Care

I don't know if I really care about other people at all.

About their wellbeing or their growth.

I behave as if I do. I sometimes feel that I do.

But I don't know that I really do.

Because when I trace back into myself the causes for which I feel an urge to help other people, they fall into one of these categories:

• I help others because doing so enhances my reputation, and raises my social approval. If another person receives my help, and if other people see me helping others, I usually gain social approval from their perspective. Therefore, performing a helpful deed increases my own social score.
• Helping others increases the likelihood that they will sometime help me when I need it. This is a consequence of the social score explained above, but it seems useful to emphasise in particular.
• Desire of usefulness and fulfilment. If someone around me has a clear lack or need, and I am able to provide for that lack, to help bridge a gap or fulfil a need, my urge towards utility wants to fulfil it. It is a desire towards satisfaction, an urge towards completeness, that drives this urge, not any particular care for the person him/herself. I don't in particular care that that person feels well or that he/she does not incur harm. What I care about is that the lack is fulfilled, because I somehow perceive the lack as my own. Sometimes. And when I do, I at times place effort into resolving the lack or need. Into satisfying what is still lacking. When I don't, I feel no urge.
• So in summary, my urge to help is either an attraction towards my own social score, or towards fulfilment of lacks that I feel as mine, even if they are not materially mine.

I ponder on these things because I notice I care nothing for people's deaths. If a person dies, to me it is no tragedy at all. The dead feel no pain nor suffering, they have no lack. The people around them feel as they feel, but they have no clear lack that can be fulfilled. They simply feel an absence of a person, and they sometimes suffer for it. No urge to be satisfied there, and I feel no urge towards doing anything. Whatsoever. No urge to console, no urge to help, nothing. Except if it helps one of the reasons above... material help, or something that enhances my social score. But not care... I notice I do not feel their pain.

And that makes me wonder. Just wonder. Ponder. Think.