What the hell is wrong with people?

[nolawitch58]

Too often I've heard the same refrain: "I didn't care about x because it didn't affect me until now." There are two recent diaries over at Daily Kos written by ex-Republicans singing the same song. They were content to be Republicans until their circumstances changed and they found themselves needing those services that liberals had championed in the past. Lose your job? Thank a liberal for unemployment insurance however crappy the amount you get.

Why is it that people cannot seem to empathize with others until their situations become similar? Not only that, but there are the doofuses out there who actively vote against their own interests no matter how much you try to explain that they personally won't benefit from any of the neo-cons' policies. How small-minded do you have to be not to care about anything beyond your personal sphere? How pea-brained is it to have a one-issue agenda? Why do these people even still have a pulse if they're so dead to the rest of the planet?

We're all in this boat together and if you're rocking it to the point where it capsizes and drowns all of us, none of us will benefit. I'm all for tossing some people the hell out of the boat. Ye flipping gods, my hatred of humanity grows on a daily basis. More and more I see greed and stupidity on small and large scales that boggles the mind. The more of this idiocy I see, the more I'm convinced that a global pandemic would be just the ticket to thin the herd and make the planet a better place. Frickin' yeesh!

Comments

Typically human

[framstag.livejournal.com]

"I didn't care about x because it didn't affect me until now."

This was a typical quote used in Germany after 12 years of terror... and I'm sure it's used everywhere in the world. People don't give a sh*it for anything that doesn't affect them.

Thinking beyond the next episode of Lost is, like,

[lionsphil.livejournal.com]

totally way too much effort.

Partly, it's sheer short-sightedness; not thinking "hey, this may actually affect me one day". Partly, if you'll excuse the amateur psychology, I expect it's a certain embitterment caused by the failure of reality to meat the entitlement illusion Illiad loves to rant about which causes people to think "Fuck the world: they didn't buy me a pony. I'm looking after number one."

And looking after number one is Fine and Natural. But most people who wear it like a badge fall into the short-sightedness trap, and end up doing it really badly. I'd rather look after number one by making sure that number one will have a pension some day.

Incidentally,

[lionsphil.livejournal.com]

you are number 6.

Re: Incidentally,

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

I am not a number! I am a free...er, woman!

[ms-issicran.livejournal.com]

Treading softly here, but I was always under the impression that the meaning of empathy was feelings from being or having been in the same situation, and sympathy was feelings without ever haveing been in a similar situation.

And I'd be behind that pandemic if it weren't mindless to which individuals it took out. Al Gore gave an excellent speech before the last election about your topic here, how so many people rallied their conservatism mindless of how it would harm them in the long run. If I could find it I'd link it. A pretty realistic blast at Bush for using faith to fool the followers.

I totally agree with you that greed and stupidity grow exponentially, and most choose to remain blind to it.

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

I may have the two terms confused. When I send a sympathy card or express sympathy for someone else's loss, I do it from knowing how I've felt in similar situations where my parents died or whatever. Empathy to me connotes that I haven't ever gone through that but I can feel for you anyway.

Looking it up now...and Dictionary.com didn't give me much more than you already did.

There are some things that we will never know firsthand. Our only hope as a decent human being is to sympathize or empathize with whatever the other person is enduring without having that firsthand knowledge. Hell, I certainly can take drug addicts' words for it that detoxing from heroin is rough. Why would I want to find that out firsthand? Or learn how to live without a limb because one was blown off in a bomb blast in Fallujah? Or any of the other calamities that befall people? Should I be so calloused as to not give a shit because none of it affects me personally? That seems more monstrous than even a vile bitch like me is willing to own.

"You're not an x so you have no right to say anything about how those who are x's do their jobs." That's another pet peeve of mine. I may not know how to drive a tractor-trailer, but I sure as hell know when one is being driven shittily, especially when it almost runs over other vehicles on the road. I am not a plastic surgeon, but I can see that whoever did Michael Jackson's work is inferior. I am not an engineer, but failed levees are their own testament to how badly they were designed.

Maybe they're just late bloomers

[tigrismus.livejournal.com]

maybe it took something personal to open their eyes, and the next time they'll be sympathetic right off the bat. We can only hope.

Re: Maybe they're just late bloomers

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

Why, though, if they consider themselves good people, do they not sympathize from the get-go? People don't seem to understand that sympathy and understanding costs them nothing.

[kitten-goddess.livejournal.com]

Why is it that people cannot seem to empathize with others until their situations become similar?

Because they don't know what someone else is going through until they are in a similar situation themselves. While almost anyone could sympathize with a Holocause survivor, most people would not be able to empathize because they have never suffered anything so horrible.

People are too busy and too intellectually limited to care for anything outside of their personal spheres. If you can't understand something, how can you possibly care for it? Most Americans have no grasp of domestic affairs, let alone world affairs. They can't possibly care, because they are ignorant and too busy keeping their heads above water to think about larger issues.

Death, Pestilence, War, and Famine thin out the human population. Fortunately for us, those Four Horsemen don't respect karma. Otherwise, we would all have died of AIDS, famine, war, and starvation by now. Americans, including myself, are responsible for much of the misery in Africa. Because I consume so much, others have less.

I don't know

[the-real-egaeus.livejournal.com]

I find that I also have a hard time with sympathy in some circumstances. For example, I can't feel sorry for rogue1971 anymore. Ten posts a day complaining about her husband! Gaaah! One of the more recent ones is that she's sure that he's planning on leaving because he's insisting that she get a driver's license. She's 35 years old and doesn't have a license?! I almost can't blame the guy. If I was in that situation where someone was so apparently helpless and dependent on me, I'd have left years ago!

However, venting aside, when it comes to things like unemployment insurance, medical care, retirement, etc. which will affect almost everyone, I don't understand how people can not see the benefits of such things.

Ayup.

[thewrongcrowd.livejournal.com]

There's nothing wrong with withholding sympathy in situations where one seems to revel in his or her downfall and does very little about their situation other than complain. Extrapolating specific circumstances to a generalized disdain of similar situations would be in error, however.*

As for the social safety nets, it's a big pile of hubris, isn't it, when folk somehow believe that they're immune from those situations.

Re: I don't know

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

Rogue1971 is a loser. I cringe whenever I see her name on the board. You're right, a bazillion posts a day bemoaning her situation is excessive. Honestly, I'd like to slap her and say, "Get off your fat ass, bitch, and make your own way in the world. Why on earth did you spew larvae with the rotten bastard? Surely, he didn't become a creep overnight and if it's been a while coming, did anything your pathetic ass do encourage it?" She sounds like a clingy asshole who'd be happy as a stay at home moo popping out larvae every chance she gets. She's a drama whore at this point. I don't believe she's going to leave him.

People are idiots for the most part. I'm lucky to know the more intelligent and decent types, but the rest of the population can kiss my keister.

[fakiiri.livejournal.com]

I've always been a fan of the theory that states that the intelligence of humans as a whole is a constant. The more humas the more stupid is the average person.

I see little evidence of things not being like that. *sigh*

the average person has no imagination

[voxwoman.livejournal.com]

They also tend to be grasshoppers rather than ants. The masses have been conditioned by the media for at least 2 generations now (maybe 3 generations, depending on how you count a generation); conditioned to behave in the mindless, reactionary way that the groups that control the media want them to.

The problem with pinning your better world hopes on an even more mindless virus is that it will not be looking for "stupid" people to live in. If stupid were a fatal disease, we'd already have our pandemic in spades.

I also think that people have been trying to profit from misery since the day after money was invented.

I doubt that money was a prerequisite.

[lionsphil.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's a classic.

[lionsphil.livejournal.com]

And, as such, has been wonderfully munged and mutilated into a few zillion different versions with time.

Alas and alack.

[thewrongcrowd.livejournal.com]

I've even seen it verbed recently.

"I'm going to Niemöller you."

*shakes fist*

[lionsphil.livejournal.com]

I'LL NIEMÖLLER YOU!!

[thewrongcrowd.livejournal.com]

It reminds me of the people who oppose abortion ... until they find themselves "accidently" pregnant. Or the PETA assholes who oppose animal-based medical research ... until they develop cancer and are happy as clams to take those advanced chemotherapies.

Many children are born selfish and must be taught to belong to the community. Others are born empathic and, if they are unlucky, are taught selfishness by the monsters masquerading as their parents.

[entheos93.livejournal.com]

No kidding.
I've heard so many stupid and callous comments at this point that I secretly hope the dreaded Tsunami that's going to eat Oregon hurries up and gets here, just so people will learn what this shit is like.

[ozanbaba.livejournal.com]

humanity does not cause greed and stupidity animality does