“They don’t care about anybody but themselves!” What might that mean?

When a person is frustrated about another person “only caring about themselves,” there’s two possibilities that the person might mean. One is: “I think this person has a lot of potential and have offered them a lot of opportunities to show me they care about me, but they don’t.” Or “This person says they care about me, but instead, they’re just using me to make their lives better and care about nobody but themselves.”

Now, your job, as the person to whom this person is venting, is to figure out if they are complaining about being used or not being able to use somebody else. If the latter, they feel that “if that person cannot be manipulated into caring about me” (the narcissist), “they cannot possibly care about anybody else, either.”

DO NOT get tempted to help that person yourself. If you find that their complaint is that they cannot manipulate this other person into self-sacrificing themselves so they get to continue being selfish themselves, they’ll also attempt to use you. Whenever another person must self-sacrifice for the good of another person, that is unfair. If you believe in the equality of people, you cannot accept that one person will remain selfish, and another will have to self-sacrifice for their selfishness.¹

1. I must also stress governmental support will protect people from selfish people, who cannot claim they’ll die if you don’t help them. Also, there’s an argument to be made on everyone’s right to basic living, even if they don’t work. After all, if an entity wants to govern all land making hunting and gathering impossible/illegal, they should compensate for that the best they see fit. ↩

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