why should we care about other people?

[leonid]

Re: why should we care about other people?

Human interaction is often give and take and when you care about other people you would get the same or similar in return, and have warm fuzzy feeling in side etc but if you really don't care about all that it's never enforced by law or anything anyway so the answer is you don't need to. If you only care about other people just to get those benefits though, that kinda also makes you a sociopath but really who cares

[Reincarnate]

Re: why should we care about other people?

First of all, "why" questions are really hard to answer:

The answer to your question depends entirely on how far you want to take it and what you're already assuming to be true.

[gold stinger]

Re: why should we care about other people?

I believe that caring about other people comes down to a want & need basis, whether it be love, attention, opinion, or requirement of teamwork in other tasks. But how much a singular person cares about other people is solely dependent on how much they'd be willing to care in a first place. Such as, a person who sits at their computer every day and plays video games may have a relatively low number of other people they care about, but a person who works as the boss of a company may care about a ton of people, to both make sure they get work they care about done, the money they care about in their pocket, and the care they have towards the dedication of how much value they can create.

You can assign a value to anything in this sense, and I believe it's been talked about at one time or another on these forums. It depends on the person and the position that they're in to care about said people. If someone has depression their interpretation of self-care and the amount that others care about them can be skewed, or underestimated. If someone is outgoing, or self-centered, their self-care and the amount that others care about them can be skewed in the opposite direction.

To be fair, the more I think about the question, the more I think that it shouldn't be a why should we statement, but more along the lines of a why do/don't we statement, because why should we suggests that there is some sort of social law that requires people to do so, when the short answer to that, is there isn't. There are people that care only about themselves, and there are people that care about the world and the planet.

[Trumpet63]

Re: why should we care about other people?

If we define caring to be a feeling of concern or interest, caring about another serves the purpose of motivating actions to pursue that interest, whether it be actively preserving another's well-being, or conversing with them to gain more information. Both ultimately result in you identifying what their needs are so that you can provide for them, or at least see whether you would provide. This leads to the question: Why would one give to another? (By giving I mean interacting with someone in a way that may be perceived as providing something)

In a strictly selfish sense, giving is a social contract implying quid pro quo. Doing this acknowledges that one lives in a world of inequity, where goods (in the most general sense) have different value to different people, and that someone else could do something that you could not. Then there's morality, religion, philosophy... plenty of things could motivate someone to care, and then to give.

[gold stinger]

Re: why should we care about other people?

Yeah, another thing that is intriguing to think about is that someone may care about others in the sense of giving stuff to them or forming tight relations with others in order to get something out of them that you would otherwise not be able to, or be able to ask them of something that you normally would not be able to unless you spent the time forming a strong bond of care between you and them, and acknowledging each other's worth & care equally, for most cases, but not all.

[Dynam0]

Re: why should we care about other people?

because reasons

[Buta-san]

Re: why should we care about other people?

It is obviously something that any group of people needs to be cohesive

Not any group of people are cohesive. There are many times you are stuck with other people you dislike, don't agree with especially working.
It's more obvious why people would care about other people.

[janetfdoss]

Re: why should we care about other people?

What good is it to care about the feelings or welfare of other people? It is obviously something that any group of people needs to be cohesive, but for an individual with no group, in a society as large as ours, what good is caring about other people?

It is very good to take care about others. At least i try to go with these thoughts.

[stargroup100]

Re: why should we care about other people?

Once again I'm late to the discussion. w/e

If you want an objective reason to care about other people, the most convincing practical argument that I can come up with is that it is simply objectively beneficial to cooperate with other people.

Take any economics 101 class and you'll understand this. If people specialized in particular jobs, they would collectively get more done. A basic math problem can demonstrate proof of concept on a micro-level. On a larger scale, it's much easier to observe through example: It's completely unfeasible and absurd to imagine that a single human being is capable of producing a modern computer from circuit components, let alone nature. Yet humanity as a whole has not only done that, but can also mass produce it on a level that makes it accessible for most any middle-class person.

Your entire life is inevitably going to involve interactions with other people, there's really no way to avoid it (unless you're absolutely committed to it, which will involve very heavy sacrifices). Even if you wanted to be a complete sociopath, it's still in your benefit to treat other people as objects that can work to your benefit if you know how to handle them. If you objectify and disrespect people, they're not going to be willing to work with you, so being able to empathize (or even put up a convincing facade) is a good skill to learn. This is something that most intelligent sociopaths generally realize and accept.


Unfortunately though, similar to the other thread, I don't think the author of the opening post actually cares enough about discussion, and really just wants to post vapid pseudo-philosophical cliches for attention.

[choof]

Re: why should we care about other people?

Unfortunately though, similar to the other thread, I don't think the author of the opening post actually cares enough about discussion, and really just wants to post vapid pseudo-philosophical cliches for attention.

what gave you this idea

[SCWolf]

Re: why should we care about other people?

Empathy is a real thing most people feel

[Frank Munoz]

Re: why should we care about other people?

New thread topic

why do we think?
why must we all have different perspectives and not just think the same things regardless of our own personal experiences?

why are do we us?

[-JiZ53-]

Re: why should we care about other people?

Once again I'm late to the discussion. w/e

If you want an objective reason to care about other people, the most convincing practical argument that I can come up with is that it is simply objectively beneficial to cooperate with other people.

Take any economics 101 class and you'll understand this. If people specialized in particular jobs, they would collectively get more done. A basic math problem can demonstrate proof of concept on a micro-level. On a larger scale, it's much easier to observe through example: It's completely unfeasible and absurd to imagine that a single human being is capable of producing a modern computer from circuit components, let alone nature. Yet humanity as a whole has not only done that, but can also mass produce it on a level that makes it accessible for most any middle-class person.

Your entire life is inevitably going to involve interactions with other people, there's really no way to avoid it (unless you're absolutely committed to it, which will involve very heavy sacrifices). Even if you wanted to be a complete sociopath, it's still in your benefit to treat other people as objects that can work to your benefit if you know how to handle them. If you objectify and disrespect people, they're not going to be willing to work with you, so being able to empathize (or even put up a convincing facade) is a good skill to learn. This is something that most intelligent sociopaths generally realize and accept.


Unfortunately though, similar to the other thread, I don't think the author of the opening post actually cares enough about discussion, and really just wants to post vapid pseudo-philosophical cliches for attention.

You somehow managed to write four inane paragraphs while completely missing the point of my question. If you had taken How To Not Be an Idiot 101, you might have learned that everything you wrote is completely wrong and that cooperating with people isnt the same thing as caring about people. Unfortunately though, similar to most of your other posts, I don't think you actually care enough about discussion, and really just want to post vapid pseudo-philosophical cliches for attention.[/QUOTE]

[benguino]

Re: why should we care about other people?

I feel with the previous discussion we've somewhat arrived at a conclusion in regards to "why should we at least pretend to care about people?"

So that raises the question of "Why should we genuinely care as opposed to just pretending to care about people?" As I said earlier, addressing this is difficult. The only thing I can think of at the moment is that genuinely caring is less stressful and mentally exhausting than pretending to care in my opinion; pretending to care would involve creating, developing, and maintaining an entire life-long facade and that doesn't sound very fun to do.

[Rapta]

Re: why should we care about other people?

It depends on what each individual wants for themselves. If more people genuinely cared about others, the good coming from that would be a world with better morals which seems like a nice idea. Some people are depressed because they feel like nobody cares or nobody actually does care about them, so if you can care about someone you should for their sake, usually oneself feels good when helping others. Did I interpret your question right? .-.