Anyone new that comes into my life, even if they become my “friends” or hell, even a girlfriend, I couldn’t care less about them and don’t value them. If they have kids, I don’t care about their well-being either. Basically I could not give less of a fuck about anyone. I don’t care about my friends or family members at all. If they are sick, I don’t care; if they die, I don’t care. It’s not even that I don’t “like” them; it’s more apathy than anything else. Don’t care whether they live or die. They don’t care about their children or their well-being. Here are my “emotions” towards people. I either tolerate you, or I’m purely apathetic. Or I just straight up don’t like you.
But I’m going to be in more social situations around people I hang out with – friends, family, etc. – and I need to fake like I care about them.
How do I do that?
Is it really? Sounds more like caring about the rewards of the relationship than caring about the people, and it’s selfish and just generally shitty.
Say you walk into a coffee shop and the guy who takes your order has a heart attack. If your reaction is “Is anyone going to make my coffee? Do I get a discount for the inconvenience?” THAT is caring about the transaction, not caring about the person, and it’s not the same AT. ALL.
Bad example. Most people don’t care about the person that serves them coffee at all. You also wouldn’t change your behavior to improve the relationship between Barista and Customer.
People are selfish, and almost everything they do is selfish. However, most people are smart enough to understand that being openly greedy and selfish is not the optimal path to getting the most they can for themselves. It’s the prisoner’s dilemma on a population scale. If everyone agrees to mostly get along, everyone does better individually.
The only exception to this tends to be very close family like a parent, a child, or maybe a sibling. Even those aren’t guaranteed though, lots of people treat even their close family poorly and don’t care about them.