Pretending to Care

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Lots of people pretend to care. Few of them actually do. Some of the pretenders don't know what they do or understand that it's disingenuous. It is.

Most people only really care about people they like. Most people only like people they actually know. Given that we don't know that many people, we like even fewer and care about even fewer still. It's not heartlessness or purposed evil, it's simply because they're not people we know. Granted some people will pretend to be bleeding hearts, but their care cannot really be genuine. If you want to know what people really are like, look at how they treat those close to them.

In his novella, The Screwtape Letters CS Lewis adeptly handles this. Screwtape tells Wormwood to "direct the malice to his immediate neighbors whom he meets every day and the benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes very real and the benevolence largely imaginary" (letter the 6th). It's all well and good to feel bad for Germans you have never met, but it isn't real if you hate your wife, your kids, or your employer. That's where the real tests of charity lie.

Our politicians operate under the premise that they care about us. They do not know us. We are in the remote circumference, and as such their benevolence is largely imaginary. When people do come into the inner circle, like Joe the Plummer or Ryan Rhodes, they show what they really think about the Average American. They lie to you and then expect you to find common ground with them. They establish the premise that they care about you. How can they if they do not like you? HOw can they like people they have not met?

They pretend. Like it or not, most of what you see is a play. People play parts to win favor, get support, or leverage some other way to their own advancement. It's what gets women to sleep with men who pretend to love them because they know how to say the right things, and it's what gets people to vote for politicians who eventually hurt them with laws 'for their own good'. They look out for people they like. If you also happen to benefit, it's because you share some commonality with people they already like. It's coincidental.

I know many people want to hear what they want to hear. Many people do not want the truth. They want answers; they want action; they want motion and activity, because they equate that with change and hope and progress as if all change is good, as if everything for which we hope is good, and as if progress can be made when you've come to the edge of a cliff. I know people want quick solutions. We're in an age of "fast foods, instant messaging, on-demand movies, and immediate answers to the most trivial or profound questions". Sometimes we forget that the things in nature that are quick, like quicksand and quicksilver, are dangerous. Good things come to those who patiently wait for a good answer or when possible an even better one. People who care will look for and offer that kind, because you are real to them.