How one makes themselves not care about something ?

[Platypus]

For example, a dog has just been run over - you care about what has happened because you love dogs and you know that a crime has been committed and feel the animal's pain and hate the driver for driving off and hope he gets caught and prosecuted.

Or, you laugh aloud, hope the owner gets prosecuted for not keeping the dog under control and give thanks that there's one less mutt carpping all over the pavements and parks.

[Churchill]

Or, you laugh aloud, hope the owner gets prosecuted for not keeping the dog under control and give thanks that there's one less mutt carpping all over the pavements and parks.

Oi! Watch it duckface!

[Denny]

But in your analogy the person who does nothing still cares, they choose not to act on it. Which is not the same as the indifferent person. The question was how do you make yourself not care, not how do you ignore your feelings. If it requires a conscious act to ignore something, then you do care about it. A person who genuinely doesn't care wouldn't even think about it.

And I thought "Stockhold Syndrome" was a wrestling move.

Stockholm Syndrome.

What I was saying is that 'care' is not just a feeling, it's an action based on a feeling or else it's an action based on what society deems as 'care' that may not be held by a particular individual. If you saw a child being molested or ill treated but didn't particularly like children that much, or even a particular child it was happening to, you would have a legal duty to report a crime.

So there are two dimensions to it to make 'care' valuable. Otherwise, it's worthless. Once that definition is taken aboard your argument crumbles away.

[Marina]

Aren't we assuming the thing cared about by the OP is important? Maybe s/he has obsessive-compulsive disorder, and spends two hours a day running in and out of the kitchen to keep checking the gas cooker is off, or returns to the house five times before each journey to double check the front door is locked.

If so, the best way to avoid worry about trivia is to remember, and the best way to do that is to associate it with an event perhaps involving a bit of pain, such as pinching the back of the hand hard after closing and locking the front door.

In other words, OCD sufferers could adapt our ancestors' custom of beating the bounds or "perambulating the parish" to give it its fancy name. Before the days of GPS or even maps, once a year the vicar and half the village, including the kids, would troop round the parish boundary and at key points such as bridges or the corner of a field, one of the kids would be whacked with a birch by someone who would shout at the same time "Cursed be he who moves his neighbour's boundary!"

Wasn't sadistic or anything, just a way of impressing on the young peoples' memory where the boundaries were, and the custom was probably thousands of years old.

[KathyWoolfe]

Stockholm Syndrome.

Stockholm Syndrome is the description given to the apparent attachment a hostage has to the person who has taken them hostage. The most famous example of this is where Patty Hearst was "apparently" abducted by a violent sect and then a few months later was caught on camera helping them to commit a crime (bank robbery I think it was).

[DaveB]

Come and sub for me on this gig. I stopped careing about it weeks ago and I guarentee you will too.

[2uk]

Maybe s/he has obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Yeah , I think I have that. But I don't wanna cure it since I saw a movie with Leo Dicaprio and he reached heights because of that.

Where u from Marina ?

[Denny]

Stockholm Syndrome is the description given to the apparent attachment a hostage has to the person who has taken them hostage. The most famous example of this is where Patty Hearst was "apparently" abducted by a violent sect and then a few months later was caught on camera helping them to commit a crime (bank robbery I think it was).

I know what it means, Kathy, but the term is adopted for other co-dependencies as well.

[El_Diablo]

Oh who cares.