I'd normally be wary of making broad-brush assumptions about others, but unfortunately you're probably right. But such are the times that we might be seeing a change in this. Here's hoping.Katharine wrote:... I think we can all agree that a fair number of people don't worry about something if it doesn't affect (or, doesn't negatively affect) them or theirs.
It's why I always try to be able to take context into account.Katharine wrote:Now, if the server at the local diner gives you a slice of pie but makes Jeff pay for his, that is where the two of you might disagree on fairness or just-ness. He will say it's not fair because everyone should have to pay for the pie they consume, and he might have a point. You might say it's fair because Jeff makes well enough to not only buy his slice of pie but the whole diner, while you just lost your job, and you might have a point.
At my watering hole one newcomer's behavior had in short order earned him a heap of disfavor from others; they were judging him to be a bad person, and some were so aggravated by him that if violence were done to him, they were to the point that they would have cheered it on. But I had gotten to know him just a bit more than the rest had, and it was evident to me the the poor fellow was actually harmless except to himself. There was no malice in him, but he was subject to some kind of mental condition, and was suffering in his own personal hell that drove him endlessly from one impulsive bad decision to another; he desperately wanted a friend, but his intrusive manner and inability to read a situation drove people away. He was effectively a helpless bystander to being the very agent of his crap life becoming more crap. They hadn't considered this possibility until I offered my take on the matter. While we still wanted nothing to do with him due to his unpredictability, and his landing in jail was only a matter of time because he couldn't help himself out of his all-too-obvious downward spiral, at least we had this newfound perspective to better inform and help moderate our need to keep our distance. It wasn't actually cavalier reckless disregard we were seeing, but self-destructiveness and a bad sense of strategy, writ large and before our very eyes. Eventually and to no one's surprise, he yet again fell afoul of the law, went on the run, and that's the last I've heard of him.
There was nothing anyone could have done to help him - a beating wouldn't have worked, either - because his pathology, or at least his pattern of decision-making, was long out of his hands. But at least now we had perspective. It matters.