"Don't care about what anyone else thinks."

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

This is one of those ideas that is passed around as encouraging advice all too often, and it's definitely something I'd call false wisdom.
(I'm also not sure if there's a really much of a debate point as much as me venting, but I'll put this here for now because most things I say of this nature tend to create debate.)

Competition leads to improvement. Adaptability is good. Collaboration is generally useful. More input provides more perspective.
These are all statements I imagine most people can easily agree with. They are at least staples of a properly functioning, progressive, and happy society.
With some extremely rare exceptions, practically every human wants to have mutually beneficial relationships with other humans. We want to work together, we want to share ideas and experiences, and we all want to help each other grow and improve.
In fact, we have such a strong preference for this that we have very harsh penalties for people who don't play nicely with this model. We fine, incarcerate, and execute people who violate our arbitrary societal laws, and we lock away anyone whose thought process cannot be easily understood by us (assuming the pills we give them to make them think more like the rest of us don't work).
So where the fuck do we get off telling people not to care what anyone else thinks?

Consider how children develop their social values, such as their behavior and their morality. They go to playgrounds and interact with peers, and through those experiences they all learn together how their words, their actions, and for the more clever ones, how their demeanor, influences people around them. We've all done some really stupid shit as children, and we've learned not to do it again. We learn from our mistakes. We try new things, stick with ones that work, and abandon ones that don't. And we identify which things work and which ones don't by the feedback we get when we try them.
Consider abused children, neglected children, and children who were raised by fucking wolves. They don't have the same opportunities to develop functioning social values, and so theirs are stunted. They didn't have that feedback, and so they didn't learn those lessons the rest of us did. It's quite easy to see why they stand out from the rest of us. (Please note that I'm not saying that this is at all the children's fault. Despicable parenting is by no means a rarity.)
Why on Earth would you recommend that someone ignore the feedback he gets? There is no improvement this way. There is no growth.

It really depresses me to think that there are parents all over the world who tell their children not to pay any mind to what all their classmates say about some stupid behavior or hobby or something that their child has. It bothers me that so much reinforcement goes into the notion that there is nothing wrong with a very wrong thing a child is doing. If you tell your child that he's probably losing friends because he likes to wipe his snot all over them, certainly he will feel bad, but he will learn to stop. But if you tell him that it's all their fault for not being able to put up with a silly little flaw like wiping your fucking snot on someone else, then that behavior is going to stick around and no lesson will have been learned. Honest feedback is good. Honest feedback is very fucking good.

Failing to care about what anyone else thinks is extremely antisocial, and is necessarily utterly intolerant. You need to damned well care about what other people think.
Naturally, don't let it blindly decide what you think and do. Don't pander. But definitely pay attention, and be ready to rethink what you're doing with the knowledge that it very well might be extremely stupid without you realizing it.

Don't get me wrong -- I am all for individuality. But individuality is not turning a blind eye to what people think; it is to understand what others think, to consider it, and to make the conscious, informed, and well-reasoned choice to go your own way anyway.
I realize that it can be difficult not to console someone who is depressed with lies after they've heard some criticism about themselves or something they do, but consider instead that they might have just heard something they needed to hear but in a way that was too harsh. Instead of feeding them more fuel for a delusion that will continue to be a disadvantage in their lives, consider offering instead some well-meaning, and polite, but honest, feedback that they clearly missed out on when they were children. It's not the quick fix that a lie can give, but it serves them better in the long-run.


And as an aside, I have to say... as much of an asshole as I can already be, I often wish I had a conscience that'd allow me to be an even more flagrant one at times. Because I still lie to people I care about to console them, even when I think they'd be better served knowing the truth. I guess I just don't want to be the one to tell them, even though I know I'll look bad if they find out later and reflect on me lying to them to make them feel better.

[Mute Monk]

For the most part, Suki, I agree with you; if you ignore feedback, especially negative feedback, life can get dicey. And I think you touched on this a bit in your post, but I feel it needs re-iteration: Individuality is as important, if not more important, then adaptibility. A society built entirely on collectivity is one that progresses very little.

Now, I'm taking a very specific and rare example, but that seems to be the norm around here: Galileo. He definitely got plenty of negative feedback, was even threatened with death for his rebellious perspective on astronomy. According to a model you described, he should've given up quite early on in his career. Now, Galileo is one of those few people who actually combine balls of steel with true genius, so (as I said before) my example doesn't apply to the general population...but you need very few exceptions to call a model flawed.

Now, I'm not supporting wiping snot on others, or other such behaviour. The line is a difficult one to define, but there comes a point where creativity is what drives society, not collectiveness. I mean, if all individualistic, rebellious minds were sunk into the murky soup of society's contentedness, we'd live in a boring world. A relatively calm one, but a boring one.

As I said at the beginning, I do support your ideas overall...but I think you put slightly too much emphasis on making society happy and not enough on the value of new ideas. Who knows, maybe wiping snot on people will become the accepted norm one day.



For those without a sense of humour, that last sentence was not meant seriously.

[SkyPanda]

A child wiping snot on themselves is not a situation in which DCAWAET would be sensibly applied.


On general dodgy feedback:

This kind of reassurance is given by somebody who believes that a /specific/ herd opinion is detrimental. It's not a blanket "don't listen to what anybody says about anything, ever" which is what you seem to be suggesting. Bear in mind that all children are constantly taught to be considerate of others, to have an awareness of self, and to accept feedback, so I don't think the general thrust of your essay thing is actually challenging the status quo.

Children often dish out criticism to other children that needs to be ignored ("hey four eyes"), and when you've got a kid bawling his eyes out it's no good playing Dr Rational and lecturing him on the merits and flaws of their childish comments. "Don't care what others think" is simple, reassuring and usually works. It's a temporary emotional band-aid that will be abandoned by the child when they mature and develop more complex social skills.


On crazy hobbies:

pursuing eccentric yet harmless hobbies and behaviours in the face of criticism is considered an admirable quality in Western society. This is because people who succeed in doing so are often happier than those who change themselves to fit in with the herd, or so the thinking goes. I tend to agree with this, but it would depend on the situation.

[otters]

Don't care about what anyone else thinks.

Translation: Cracked agrees with Tsukatu.

[Skyling]

What if someone makes fun of a child because of the color of their skin, or their sexual orientation?

[Rhekatou]

My new personal philosiphy is: "So what?"

[smartalco]

That advice is highly situational. In Suki's example, well yeah, that 'feedback' will stop you from being socially outcast. Take more along the lines of 'Jimmy says I suck because my pants aren't $80 brand name' and my response would be (in less harsh terms to a child) 'Jimmy is a douchebag who you probably shouldn't listen to'.

I think a lot of these different situations come down to practicality. Is this feedback telling you to change because what you are doing is completely illogical (suki's), or are they telling you to change just for the sake of being more like everyone else (mine). One is practical, one is dumb.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

And I think you touched on this a bit in your post, but I feel it needs re-iteration: Individuality is as important, if not more important, then adaptibility. A society built entirely on collectivity is one that progresses very little.

Er... fairly certain I wasn't making such a point. But if you're giving me credit for saying something you liked, I'll totally take it.

Now, I'm taking a very specific and rare example, but that seems to be the norm around here: Galileo. He definitely got plenty of negative feedback, was even threatened with death for his rebellious perspective on astronomy. According to a model you described, he should've given up quite early on in his career. Now, Galileo is one of those few people who actually combine balls of steel with true genius, so (as I said before) my example doesn't apply to the general population...but you need very few exceptions to call a model flawed.

This is actually exactly the person I had in mind when I made the point about individuality. I don't think he's at all an exception to the general rule of "pay attention to what people say about you."
Galileo quite clearly understood the geocentric sentiment that surrounded him, and he understood full well that it was very misguided. He pursued his astronomical studies because he made the conscious decision to correct what he saw was a problem.
If Galileo had gone around talking about a Sun-centered solar system simply because he was doing his own thing and ignorant of the geocentric model, then he'd have been exactly the kind of moron who I'm saying needs to start listening to other people.
But he did have the proper perspective to see that the prevailing idea was wrong. He already had the "pay attention to feedback" bit down. That's what makes him individualistic.

I think you put slightly too much emphasis on making society happy and not enough on the value of new ideas.

In my post, I wasn't actually intending to make any kind of argument in favor of a happy society over creativity. I was actually trying to talk more on the individual level, particularly about personal improvement, and I only made references to how society works to help explain that.

The central point I wanted to make was "be informed." Whatever the hell it is you decide to do, at least be informed about it. Get as much perspective on what you do as you can. I think that will naturally lead to a happier society and whatever the hell else you thought I was talking about, but that's really incidental.

A child wiping snot on themselves is not a situation in which DCAWAET would be sensibly applied.

I Googled the crap out of "DCAWAET" and couldn't determine what it means.

This kind of reassurance is given by somebody who believes that a /specific/ herd opinion is detrimental. It's not a blanket "don't listen to what anybody says about anything, ever" which is what you seem to be suggesting. Bear in mind that all children are constantly taught to be considerate of others, to have an awareness of self, and to accept feedback, so I don't think the general thrust of your essay thing is actually challenging the status quo.
...
It's a temporary emotional band-aid that will be abandoned by the child when they mature and develop more complex social skills.

No, I don't think they are. I agree with you 100% that these things should be taught to children, and I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that most people would agree that these things should be taught to people, but I think a lot of people are dropping a lot of balls on this one. I actually wasn't even thinking about childhood when I was inspired to write this, but about this sentiment being prevalent among adults as advice given to other adults.
To be honest, much of this was inspired from my own social experience. There's a certain class of people I keep running into that are the tragic results of being hammered with the order to disregard what other people say about them, and it just bothers me that they couldn't have turned out better.
Consider, for example, the typical modern Pagan. Now, it's my understanding that Paganism is so horribly and evidently primitive that one should be shocked to find an educated individual who earnestly believes in any of its flavors. And so I've yet to run into a Pagan who is neither of below average intelligence nor a social outcast (the depressing little pocket groups they form don't count). I can't help but think that their idea of individuality is indistinguishable from completely disregarding what society expects, where they fail to go one step further to realize that what society expects are actually very good things to have completely outside of society. For example, society looks well upon people who are intelligent, who are social, who are wealthy, and who know how to present themselves well (aesthetically, that is). I have no particular anxiety about making sure I fit in, but I do understand that these things are all good for me, society be damned. This is why I go to school, do my best to make friends outside my normal social circles, work hard at my job, and groom myself in the morning. People who don't care about what society thinks of them, as well as (what a shocking coincidence) most Pagans, tend to look something like this.
You can take a lesson from your own childhood and realize that first ideas, especially uninformed ones, tend to turn out particularly awful. I know I'm not the only kid who thought that punching and kicking at the same time was an unbeatable technique in a fight, besides having some pretty ridiculous "brilliant" ideas about every other human experience. Without feedback about stupid first ideas, there's not much of anything to get you to update them. So if you stick with totally non-functional first attitudes toward education, socializing, your appearance, and making a decent living, for which you are comfortable with ignoring any negative feedback it garners, you end up something like this person. Or this person. Or this one, or these people.

The central point I think I haven't emphasized enough, actually, is that these people are doing what they want without the proper perspective to make their life choices functional ones. Making independent choices after considering others' perspectives is individuality; making independent choices while totally ignoring others' perspectives leads to this.
You look at that and you tell me what his future is going to look like. How is he going to make a living? How many friends is he going to make that aren't in the same depressing circumstances? You could say that he could be happy (he certainly looks it), but wouldn't you wish for him that he could find happiness in a more functional way? Wouldn't you wish that he could be more happy while looking, even if incidentally, more presentable at a job interview? Take away those piercings and the makeup, take away the ridiculous haircut, give him a passion for law or medicine or physics or literature that was fostered at a young age, and give him a well-paying job in the middle of the city with friends he connects to. If you could do that for him and have him be happy, wouldn't that be preferrable to this?

What if someone makes fun of a child because of the color of their skin, or their sexual orientation?

Perspective, perspective, perspective. If you understand that the color of your skin or your sexual orientations says dick-all about how you compare to any other person, then you know that that particular bit of negative feedback might as well have been a nonsense phrase. He might as well have yelled "cinnamon bits!" or "seafood salad!" at you.
In fact, you'd also have the knowledge that he's probably more than a bit retarded, himself. And if there's anything I can be honest with myself about, it makes me feel good to know that someone is dumber than I am.

Same goes for:

'Jimmy says I suck because my pants aren't $80 brand name'

I think I really should've put a lot more emphasis on the "being informed" bit, because that was pretty central to my post.


ADDENDUM:
A bit more clarification as to what inspired this:
I have a very wide variety of friends. I'm friends with the full spectrum of intelligences, athleticism, academic inclination, and professional interests. You name any combination of those things, I can probably find a friend of mine who is exactly that permutation.
I'm also kind of an asshole, in much the same way that Dave is -- I am constantly judging people, and it is never for a moment out of my conscious consideration what each and every person in the room thinks of me. I'm an asshole in the sense that I pay particular attention to how much you do or do not suck, but will do my damnedest not to give you a clue as to what I actually think of you. I actually consider it one of my flaws that I can't be more honest about how I feel toward certain people. It turns out that there are a large number of people who will take all of the respectful interaction they can get, and so I end up spending much of my time in the company of people I have no interest in being around.
I'm also (if you couldn't guess) very talkative. I try to be lively, entertaining, jovial, what have you, and it often works out pretty well for me. But every now and again I get into a depressing sort of situation where I'm the only one in the room who isn't a waste of human, and that frequent look I get into the world of these people is what drove me to make that first post.
I can describe most every such interaction I've had with people like this. It's me sitting in a room with people dressed mostly in black colors and somewhat emo or goth stylings. At least half of them will have some of their hair dyed some non-conventional hair color. Most of them will have piercings, many not in the ears. And everyone but me is staring at the floor in the center of the room in total silence. I take a second to look around and consider what each person's educational background might be, and where they might work. I try to be diplomatic if bring it up, but they'll still be uncomfortable about it because they expect me to be overbearing about it, as though the only times they've ever had that brought up is during particularly unenjoyable conversations with their parents. All but a few of them will not have any more schooling than high school, and those who do are going for art degrees in a community college and hate it. The few who have jobs are clerks at Blockbuster or Pet Smart or KFC, and they don't aspire to anything more. I lead the conversation away before I end up saying anything about myself on that subject, but imply as best I can in my mannerisms that I'm in the same shoes (which is a lie). As I warm them up to my company and start connecting with some of them, there will still be a good proportion of them who will sit in utter silence even if spoken to (usually small-statured girls with pink hair and Invader Zim piggy backpacks). Conversation will only ever pick up if the subject is in line with their extremely narrow interests, which in the case of the sorts of people I find myself in the company of, ends up being drugs and gaming. I steer away from drugs if it comes up because that's not particularly relevant to my interests, but I usually end up making lively conversation with a handful of the more talkative ones (which is by no means saying much). I'll leave at the end of the night with the more desperate and female of their number insisting on giving me hugs (which I'm becoming less a fan of with every passing day), friending me afterwards, and poking me incessantly until they figure out that I'm not interested. The guys in the room that I connected with about nerdly interests will probably invite me to other gatherings every so often, and I'll attend every so often if I did manage to scrape some enjoyment from their company (although it does happen that I become good friends with one of them, and attend an event with their dumb friends just for the sake of his company). And I'll otherwise start meeting their friends, and friends of friends, until I connect them better with my understanding of the social network of the small town I find myself unable to fucking leave already.

[otters]

A child wiping snot on themselves is not a situation in which DCAWAET would be sensibly applied.

I Googled the crap out of "DCAWAET" and couldn't determine what it means.

That's ironic since you /made/ the thread called "Don't care about what anyone else thinks."

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

A child wiping snot on themselves is not a situation in which DCAWAET would be sensibly applied.

I Googled the crap out of "DCAWAET" and couldn't determine what it means.

That's ironic since you /made/ the thread called "Don't care about what anyone else thinks."

Oh wow.

[SkyPanda]

Everything I ever do in life is lousy, including my acronyming

[MattKestrel]

I c ompletely agree with Tsuki. Every time I do something silly, in retrospect I usually mull it over and try to think of ways to prevent bad experiences from repeatedly happening. For example, going out to the baker's in the snow, I got attacked by snowballing kids twice. I don't mind that they like snowballing random people, I convince myself it was nothing personal (which it really wasn't, I didn't know any of them) and found a different route to the baker's. I haven't had any problems since.

Pain is the most powerful incentive. Sorry if I sound like a wuss :D

[Rhekatou]

Pain is the most powerful incentive. :D

I agree with that. The best lessons are the painful ones.

[Kablizzy]

We have people in this very community that have said those exact words to me. My response has been, "Bad dog. Outside you go. Don't come back in until you've thought about it."

[SlappyMcGee]

I live to impress cool people.

[blackson]

If someone I respect or deem rational says something, I'll listen and interpret what they say. If pretty much anyone my age in RL says anything, it's hardly a contrived statement and something I'm able to take seriously. While everyone is entitled to an opinion, I'm only able to acknowledge opinions from people who I know have a general grasp on the world. I've been called a judgmental person, but hey, who hasn't been?

[beethoveN]

Now, I'm taking a very specific and rare example, but that seems to be the norm around here: Galileo. He definitely got plenty of negative feedback, was even threatened with death for his rebellious perspective on astronomy. According to a model you described, he should've given up quite early on in his career. Now, Galileo is one of those few people who actually combine balls of steel with true genius, so (as I said before) my example doesn't apply to the general population...but you need very few exceptions to call a model flawed.

didn't he eventually give in because he didn't want to be kicked out of the church, but was still put under house arrest?