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Position:Home>Arts & Humanities> If you don't care what people say or think about you, why do you get angry/defen


Question:

If you don't care what people say or think about you, why do you get angry/defensive and react?

There are lots of people out there who claim that they do not care what other people think or say about them. Yet, they will still react and respond. Usually in a negative, contradicting way. Being offended, hurt, angry, sad are all show that you do in fact care. Otherwise it would be like a dog saying it doesn't like your fashion sense because you have human skin, you woudn't care...you wouldn't lash out at it. Stupid example, but... :)


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: You are exactly right. Though it would be going to far to call them outright liers.

Most people think that they are their lives. That is pretty much the bare and dry definition of ego. And the ego is no more capable of letting go of worrying about what others think than the body is capable of living without food and water.

You see, the ego, while granting us our sense of individuality, is really more like a hub on a network than some isolated entity that could live in a vacuum. We define ourselves in various ways, but all of the ways that we define ourselves depend upon comparisons to people/things/ideas outside ourselves.

For example, say you consider yourself intelligent. Well, what does that mean? It has no meaning unless you can compare yourself to others. You may be very intelligent when surrounded by a group of teenagers, but if you were in a room full of advanced theoretical physicists and scholars holding PhDs from the world's greatest universities you might not be so intelligent by comparison. And even those "brains" might not be so intelligent if they were surrounded by a group of extraterrestrials . . . lol.

You may consider yourself beautiful, for another example, but if everyone around you suddenly became convinced you were ugly and wanted nothing to do with you, how long could you maintain this self-image?

Indeed, even our more abstract ideas about ourselves are all dependent on a social and physical network which define the ways these ideas work, and again, the ego is like a hub in this network, exchanging information, redirecting it, redefining it in subtle ways . . . but still dependent on the network nevertheless.

And because the ego is dependent always on external factors, its integrity and stability (i.e., its ability to maintain the same self-image) is always potentially threatened, no matter how remote of a possibility this may seem at the time. The ego seeks to survive, and survival for it means maintaning its self-image. People become angry when they are insulted because the ego feels threatened. And there will always be some situation, even if only in theory, in which the ego will feel threatened.

Now, having said all of that, it should be remembered, however, that some individuals do, in fact, have more internal integrity and strength than do others. One person can be devastated over the slightest offense, another can shrug it off without thinking twice. Why?

To make a long story short, it seems to be due to the fact that there are layers of depth with which we can define ourselves. A young teenager, for example, not yet having formed a strong sense of self may latch on to certain superficial external factors, such as the way they dress, and belonging to a certain group in order to define themselves (what you wear, being so arbitrary in the larger scheme of things, requires a group to reinforce the idea that there is something true about it). If they look at a more mature adult who is wearing something pretty lame by their definition, they might redicule such an individual. But that mature individual, having identified with something deeper than dress could care less, because they know style of dress is pretty superficial and meaningless in defining who they are, thus the insults of those teenagers will bounce off them like water off a stone. And even if they are slightly insulted, such feelings won't last long or have any great impact on their life (whereas for a young teen it might cause an emotional crisis.) Ok, so that is a pretty weak example, but you get the drift.

And this is exactly what people mean when they say they don't care what others think or say about them. What they are essentially suggesting is that they have identified with something deeper than the criticisms of others are identifying, and thus aren't threatened by those criticisms. But that isn't to say that under some circumstances they won't feel threatened, because there is always something that can threaten the ego, as long as that threat meets them at their level.

(It is also important to remember that the ego is made up of several layers itself. With each deeper layer, the more superficial layers are still kept, just that they don't become the focus on that individuals identitiy. So while we eventually outgrow worrying about whether we dress the "right way", a part of the ego will continue to worry about this, albeit it will be a much weaker voice than before.)

So while in one sense when people say they don't care what people say or think about them they are speaking the truth, it must be admitted that there is always something that would cause them to care. (To get out entirely, I imagine, requires one enter the spiritual, in which one attempts to transcend ego altogether. I doubt the Dalai Lama is easily insulted.)

There is always more to the story, but that's what I can offer now.