Nobody Cares
141 comments
·January 15, 2025DharmaPolice
liontwist
Why doesn’t Japan have this problem?
ks2048
I thought Japan had a reputation for pointless bureaucracy (faxing useless paperwork around to get something approved, etc).
unknownsky
I hear that in Japanese schools, the kids do most of the cleaning, like sweeping, cleaning the boards, taking out trash, and cleaning windows. Janitors mostly do building maintenance or major jobs.
That must instill the sense that environments that are shared collectively are everyone's responsibility. When janitors clean up after us, it instills the sense that we can do what we want and it's the problem of some lowly person to deal with it.
GreatGaijin
- Culture that prioritizes collective good over individual need
- Functioning government
- Competency, skilled engineers
spencerflem
Love the analogy and your explanation
whyenot
Most of the government employees that work in the bureaucracy do care. They care a lot. The reason their "favorite" part of the job is "stability" or "job security" is because the pay usually sucks compared to industry, and the bullshit you have to put up with to avoid scandals, lawsuits, and corruption also sucks. Most of the civil servants I know stay in their jobs because they really do want to help people; they really do want to make their agencies or institutions more efficient and better.
batiudrami
Also external people don’t generally know or understand all the constrains that led to decisions that are suboptimal (for the person complaining).
sam_lowry_
I work for the government IT.
Constraints are often bogus, made by a few bad actors and never questioned because the government is structured to avoid personal responsibility. Unfortunately, this takes away agility and disempowers individual workers.
Which, as noted in a nearby comment, makes them coping instead of caring.
An overlooked cause is the management science that insists on getting rid of individual ownership.
maximinus_thrax
Yes, but they don't seem to care about the stuff OP cares about, therefore they're just mindless bureaucrats. Unlike Elon, who's defeating armies of nihilists by sheer force of will!!!
GuestFAUniverse
And playing PoE!
Shank
> In Japan, you get the impression that everyone takes their job and role in society seriously. The median Japanese 7-11 clerk takes their job more seriously than the median US city bureaucrat.
My favorite example of this is how, if you visit 7-11 in Japan and an employee isn’t busy, or is busy but with an unimportant task, they will jump to open a cash register and check people out the second a queue forms. They will move as quickly as possible to clear the queue of people, seemingly aware that everyone has some place to be that isn’t a checkout line. It’s wonderful.
wegfawefgawefg
In Japan this attentive behaviour is often out of fear or boredom. Either way the service is good overall.
I live here. Sometimes the service isnt good and staff behaves like an insentient robot who repeats a script and fucks off.
If you know Japanese and actually talk to them, its obviously the same ape base mech the rest of us are driving.
8n4vidtmkvmk
Oh.. do people not do that anymore? At the little grocery store I worked at in BC Canada, if there were like 2 or 3 people in line we'd call for help if they weren't already on their way. Seems like a pretty basic thing.
Here in the US, I don't know what's going on with the cashiers. They're slow. They don't say a single word to you, not even to give you your total. And they're awful at bagging. I just don't get it. It's not a hard job.
athrowaway3z
How roles are perceived, becomes how people perceive themselves, becomes how people act out those roles.
Or more to the point: Its easier to be what people expect you to be.
In my experience the US is especially susceptible to this 'roleplaying', probably because all (entertrainment) media comes from the same overarching culture.
mc3301
It is a hard job if you and your partner both have full-time jobs and other part-time or side-hustles just to barely pay the rent.
readthenotes1
I used to rank the McDonald's in Toppongi hills Tokyo as having the best employees anywhere after I saw one run from one side of the little shop to the other when the French fry buzzer went off.
However, it got beat out by the McDonald's in Arkadelphia Arkansas, where the employee fast walked as quickly as hen could to take the order to the car waiting in the Drive-Thru, and then also fast walked back. Running of course would have been against OSHA and gotten hen in trouble so hen did the best hen could.
unknownsky
Are you Swedish? Just wondering because I've never seen the gender neutral pronoun "hen" in English.
wegfawefgawefg
The run usually isnt because they care its because theyre scared of senpai and (bucho/shacho) big boss.
If the management is chill they arent gonna run.
imgabe
Man, I've been the engineer in situations like that bike lane and believe me, we care. Usually the engineers care. 99% of the time the contractor had some "value engineering" suggestions that the client was all too happy to take because it saved them a little money up front. As the engineer you can try to explain that it will be shitty, but they ... don't care.
Over2Chars
A well known CEO noted that in a failing organization he was trying to devise a turn around plan for that everyone in the organization invariably blamed... the other teams! Not a one said "our team is responsible for our failure".
The engineers blamed product, the product people blamed sales, etc.
He said he provided this suggestion, "You are of course right (it's the other groups fault, and it might have been so), but what can you do, in your group, as part of a solution we all work towards to help fix this?"
So yeah, it is the other guys fault. But what you can you do to help fix it?
imgabe
Sure, that's great if you all work for the same organization and everyone involved asked themselves that and they all benefited from the organization's overall success.
But that is not the case here. That is not how bike lanes or many other things get built. The engineer is a consultant that works for one independent company. The contractor is a different independent company. The client is another company or a government entity. Possibly the client involves several different entities with competing demands and priorities.
And "success" for the engineer doesn't really mean building a good thing. It means a happy client who will come back for repeat business.
How does this problem get fixed? Well, eventually someone hits that curb and breaks their neck and sues the city. Then the city hires an engineer to create design standards that they include in future contracts when they build new bike lanes.
000ooo000
Classic CEO. "How can you, the powerless IC, fix an organisational problem? No, I mean without me having to do anything meaningful or risky"
Over2Chars
Not at all.
The CEO in question publicly declared his own job would be forfeit within a year if he didn't meet goals that were in the recent past history of the company, absolutely impossible.
He met and exceeded those goals.
The IC isn't powerless with good management.
tommiegannert
From skip-reading, this is not about motivation (intrinsic or otherwise) in general. This is about other people not caring about you, or what you care about.
I care a great deal about DevEx, and since no one else tends to care as much as I do, I can do good work for a few years, but then I'm worn out from fighting alone. I move on and hope things are more aligned somewhere else. Doesn't mean my co-workers are wrong for "not caring", just that I haven't found my peers.
The driver who doesn't let you into her lane perhaps cares deeply about not being late, again, to pick up her kids from daycare. Or her brother is about to do that stupid thing again, and if she doesn't try to stop him, she'll feel bad forever, again. Which lane you're in doesn't even register on her list.
zoogeny
You know who really cares? The Karen in the HOA who relentlessly hounds the board because one of the units in the complex has the wrong color paint on their door. Be careful what you wish for, or the grass is always greener.
xnx
Indeed. Imagine a neighbor who was upset that people didn't care enough to clear the parkway of leaves and selflessly dedicated himself to spend hours loudly leaf-blowing the whole neighborhood.
MattGaiser
You bring up an important adjacent point. OP believes bikers and non-drivers are substantial stakeholders, but ignores that the tax complainers and drivers may prefer the world that way. And they do hound council.
hosteur
How would a better solution to the bike lane cost more tax or worsen situation for drivers?
lnsru
I am the guy who cares or cared! I will bring lost lady back to care home. I will help a kid to find his lost key in the playground. I will start fixing technical debt in a product at work. While two first cases were naturally the right thing to do I didn’t expect anything. With technical debt I was stopped because I was wasting company’s resources. I observe in my diary, that I am turning into do not care type person. One can’t cary about every pothole in the world.
tolerance
Resist the cold churn toward pride-fueled apathy that this rant exhausts.
After reading this, if this is supposed to demonstrate the psyche of the sort of person who “cares”, I really hope he keeps indoors and spends a little bit more time on his self before stepping out on others.
lnsru
The thing is that I might be another psycho. But there is a city center, winter and an old women with blueish hands. Wearing no proper shoes and having only a sweater. There are hundred other caring and loving persons and missionaries around, heavy car traffic too. But somehow I am the one bringing her to the care facility a mile away. How can it happen!? Why do you think, that only a Good Samaritan can care and a psycho can’t?
tolerance
Well, pardon me. It doesn’t seem to me like you’ve gone mad, but if you are a psycho indeed, I don’t want to do you further harm.
If you really are “all right” and just an honestly styled man trying to cultivate good in a barren city with crushed soil and souls, then I reckon there’s some care in you of some kind much to be desired from others and you know it.
And I suspect that it’s the psychos who believe that they’re “Good Samaritans” and if your word is true then we can tell that apparently they’re unwilling to provide actions that confirm their claims. Crazy.
So, my guess is maybe the world’s gone so mad that anyone trying to behave sane looks strange, and the ones who are mad pretend to be right until wrong shows up.
soulofmischief
Please never give up the fight against entropy. We can keep the flame alive a little longer.
null
arisbe__
Its worse than that. There is a logic to society, growth and scaling that involves accumulating obligations. This is like a gravity or a gang hivemind that due to scale inverts the value of bettering to the value of self-preservation of a corrupt society theatre. They dont want improvement but containment i.e. inhibition of creative destruction. What really gets me here is just how much people normalize lying.
When you know this (if you arent obligation enslaved) you can then just work orthogonally to the system to make something way better. In fact it kind of breaks reality for you.
wegfawefgawefg
"does this dress make me look fat"
is it lying or not? People lie all day every day, and if you dont they wont like you. They expect you to lie.
Someone invites you somewhere. You respond you dont want to go because meh. They get angry. "Atleast make up an excuse or something dont just tell me you dont want to go!!"
Very common. More common in women.
solatic
Everybody has a limit to their capacity To Care About Things. It's not fixed in stone, people can care about more things and more deeply, but at any given time it's essentially some finite capacity. A glass-half-empty mentality (like the author's) is to look at everything that people don't care about and despair, while a glass-half-full mentality is to look at everything people do care about and remain optimistic about our ability to inspire people to care more.
The classic needs ladder states that first you need to take care of yourself, only after which can you take care of your in-group, only after which can you take care of your out-group. A lot of the process of inspiring others is to first set a good personal example, then helping others in such a way that ascribes cultural value to paying it forward, i.e. to teach people to fish instead of giving them fish. Sadly, this culture had largely dissipated in a society where so many people first have so much trouble taking care of their own needs. But it can be restored, with some optimism and finding people who are receptive to it.
liontwist
Nobody is asking you to care and fix everything. They are asking you to care about the things in direct control, like your job or kid.
This thread is filled with “I do care but can’t because _”. And yet there are those rare people who do care, and with a little bit of preparation and effort make a big difference.
When people start in a new job they go through a tough 3-6 week sink or swim experience, and then the skills and approach they develop rarely changes. Think about that. Most professionals probably have spent 200-300 focused hours of their entire life trying to get good at what they do for 40 years.
spencerflem
lovely perspective <3
flymaipie
People do not care because they don’t want to suffer all the time they see some lack of effort. Even when there is 80% carers and 20% do-not-carers, 80% will suffer and go into the opposing group. It has upside-down-bowl stability.
astroalex
> Have been to the DMV? It sucked? There is a human being whose job it is to be in charge of the DMV. They do not care that it sucks.
Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've actually never had a bad experience at the DMV here in Seattle. The staff have been efficient, fast, and friendly every time.
ivraatiems
I've had experiences with the DMV in three US states, and in two out of the three it was highly efficient and worked great. In one of them it was mediocre to unpleasant, but nothing to write home about.
I suspect the DMVs in LA and NYC are particularly bad and that's why it's a cultural meme.
zonkerdonker
I've had wonderful experiences at DOL offices (which are 3rd party contracted), not so much at the DMV. Which one are you going to? Honestly worth a drive (or bus ride, depending on the issue) to go to a a decent one
mikewarot
Indiana's BMV used to be the Kafkaesque when I went with my mom in the 1970s. She waited in a huge line only to find out it was the wrong line...waited again to find she didn't have a certain document and had go home to get it.
About 20 years ago the would check to see if you had everything right as you came in.
Now it's almost magical how fast friendly and efficient they've become for the few times you actually have to visit. Most transactions are online or via mail.
Over2Chars
Ironically, we may look with fond memories of the days when an actual human being handled our DMV paperwork.
An AI chatbot with an unblinking stare and frozen smile is likely to be your new DMV virtual assistant!
p1necone
The idea that the DMV is a particularly awful experience does seem like something that would be especially susceptible to selection bias. Why would anyone ever announce "I went to the DMV today and it was fine"?
thayne
Well, now that it is a meme, and the DMVs where I live is actually very effient, I've actually heard multiple people say "I went to the DMV, and actually it was fine"
spencerflem
My experience has been that it sucks but not as bad as private customer service.
Getting a refund from UHaul was fifteen hours of pulling teeth. DMV was a 45 minute wait.
Worse in Texas where they dont fund it ofc.
Yen
I've lived in Japan for a few months. I was about halfway through the article, thinking about how it seemed to be a counter-example, before the author called out Japan specifically.
For all the other differences in culture, the attribute of "People Actually Care" seems to have a huge impact on how pleasant a place it is to visit or live.
I don't know why it seems to be the case there. I don't know how to replicate it. I don't think it's magic. I've heard people bandy about the theory of cultural homogeneity. That might be a _factor_, but I doubt it's the full story.
I suspect if you dig into it, differences in economics are a major factor. In the US, it feels like caring is actively punished, economically. Caring is nice, but someone can only _afford_ to care if their other needs are met.
I also wonder if density is a major factor - not so much for the difference in economy of scale, but the difference of "if my physical space is incredibly constrained, I'm both more incentivized to keep it looking nice, and there's less of it to keep looking nice."
And, of course, it's not like Japan is some kind of otherworldly utopia. There's serious tradeoffs and differences, there's negatives compared to other countries. But it does seem like almost everyone, everywhere, just... puts in a bit more effort. Takes a little bit more time.
As someone who works for a local government bureaucracy - not caring is a coping mechanism because if you let every sub-optimal thing bother you then you'd just burn out. Very few jobs are structured in a way that those directly involved can determine how things are done so there is no real value in caring about how long a process takes. Where people have some agency you might be surprised how much people do care even in relatively low paying bureaucratic jobs.
In a similar way, many of us walk past multiple homeless people every day. Do you not care about them? Well, in an abstract sense yes of course but as there's not a lot you can do about it right now you evolve an indifference to it.