Saturday, December 25, 2010

Indifference: Spiritual poison

Meaning, it poisons the spirit to be around people who don’t care – about you, about themselves, about other people in their lives.

People who don’t care are poisonous. Avoid them as you would any other noxious substance.

2 comments:

Michael Finley said...

But there are so many of them. Most of them faking it until they can strike.

grasshopper said...

Yeah - I don't like thinking of it this way. Maybe it makes the world too scary to contemplate. It also doesn't really match my experience - I really believe people are opportunists more than anything, rather than being actively malicious.

I think people are basically greedy and selfish, and they learn *not* to be *only* if they've had *both*: a) sufficient measures of negative reinforcement for their 'bad' behavior, and b) enough inborn - empathy? that said 'negative reinforcement' is even effective. That's why I call it indifference instead of outright cruelty - it's almost worse, in a way, because outright cruelty suggests at least *some* level of awareness of the effect one is having on another person.

Whereas indifference means - well, there's *no* awareness. Whatsoever. Which, in *my* experience? is by far the more painful of the two. A genuine bully you can strike back and sometimes it'll be enogh to stop him, because he actually *feels* pain.

Whereas, the clueless, 'indifferent' one? is really, mostly, just simply *unaware*. It's almost *impossible* to deal with such sorts - they can't really be influenced by their 'better nature', since they haven't got one. Guilt can only be effective if the person being guilt-tripped can *feel* the guilt.

Argh. Obviously a sore spot/hot button for me, and I don't feel like I'm explaining it very well.