corpse―୨୧⋆ ˚ · 10 answers · 2h
question of the day!!
do you care what others think of you? if so, why?
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Yes, I don't know why. It's just a natural human trait. I guess part of is that, to some degree, we all share the same mental space(s), so others' judgments of me naturally impinge on my own judgment of myself. Another factor may be the very legitimate fear of losing social status. Having low social status/respect is painful and subtly but profoundly limiting.
And people are always touting the inspirational meme that you shouldn't care what others think of you (as if it were that easy even if it were true), but a person who doesn't care what anybody thinks of them is prone to become a monster, totally incorrigible, having no means of identifying and fixing behavioral problems that maybe only others can see.
Another thing I could say is a reason I care that people think of me is that I have low self-esteem or something like that due to having been severely emotionally abused while growing up. I think self-consciousness, and the low self-esteem that probably always goes with it, are usually if not always the products of emotional abuse in childhood, and emotional abuse is very common in this world.
One reason for emotional abuse of children being common, but far from the only reason, is that parents are obligated to raise their children alone before they've even had a chance to mature themselves. An adult of child-rearing age is essentially still a kid. This is an unnatural social development, partly due to the loss of small, trusted communities which used to allow children to roam around the neighborhood freely and stay at anyone's house they liked, and then later made worse by the industrial revolution which was the origin of the nuclear family, that is, families limited to one or two parents and their children, as opposed to households that include extended family and multiple generations. It's not supposed to be this way.