Caring Schmering

Empathy. It’s overrated. Gets you into all sorts of trouble. And yet not having any also seems to get you into trouble. You can’t win.

Take, as exhibit one, this photo:

Woman walking, I like to call it. It was taken by a chap called Jamie Lorriman when a mentally unstable chap with a grudge decided he’d drive a car over Westminster Bridge and then stab a policeman. You know, that crime that happened on Wednesday that absolutely no newspaper or broadcaster is turning into a huge deal that can be appropriated by bigots to further their own agenda. The photo was subsequently used by a bigoted fool (whose name really isn’t worth knowing, but oddly enough turns out he’s a Trump supporter, go figure) as evidence that she didn’t care about what was going on (‘look at her, look at her, just casually walking past a dying man without any empathy at all!’) and that therefore Muslims = bad and Christians = good. The photographer came out in support of her today to say ‘well of course she cared, she was in shock, look at all these other photos I took which show her to be distraught,’ etc, bla.

Whatever. The point is why do we care (ah ha, I see what you did there) whether she cares or not? I know, empathy is what makes us human, how would we cope if no one cared about anyone else, society would collapse, Google would become sentient, our bank accounts would marry our cars and we’d all go to Hell in a handbasket, fine. But. Really?

Altruism, selflessness, the principle of having concern for others. Lauded, considered a virtue, is the basis of religions and society. But it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Altruism could be loyalty, the concern for special relationships, friends, family and so on and in that form it’s admittedly useful from an evolutionary standpoint because (a) it seems to ensure that parents are nice to their children, and (b) is reciprocal, in that the nicer you are the nicer people generally are to you. Which brings me to the fact that there is some debate about whether people can actually be altruistic. To be truly selfless, to truly care, there has to be nothing in it for you. There’s a cost to you, but there’s no benefit. But there is a theory called psychological egoism, which holds that humans are always – always – motivated by self-interest. The desire to experience pleasure and to avoid pain. Being nice makes us feel good, it makes it more likely that others will be nice to us.

To take the concept of altruism and turn it into a stick with which to beat people with strikes me as being the antithesis of, er, empathy. On the one hand it’s saying you’re a good person because you care, and on the other hand it’s demonstrating your complete lack of care by attacking someone else’s reactions (and in this particular case it’s decrying a lack of tolerance by being intolerant, but no one ever said bigots were logical I guess).

Just…let’s understand that you can be a good person while not necessarily giving a shit about everything. Some of us find it a bit harder to do.

Sorry, what?

Today I ‘ave been mostly getting a referral to an ADD clinic. No, not for La Child, although Lord knows that wouldn’t be a massive surprise, would it? No, for me. Moi. The grown up, sensible, healthy (I didn’t say ‘fit’, stop sniggering at the back there) member of the family.


I’m not quite sure what to make of it.


It’s not as if the referral came as a massive surprise. I didn’t walk in saying ‘Doctor, doctor, I have the sniffles,’ only for her to turn around and say ‘Right then, it’s the ADD clinic for you.’ That would be a crap joke. I was aware that by saying to the doctor ‘here is my list of symptoms, do you think it might be ADD?’ a referral might ensue. It’s more that I’m in two minds (oh, ha ha, very funny, I see what you did there) about whether I’m wasting everyone’s time.


I realise that a little background may be necessary, so sit down children, make yourselves comfortable, pass around that plate of apple quarters and let me tell you a story. Ever since always I’ve had trouble concentrating. Focus has been an issue. My mother used to say, as La Wife currently does (and as I do if anyone asks), that I get bored easily. Scarily easily. I flit from thing to thing. I get terribly interested in something, anything, for a very brief period of time and then I move on. I’ve always thought that this may have something to do with me just finding it very easy to learn stuff. I pick things up very quickly, so I need to keep moving on from thing to thing. But that’s the macro level. The very same thing happens at the micro level. As I write this blog my mind wanders to other things: what work should I be doing, how much should I be charging that client, I wish it would stop raining, where has my boss disappeared to, where the Hell is that noise coming from, how do I stop it, what happens if I hit it, I wonder if La Wife has received my text yet, ooh, ooh, what time is it, have I missed that meeting, where’s my building pass, my glasses are annoyingly dirty, what’s happening on Facebook, I wonder what the trains will be like tonight, and so on and on and on and on. Getting to the end of a sentence is murder; getting to the end of this blog will be a marathon. Getting through a day is a frustrating exercise in plate spinning. It’s a miracle I ever made it through school, let alone university, professional exams, a career, life.


But that’s precisely why it is that I wonder whether in truth I’m wasting everyone’s time. Because I did get through school, and I did get through university, and I did get through my professional exams, and my career, and life (so far). I just get bored. Doesn’t everyone?


But then again, let’s look at the symptoms: difficulty focusing, work takes longer than it should, attention to detail must do better, commitment to getting stuff finished slightly lacking; difficulty focusing on conversations, worry so much about concentrating on what someone’s saying that by the end of the sentence you realise that you haven’t heard half of it, or zone out half way through a conversation and get shouted at for not paying attention (by La Wife mainly); chronic impulsivity, do now, worry later, I’ve even bought a house impulsively (‘yeah, fine, it’ll do,’ etc), and I certainly tend to say stuff I almost immediately regret. And the tapping, good God the tapping. I can’t sit still. Drives La Wife mad. Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap tap tap. That and the Italian bouncing leg of tedium. And the continuous fiddling with something, anything. Maybe there’s something in this.
The alternative is that I’m just a rude bugger. An impolite sort beset by a low boredom threshold. Which would just make me a horrible person, and it’s certainly not what I want to be, so by definition I can’t be, because otherwise I wouldn’t care, would I?


Except I don’t always care. Empathy levels: negligible to none. Worrying about other people requires effort, work, attention, and I don’t have much of those to spare. So perhaps I am just a rude bugger. Who knows?


Hopefully the consultant to whom I’m being referred knows. And if it is ADD? Well, then probably nothing. I seem to have managed to reach the ripe young age of [not important, nothing to see here, move along, move along] without assistance so I’ll probably continue in that manner. It would just be nice to know.


And if it isn’t ADD? Well, then I’m just a rude bugger. Tap tap tap.