Does Caring Matter?

I was included in an awesome conversation lately, wherein one person had spoken out to the general public saying basically, "I care; even if I never meet you or can never help you, please know that I care about you"; and another person had responded that such internal-only caring, bereft of utilitarian benefit, is useless to people.

Here was my response:

The reason caring matters, even when it's only one person's state of mind, is that it changes everyone's (who learns about it) perception of how the world and the people in it work.

We all act differently when we perceive the world to be at least somewhat populated with people who do care — who, maybe they can't help us now, but if they knew we needed help and they could give it, they would.  Knowing that those people exist, and especially that they aren't even that rare, makes each of us more willing to reach out and help others than we would be otherwise.  It makes us less likely to give up, less likely to victimize or use others for our own ends, and less likely to treat others like potential aggressors or criminals.  Think of how you'd live in a small town filled with people you know (just to use an easy example), versus how you'd live in a dangerous dog-eat-dog city.  It's not impossible, or even hard, to show empirically how those perceptions affect not only individual happiness and long-term security, but the structure of society as a whole.

So yes, people who care should speak up.  Those who can hear you, even if they have nothing to gain directly by your caring, are better off psychologically, and freer to be the people they want to be, because they know you're out there. 

The kind of skepticism that says "caring doesn't matter unless I can get something from it", is already coming from a place of assuming that most people don't care; that humans are not fundamentally connected and that what happens to one of us doesn't matter to another except where it matters materially.  That some people go through life thinking this way is itself proof of why good people need to be a louder portion of our societies.  Someone who'd seen the effects of genuinely caring people being available to help in surprise situations would already know that they're a valuable resource simply by virtue of their existence.  You don't love them for what they do for you; you love them because if you, or someone you love, needed a helping hand, the fact that people like [the man who spoke up] exist means there's a much greater chance that you or they would get it, freely given.  And that means you live in a different world than if people like that didn't exist, or didn't care.  And the world you perceive yourself to live in is very often the one your actions reinforce and create.