I've been self-examining this quite a bit. People want to not care so they can avoid the pain one can feel... One makes themselves vulnerable, or at least *believes* they are vulnerable.
Oddly enough, taking these nootropics and supplements to alter oxytocin, I was better able to manage the ups and downs of ordinary emotions, stress, etc. My ADHD was better, or at least not as stressful. There were other positive changes. The negative seemed to be that other emotions and attachments were heightened and longer-lasting. Emotions were able to reach deeper and actually be explored more. Now, as I've been gradually going off these things, I already feel the slide back into shallower emotion, detachment and more cognitive empathy-style thinking.
What has changed? What has remained? I don't know.
As regards caring -- to bring it back on-topic -- I think one can examine neurobiological impacts of the environment the state of our culture and society is undergoing. There is heightened sensitivity, reactionary societal outrage, the rumblings of potential violence in some places, massive uncertainty and hyper-awareness. People are pacifying themselves into numbness. The extreme reactions are being compensated by opposite and equal attempts of extreme reaction. People in the middle try to find their solace in detached disillusionment, probably.
You should enjoy the emotions you have. All of them. If you didn't have any, you'd be dead. That's no fun at all.
There's a way to care, be vulnerable, and still go on. Emotions never actually kill you...they may drive you to want to, but the emotions themselves aren't actually dangerous.
"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
I think the fear revolves around a sense of control being lost or something. As though caring means you won't be in control of your emotional life, at the whims of the fate of others, etc. While there's some truth to that, where is the danger, right? Feeling bad? Wanting to help someone that needs it? Having concern? Finding out they're incapable of returning those feelings? Abusing them and taking advantage of them? You're still in control, really. People are scared of themselves.
Thrall to the Wire of Self-Excited Circuit.
