Is it normal to feel completely indifferent to strangers' lives?

[AmusedTaupePlayer]

Hi all,
Bit of an odd one, but I’ve been thinking about this lately and wondering if anyone else relates.
I’ve noticed that unless someone is part of my life — family, close friends, maybe a few colleagues — I just don’t feel anything about what happens to them. Whether it’s good or bad. Someone winning the lottery, getting cancer, becoming homeless, whatever — I can understand it matters, but on a personal level, I feel nothing. Take homelessness — I get that it’s awful and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, but emotionally, I don’t care. It doesn’t affect me. I don’t feel moved by it.
It’s not that I’m unkind or malicious. I just feel emotionally neutral about people I don’t know.
I suspect more people feel like this than let on, but whenever I’ve hinted at it, people react like I’m some sort of sociopath. So if it’s that common, why is it such a taboo to say out loud?
Is this just how emotional bandwidth works? Or is something off?
Genuinely curious — would love to know if others feel the same but just don’t talk about it.

Absolutely.
What can we actually do about it though?
Unless your the type that can physically go and help out in countries that are war torn or in famine that is.
We get fed up with countries constantly at war, religious conflict, corrupt goverments, charities with a string of highly paid execs, our own country supplying arms, the list goes on.
I feel it's healthier to be switched off from the constant barrage of stress from news channels, we'd be better off only paying attention to and helping out in our own locatilty.

I don’t think it’s really possible to be ‘putting yourself in someone else’s shoes’ all the time, as there is so much suffering and misfortune all around us all day every day, and if we were to really empathise with each and every person affected, we’d be an emotional wreck the whole time. So I think perhaps we shut ourselves off to much of it just so we can focus on our own lives and get shit done.

A stranger winning the lottery- neither here nor there for me. I don’t find it interesting and don’t really care. I might feel something if the person in question seemed particularly deserving (or undeserving!) But my response would be a fleeting moment of ‘oh, that’s nice’ (or the opposite).

I was in the waiting room at the vets the other day, and a couple arrived in reception. They had come to collect their pet who had evidently died or been PTS. As the staff member led them away down the corridor, the woman began to sob. That brought a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes. In that moment I felt for that stranger and my heart went out to her. But it was a short moment and I will probably not ever think about that woman again. It was interesting actually that it provoked tears as I am not a crier in general and never cry about my own life- just very occasionally well up on a stranger’s behalf.

Because people want to feel better about themselves and if they are caring about things you're vocally being indifferent about it's just an easy way to feel superior. Either don't engage in these conversations or change the subject. You don't need to give anything to charity if you don't want to.

Perhaps because we are all humans and other people matter too. I think people suffering has something to do with everyone.
You can't help how you feel but I do think it's quite unusual. But maybe that is because most people I know work in caring professions or in organisations that aim to make things better for people generally.
Having said that I think the same way about animal charities I know some people are very moved by films of donkeys suffering or adverts showing pets who have been abused. I don't want any animals to suffer but I don't feel emotionally involved in them the way some people do

I think there’s a difference to that and what OP is saying. I’m not indifferent to other people’s sufferings, I’m about as polar opposite to a sociopath as you can get, but it would be impossible for any of us to permanently carry the emotional load of every person who is suffering, we would end up in a psychiatric hospital.

The more people who care, are invested in and support each other, the better society is for everyone (including YOU).

You are thinking about this, but currently you're looking through a rather limited lens.

The fact that many people donate to charity, for example, improves society, and ultimately it improves YOUR life. Yes - your individual life is better because of charities, even if you don't directly use their services.

Charities pick up a lot of slack from government - if people did not donate, the whole system would be under more strain, and those government funded services you mention, like the NHS, would not be as available for YOU, because taxpayer money would have to be diverted elsewhere.

So yeah, all those national and local charities are actually very much benefiting you, and all of us.

That's just one example, but when you actually look more widely, most things work in a similar way. Supporting people in other countries is actually in our own national interest, etc. There is rarely a time when helping someone else doesn't in some way, directly or indirectly, benefit you.

I think what you're saying is very common, but far from, universal OP.
Apparently there's a thought experiment-
You can save the lives of 100 British people (assuming you're in the UK) or 101 Ugandans (or anywhere else far flung that you have no connection to).
What do you do?
The vast, vast majority of people save fewer people (they don't know and will never meet) in their own country.
Every country where this has been tested gives the same result as well, people save those closer to them. Apparently the differential goes up the closer you get - 100 people in your own city v 102 Ugandans etc
Another example of this, only care about yourself/those clise to you is voting patterns. People happily vote to take services away from poor children (see Sure Start) if they think it means a little bit less tax for them.

People happily vote to take services away from poor children (see Sure Start) if they think it means a little bit less tax for them.

Yes . The problem is that those people are extremely short-sighted.

Taking services away from disadvantaged children results in those children growing up ever more reliant on the system, costing more, needing more taxpayer money, ultimately making society worse for everyone.

Helping them when they are young, helps all of us.

Helping others tends to have wide knock-on benefits for everyone, even if the immediate impact is not obvious.

I’m the same, and have been quite surprised reading this thread how many people don’t feel this at all, and worse believe that anyone who does is faking for attention.

You are selfish with limited emotional intelligence. Many people are, and that includes the ones in this thread who state that everybody is just like you, and it's all virtue signalling.

We have to be extremely thankful for the people who are not selfish. Some are born that way, others are humbled into it through life events. The unselfish ones make the world a better place.

I couldn’t agree more

Something happening to someone I don’t know will make me feel good or bad for them, but unless I’ve been exposed personally to the situation I don’t see tears.

*shed tears

Yes I agree. The examples cited don’t really reflect the point that poster is trying to make, either.

This is such an ego centric thing to say. Being NT doesn’t mean one is overwhelmed by emotion or that emotion swamps the higher functions of the brain and means you can’t problem solve.

You say you are autistic OP, think how no SEN child would ever get help, monetary or otherwise, if we all felt like you, unless they were related to the person giving the help. Did you ever get help and was it only from people who would be personally affected if you didn't?

I know many people on this thread have said they’d be unnerved to find out a friend didn’t feel emotions about other people’s situations but I’m of the opposite opinion. I can’t bear people who start crying and emoting about other people’s stuff. Especially if it was my trauma! I’d be intensely fucked off if I started telling a friend something terrible (or happy) had happened to me and they burst out crying. It may be involuntary but as far as I’m concerned it’s the most self-absorbed “grief thief” reaction going. It makes other people’s problems about you.

I was going to say OP sounds almost boastful and proud but didn’t want to get piled on.

This is hilariously dramatic but I’m really interested to hear why you’re repulsed. Personally I’m more repulsed by someone who starts sobbing about stuff that’s nothing to do with them.

God it’s not one extreme or the other!

My ex is most likely a sociopath and I wouldn’t choose to be within hundred feet of another one ever again, preferably an ocean’s width distance.

Absolutely agree. It's completely selfish and performative when people act like everything boils back to how THEY feel about it. A loved one had cancer and when they told people, some of those people cried and had my relative comfort them. So utterly selfish and self involved. The post earlier about how someone would 'burst into sobs' at someone else's grief is deeply selfish and narcissistic.

Yes, it's odd. And it strikes me that so many "empathetic" posters on this thread are SO hostile and angry 🤔

Why are people using extremes as examples of not being like OP. What about just balanced people who have a sense of humanity about them without the histrionics and attention seeking! It’s not one or the other!

No one said empathetic people can’t be hostile or angry.