I’m wondering how some people lack the ability to understand that people have very different experiences/lives

[Barsh]

Musing really. Couple of threads prompted this and a comment from a friend.

Friend was asking what special talent my autistic nephew has....none really unless you count the ability to make his feelings about wanting chips known...but he isn’t a maths genius or RAinman

Posters piling in on poster who didn’t want her Father with frontal lobe dementia to stay at Christmas. Their experience of dementia was obviously limited to watching a bit of telly...with gentle old grannies being a bit forgetful.

The poster who is trying to clear debt and wants a bit of cheering up being told to go and get a £150 hair cut.

Before I get asked what my point is, I’m not really sure.

People really do live in a bubble. The amount of cognitive dissonance around is appalling, and I think it sometimes gets worse as people age. I am on a very average household income and have worked, in the past, amongst wealthy people - it was a huge eye-opener and quite depressing.

That's interesting you should start this thread because I was just thinking the other day that this sort of polarised thinking is getting much worse.

I see it a lot on the election threads (people who vote Tory shouldn't be able to sleep at night/Corbyn voters are brainwashed dreamers/all brexit voters are racist idiots). I think it's a dangerous place to be and I say that as a leftie remainer. I have an acquaintance who constantly posts pro-labour stuff online. Then the other day he posted the one about people's only reason for voting conservative is that they dislike Corbyn and I just thought he's got to that point where he literally can't even imagine a situation where a person might be inclined to think differently to him.

I also think social media algorithms encourage this sort of bubble mentality. I saw a poster on here once refer to it as a culture war ie dividing people into two very different camps and I sometimes believe that without a bit of empathy for our fellow citizens that's the way we're heading!

There ARE quite a lot of people who have stated to me that Corbyn is the reason they aren't voting Labour this time.

Equally, I've seen people on here who say they can't vote for Boris Johnson

People seem to forget the public don't elect the leader.

There’s a real lack of critical thinking. And also the ability to accept that the views of others can be equally valid even if you don’t agree with them.

I can be really guilty of black and white thinking. But I try not to wilfully upset people. Even people I’m never going to meet.

I totally get what you mean OP. From my own experience,I find that so many people cannot understand what it is like to live with a disability. I have osteo and rheumatoid arthritis,(in numerous joints) plus fibromyalgia. RA and fibromyalgia are notorious for causing extreme tiredness,to the point of exhaustion,added to which,I am in constant pain. But so many people seem surprised when I say that I can't stand up for a couple of hours to prepare a roast dinner,or work part time. As far as they are concerned,I am just being lazy. And I'm really not. It exhausts me just having a shower,washing my hair and getting dressed.

On a thread a poster said that the cost of NCT antenatal wasn't expensive or prohibitive. If I remember correctly it was around 250 quid.
My mother does not understand that people who 'should just get jobs' outweigh the actual vacancies. Actually the Government doesn't understand that either when they are keeping people poor in the hope that it may motivate them to get work

The link between (lack of ) empathy and right wing tendencies is I understand just factual, not
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/canyourrpoliticspredictthowempathiccyouare

I have learnt a lot from MN. I struggled to understand people's lives, so different from my own. Mn has opened my eyes. Even recently.

Many, many people are very, very stupid.

Yes especially on here!

I always remember a few years ago a poster posted on the Christmas board for ideas for Christmas on a tiny budget (I think it was £50). She was given loads of good advice like buy a chicken instead of a turkey but one poster “helpfully” suggested that lobsters were on offer for £15 in Lidl 😂 she clearly couldn’t understand that lobster isn’t an essential part of Christmas!

I despair at both the lack of imagination and lack of common sense displayed by so many people towards others' situations. Some of that, I suppose, could be explained away simply by labelling them as 'thick' but sadly, I'm not convinced an absence of intelligence accounts for most examples of missing empathy.

More to the point, I've come to the conclusion that many are inherently selfish. They don't want to acknowledge the difficulties others face with empathy and/or sympathy because once you accept a particularly difficult/stressful/scary/dangerous/upsetting situation exists it's then often incumbent upon you to demonstrate some sort of 'care' ..... be that emotional support, practical help or financial assistance. So ..... what you find instead, in my opinion (and, on occasion, in my experience) is that people will either minimise and dismiss what they see, or what they've been told, as in variations of 'it can't be that bad ... why don't you (insert some impossible 'solution' here)' or, they'll get quite hostile about it and claim you're exaggerating, attention seeking, or lying, or not trying 'hard enough'. Either way, having thrown cold water of one sort or another over somebody else's experience that person can then wash their hands of it all.

And yes, I appreciate of course that if you're overwhelmed with your own problems it's not always easy to be as empathetic/sympathetic as you would usually wish to be but if we go back to the type of threads here where the OP is met with what seems like baffling incredulity and/or a complete misinterpretation of their circumstances I think it's stretching it to assume that everyone who replies in that vein is caught up in their own issues. Though I do wonder if some of it is about making themselves feel better by kicking someone when they're down.

@Oliversmumsarmy

at least she uses the subjunctive correctly!

I think a lot of people only mix with others who have very similar socio-economic backgrounds and family situations similar to their own.

As I grow older, the more people I meet, the differing life circumstances I realise how little awareness I had when I was younger.

It's so true that one person's experience of a particular situation is not the same as another's. And just because we know one person in a particular situation eg has a parent with dementia, a child with autism , a partner who has lost their job etc doesn't mean that the next person we meet in that situation will have the same experience.

IRL I got told how I was lucky my dad only has dementia and not cancer.

I agree OP.

I find threads about kids highlight how unimaginative some people are about what it’s like to parent non perfect kids. Luckily for me I’ve got a mix of kids so I get to experience a good cross section of the child - parent relationship. 😅

I have learnt a lot from being on Mumsnet. I like to think I was always aware of things but Mumsnet has opened my eyes to a lot of things.

TBH, the problem is not so much that some posters fail to understand other people’s situations it’s more that they often do so in an obnoxious way.

Even basic things like a poster moaning about how it's been raining all day and they've been stuck in the house. Pound to a penny someone will come on saying What??? It's been sunny all day, I've no idea what you're talking about. It's like it's completely inconceivable that not everyone on MN is within a 10 mile radius.
And don't get me started on different school holiday times 🙄

....or people posting from abroad. In a different time zone or season.

Oh and step parents, OW and anyone who doesn’t drive.

Goodness this resonated with me, you're absolutely right OP. I recently ended things with a long term DP who walked around the zoo telling me it really wasn't a patch on seeing the "real deal"; the safaris he'd done in Kenya several years previously and how he couldn't understand why people wouldn't just go to Africa instead of having a day in London to see the giraffes.

He used to act as thought he really understood those from less privileged backgrounds and because I'd gone to a private school (bursary paid ironically) I couldn't possibly understand other people's points of view if they were from a lower socioeconomic background

I work with homeless people and hope to foster in the future. He had absolutely no idea how challenging others' lives can be.

For me it's anything to do with race and my lived experience as a black woman, whenever I point out prejudice or racism, I'm the one being oversensitive or reading too much into things or flat out - no that does not happen - when I am recounting a story of something that happened to me. The thread that upset me and just made me realise there is no hope is one where a woman was complaining how people constantly touched her mixed race daughter's hair and all the posters saying no it's not a racist thing and they should appreciate people find their hair nice, people are just curious about curly hair despite
-numerous black and mixed race posters saying it is and they feel dehumanised when it happens
-they dont like it and noone has the right to touch anyone else or make them feel uncomfortable but somehow black and mixed race people are supposed to overlook their feelings of being uncomfortable and not like an action and appreciate someone crossing their personal space
-links expressing this sentiment

And accusations about black people always making everything about race, no it's an effective way to shut down communication about problematic behaviour and make the victim responsible for someone else's actions

Agree OP. The phrase I love best from my childhood was "There but for the grace of god go I" - used when anyone else was troubled/distressed/ poor/needing help. The first and only time I've heard it used in the US was by Michelle Obama in her address to the democratic convention in 2016. Successful people seem to think now "here because of the grace of god go I". No it doesn't work like that. People have no idea of the luck that is involved in their successful lives (and I say that as someone lucky and successful - but raised by parents who understood the different lives people led. One of my earliest memories is my dad coming home from delivering meals on wheels - probably to a grandfather living with them - the saturday before christmas and being so upset, ransacking our rooms for stuff - he had delivered food to a house where there were kids who were getting nothing for christmas the next day - nothing).

Mind you the dementia thread impressed me more with the outpouring of support and understanding for the OP than the few stupid posts. I hope the OP felt that.

Struggling with a complex mental illness I have experienced the lack of comprehension from people who don't seem to understand.

Someone who once stated if I could attend therapy once a week then surely get a volunteering job, I was just being lazy. She, of course, doesn't understand the battle I go through on a weekly basis to actually go to therapy in the first place.

I remember the thread about the hair touching, some of the comments were jaw dropping.

My husband says that right wing people just basically lack empathy and the ability to imagine themselves in another person’s shoes.
Do women really still exist who think it’s ok to parrot their husbands’ opinions? Don’t you have any independent thoughts of your own?

I read the dementia thread with trepidation - as someone who has dealt with a similar situation in real life I’m staggered, despite all the publicity given to dementia nowadays, by how many people still seem to think that it is typified by cute old ladies putting their spectacles in the fridge. Pleased to note that as the thread progressed there was lots of good advice being given and the unsympathetic fools who had never experienced such an issue were having their arses handed to them on a plate.