Posties
I have heard everyone say "Well, I don't care what people think."
Apathy is a response, you don't care, because you acknowledged the opposition which means initially you do/did and may still care.
Conclusively is it possible to not care? and examine the opposition(Which is the process of becoming apathetic towards a specific thing.)
Or does it depend on severity, does a small amount of not caring equate to caring?
Do you or do you not care?
I've found that the vast majority of people say that they do not care what people think of them. Yet I've also found that in people's behavior, most people have a very strong sensitivity when it comes to what their peers think of them. So people are contradicting their words with their actual personality and actions.
However, I'm not saying that these people know that they are lying to themselves. In fact these people who say "I don't care what people think of me" could be lying to themselves while simultaenously convinced that they actually really don't care what people think of them.
It's a part of human pyschology that's been developed through evolutionary history. Human beings are social creatures and we've evolved by being ones, and thus we've developed social defense mechanisms. One is lying, humans are good at lying (In fact human beings are the only creatures that can lie if we strictly stick to the idea that you can only lie if you have command over a linguistic language). The reason being is that evolutionary biologists believe that humans who lied to their peers had a better chance to survive and reproduce than humans who did not lie (or weren't good liers).
The best way to be a good lier is to be good at self deception, the reason is is because if you're convinced of your own lie, then you will not produce body language and a tone of voice that implies you are being dishonest, and most communication is done through these two vehicles.
How am I connecting this to people saying "I don't care what other people think of me?" Well again, I think this goes back to the fact that human beings are social creatures. A common trait that alpha creatures have in a certain pack is that they tend to not care what others think of them, well at least they are less sensitive to it than the other beta members of the tribe. So that's why I believe that people who say "I don't care what other people think of me" is actually people trying to increase their social status and social worth. They are trying to send a message to others that they are unique, or they are more alpha, they are a leader, etc, etc.
As to the question of whether I care about what people think of me, well I personally would say yes I do care. But my actions may say otherwise, lets take a look at my actions. I don't have any friends online or offline (none), in real life when people get to know me they will notice and point out that I do many things that are eccentric, and I also don't bathe very often as well, I only shower about once a week.
So actually my behavior actually says two things (or perhaps I'm making a false dichotomy) either I don't care very much about what people think of me, or I'm depressed and have some psychological problem. I mean for example with the information about my actions I've provided, one could think of the possibility that I actually am very sensitive to what people think of me, and as a result I am a shut in and don't socialize with people.
It's up to you though to pick which one you think is true about me, and I think which one you choose to pick says something about yourself.
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