformity is necessary for society to function. You don’t have to agree to it, but at least put on a show in public.
If you want to live in the woods, then no you don’t need to care what others think. If you want to socialize, date, have friends, not get arrested, not be a laughingstock, etc. then yes you should care somewhat.
There’s a very basic level of, do you want to be followed around by the police because you are looking, acting out of sync with the general public in your area?
There’s the slightly higher level of, do you want to have friends? Date? Acquire a job? Hold down a job?
Above that level it gets pretty subtle. I have had many occasions to reflect on how much my interests and goals are influenced by others. That’s only because I am much different than most people, and so I feel the discomfort of trying to fit in when really, I never do.
For women, a big one is feeling responsible for the behind the scenes grunt work that makes everything go at every social event, and being shamed for not cheerfully doing your share without even being asked.
We are social beings, we were never anything else.
Of course, as do most all of the people who say they don’t. What other people think of you creates your public persona. The way you act around other people is not normally self-generated, but is a product of the feedback you’ve received throughout your life in response to your public behavior. People constantly adjust how they act in response to that data. And it’s normal to act differently, depending on the audience, in order to fit in with a subset of the larger group.
absolutely.
One can’t blindly accept other people’s opinions, but knowing how your behavior/looks come across to others is valuable information as you make personal decisions.
In other words, feedback is valuable but not the only information you need to make good decisions.
As others have said its nice information to have so yes; to some degree I care and would like to know. But what I do with that information becomes a wide swing depending on my age, my plans for the future in terms of business/professional goals, and a host of other variables.
♬ Now if you care what people think
Like they supplied some missing link
They’ll just stand back and watch you sink so slow
They’ll never help you to decide
They’ll only take you for a ride
After which they’ll try and hide the fact that they don’t know
What you should do, where you should go
What you should do, where you should go ♬
To everyone here who says “no”: Try going through life as a sex offender.
That’s just the government? Well, what is the government, but a formalized, ritualized portion of society, that is, other people?
You might not care what most other people think of you, but that’s just because most other people don’t. If they did, and decided they didn’t like you, for any reason or none at all, I guarantee you, you’d care pretty damn quick.
As others have said, it depends on many things. Who the others are and what they’re expressing an opinion of.
Spouse thinks you need a different haircut/shave or should wear more/less makeup. Discuss it like mature people and reach an agreement.
Meddlesome Aunt Sue thinks you need a different haircut/shave or should wear more/less makeup. Piss on her shoes.
Random stranger… Walk away and don’t even acknowledge them.
Any of the above mention that you should consider deodorant or that your cologne/perfume is overwhelming. You should probably do something. Whether they were polite or complete assholes about it doesn’t change the validity of their observation, only how you should respond to them.
It seems like a lot of people here are in the “caring about other people’s opinions is a necessary evil” camp, too.
I used to think one of my personal measures of success was getting to a place where I wouldn’t HAVE to care about anyone else’s opinion ever again.
But then I kept thinking about it, and even if I were “I’m buying this establishment just to fire you for this treatment” independently wealthy, which would take care of bosses, dating, and pretty much anyone else (assuming we agree opinions != laws), it would still be a very limiting way to live.
You wouldn’t be able to accomplish any larger goals, because you’d have trouble retaining the talent to build an organization to accomplish them. Although you could undoubtedly attract an endless string of mates / SO’s with your wealth, retaining quality ones is reliant on caring what they think. If you were a parent, you’d probably be a pretty poor one if you didn’t care at all what your kids thought of you. Likewise friends - it’s a pretty poor friend who doesn’t care at all about your opinion, and like attracts like.
So ultimately, it seems caring about other people’s opinions is a necessary evil. But I’d still be happy to be able to limit the circle of “care” to the relatively small subset of your immediate family, friends, and business partners / employees…so maybe the really aspirational goal is minimizing the opinions you have to care about to that floor (and no lower).
My previous posts in this thread were pretty flippant - you have to care about what other people think at least enough to avoid being killed, tortured, incarcerated, or having your netflix cut off. This is of course absolutely true - if you just do whatever the hell you want with no consideration for the opinions and laws of society, then you will be severely boned.
Of course, this is just the start of it, and in fact if you dig into this far enough you find yourself actually constructing a semi-decent moral system. From an absolutely selfish perspective, it’s beneficial when other people treat you nicely. And from a cost-benefit perspective, it’s often the case that the easiest/cheapest way to get other people to be nice to you is to be nice to them first. Again, from the completely self-centered perspective acting nice is often the best way to go, so a completely selfish person might quite reasonably choose to act quite nice in a lot of situations, making a point to care what people think in order to get people to think nicely about them and treat them accordingly.
Of course, if a person does this enough, they might develop actual empathy, just out of habit. Escalating it from a semi-decent moral system to full-on secular humanism.
(Unfortunately this whole system breaks down when you have a lot of money or power - you don’t gotta be nice when you can slap people around with wads of hundred dollar bills. As we’ve seen in numerous real-world cases.)