This is a quote that I have felt in my bones since I first read it. I think it speaks to the differences between certain social groups in the United States, and is something I feel sometimes that not everyone lives by to the same extent.
Why Caring About Others Shouldn’t Need Explanation
I’ve seen this quote posted often. It is most often posted with political connotations, but I think it’s something that should get more attention for most of us, regardless of politics.
In the US, we have a very “self-made man” culture: Independent, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, I-don’t-neef-help culture. And this is great for many things. People tend to feel empowered to control their own lives and try to work hard to lift themselves into better circumstances.
The downside is that we are also a culture that doesn’t care for each other. We litter, because once that trash is gone from my life, who cares? We don’t care that our actions harm others or society as a whole because we are taught that we are what matters, that the only people that can help us are ourselves.
There are some culture where conformity and fitting into society’s expectations are more forceful. Going back to litter, those are some of the places that are cleaner. And people will wear masks when they are sick to help ensure they don’t spread the illness to others.
There are counter examples to the above, mind. I think drivers in all cultures tend to hate other drivers, and even in the US, people will often stop to offer help to those in need — at least in situations like where someone has had a crash or fallen or something like that.
In my opinion, while we don’t necessarily need to subvert our sense of independence, we could generally use a bit more empathy with others — on a personal and societal level. A lot of people treat service workers poorly, when the workers are often just trying to help us while following the company policies (which may well be the actual source of the problem). I’ve never understood the folks that treat others poorly like that. We’re all human. We’re all just trying to make it through the day at work so we can relax and take care of ourselves and our families after work.
I don’t think we should have to explain why people should care about others. This shouldn’t be a thing!
The Urban/Rural Divide in Social Trust
I don’t want to get into politics as much as I can do to avoid it, but I think one thing that applies and helps explain some of our differences is the urban/rural divide.
In my humble opinion and experience, there is a large difference between the experiences of people in the rural environment vs. the urban environment.
In the rural environment, people live spaced out a bit. This means that help is often not easily accessible, with the few police or medical or fire first responders are often far away, and even contacting them for assistance might be difficult. And especially historically, but even to this day, seeing a stranger hanging around gives rise to a reasonable suspicion: What are they doing here? What do they want? How do they want to harm me and my family or my property?
Contrast that with the urban environment, where people live close together. Help is often a lot easier to access and quicker. And while you might get to know your neighbors, life is filled with strangers bumping elbows everywhere you go. The sheer number of people means that some crime is inherently less common — at least where crowds are on the streets. Sure, plenty of crime can still happen, but you’re not hyper-aware of strangers hanging about simply because there’s always strangers anywhere you go. It’s much more common to be in a crowd of people when something happens — an accident or medical emergency or what have you — an people around will hopefully jump in and help other people. Or when something affects a large number of people, people in cities will come together and help strangers out.
And I’m not saying that when things happen in a rural setting, people don’t help out, because they do. The point is just that there’s an inherent fear of strangers that doesn’t work in an urban setting, but helps with safety in rural settings.
I believe this difference in settings has caused a large difference in peoples’ outlooks. And I think it provides a notable piece of the puzzle on why we have two nations (people who feel the same way about society/culture/identify) in one country (the area of land under a government).
Neurodiversity and Hyper-Empathy
I am very vocal about having severe ADHD. At this time (2025), I’m in the process of trying to figure out if I have autism, making me AuDHD. Either way, it means I have a “neurospicy” outlook on life. Unique? No, hardly. But perhaps unconventional in many ways. Some things I take for granted, others definitely don’t. Can I learn from others? You betcha. Can some folks maybe learn from some of my perspectives? I hope so!
I’ve read that social challenges can cause some to overcompensate with kindness towards others — a way to bridge the gap when conventional interactions prove to be difficult. Similarly to over-explaining, which follows naturally to commonly having to explain more because people didn’t understand what you were saying; being careful to be kind is a natural response to attempting to treat others normally and positively but being told that your interaction was negative.
I’m not sure this is all a bad thing. The actual event that sparked me thinking about writing on this topic was a local business that experienced a fire. I’ve never been to this business, but I still felt bad when I read that they would be closed for an unknown amount of time, because I know it probably means the workers who can barely make a living are going to have reduced or no hours; the business owner will now have expenses and less profit (and while some companies are able to compensate their CEOs at an unethically high level, small businesses tend to be much less profitable). In the comments of the news article, while I saw some sympathetic posts, a lot of the sympathy was tempered with comments expressing sadness that they would not be able to patronize the business; and other comments that were less kind.
It troubles me on the larger societal level as well as on the smaller interpersonal level that so many people seem to have so little empathy for others.
Small Acts of Connection and Empathy
One of the ways that I do see empathy expressed commonly are in small interpersonal acts, such as a “How are you? Good/Bad weather we’re having, isn’t it?” and holding the door for others. I love these little interactions; I treasure the moments I can brighten a service worker’s day.
Well, about that. I feel awkward when I try to explain about trying to make people smile, especially service workers, because most companies force employees to be friendly to customers. One of my worst social fears is that I would force someone to pretend to be happy. I want to genuinely give someone a little laugh, not cause them to have to force a smile while internally they resent my interaction. It’s about forging a tiny, brief, human connection. It’s about treating people like the human beings they are. It’s about creating a blip of solidarity about being human, together in this world — in what is otherwise probably just a transactional event.
But I think it is critical to approach others with empathy. One of the common areas I see a lack of empathy is for those accused of crimes, or even convicted of crimes. To some folks, a criminal essentially becomes lesser — subhuman, even. Sure, a convicted criminal is someone who has nearly certainly (because our justice system is not perfect and innocent people get released after years of prison time more than most people think) harmed others, but some people seem to think they should spend their entire life in prison. But years are longer than you think by hearing a number. Put someone away for 10-15 years and that is a significant chunk of their life that is gone. And it’s even worse because we don’t try to help those in prison. We should give them humane living conditions, giving them mental and physical health resources, gving them education and counselling. We should make prison time a positive, such that they are ready to participate fully in society once they’re out, and they have a foundation to do so. Ideally, companies should be competing to hire those released from prison, knowing that they are going to be good and productive members of society. And if you think that sounds unfair to “the rest of us”, perhaps we should make sure the rest of us have those resources as well!
I realize it’s asking an awful lot for more empathy when we’re out driving. After all, anyone driving slower than I’m driving is a menace, and anyone driving faster is an absolute idiot. But I think one reason we all struggle in traffic is that it’s hard to see our fellow drivers out there – we see cars and trucks. So this inanimate object in my way is being an idiot. And ever make a mistake and wish you could say “Oops, sorry!!!” to other drivers? It’s hard. How many times has someone cut you off then realized they did so and you’ll never know they felt like crap, because to you, you just see the car acting badly and you don’t know they feel awful. Or maybe they don’t — maybe they don’t have empathy because our society rewards individualism.
The Call to Action
Why is this all important? I firmly believe that a lack of empathy is one of the foundational causes for division in our society. If we all cared about all of us — individually and as a whole — I think our oligarchs would have a harder time fomenting the divisions that they do. They have successfully convinced us that it’s “us against them” – with the “them” being others that are mostly like us, and very different from the elite unethical wealthy who truly live in a different world and reality from the rest of us who struggle to make it day after day.
It has taken me a very long time to be empathetic to my political opponents. But after realizing part of what makes us different, I’ve realized that we’re really not as different as it seems. One of the huge things that is important to that group is the idea of family. You take care of your family; your family takes care of you. And I realized: That is the same empathy I’m asking for people to have towards all people in our society. They have that empathy already. All we need to do is figure out how to get everyone to realize that we’re all human, no matter who we are or where we are; no matter our culture or country; no matter our identity or gender or sexual preference or “race”. We’re all human, and we all generally want to work a fair job for fair wages, go home and spend quality time with our family and friends.
All I’m asking is to remember that all of us are human, and to try and treat everyone that way. That’s the only way we can all work together to make a better life for all of us.
