Care is an extremely delicate subject. If its idea is too abstract, anything can be passed off as care, including overprotection. And if it's defined too strictly, apathy towards other aspects of life appears.

We can find a working definition for care by looking at its opposing extreme which often lacks care. Quite counter-intuitively, that's progress.

Some people may object, saying the opposite of progress is degradation. But degradation is just lack of progress, it doesn't complement progress by nature. We need something that comes into play when there's too much progress, and balances it out.

Now this is overwhelmingly important. First, because people driven by progress may become unable to actually build the future they dream about. Second, because consensus about the future goals and plans may be unreachable. And third, because constant transition means you can't tolerate the present.

We've spent so much on trying to invent and build things that could help us escape reality. Doesn't that mean that we have no idea how to work with the reality we have right now? Sometimes we think we've found a solution, but it becomes a small comfort zone where we can finally stop thinking about the surrounding hell, which leads to degradation of that hell, because we don't work on it. It's important to be able to rehab, but escapism has never solved a strategic problem.

So when progress is impossible, one needs to learn embracing the present, helping it with objective and subjective needs. That way one can self-actualize through care - by doing something other people need. Understanding them psychologically is often more important and helpful than trying to "fix" their world, because shared pain is half the pain.

Which is paradoxical. When someone is facing a problem alone, they often think that problem is unique and there's no working solution, so it can't be helped naturally. But when somebody else simply joins the crew and wants to share the experience, the problem can't overwhelm anyone in particular anymore, as long as they make sure to face the issue together. And strategically, the new person can spot obvious mistakes the other person wasn't aware of, which eventually led to the crisis. The crisis just needs to be put into perspective.

Using progress to escape a problem is implying the situation doesn't have anything we really need, so we discard it as unhelpful or useless. Which is ignorant, because we don't try to figure out what the situation may need us for. The main thing we're missing in that case is that other people discard it for the same reason, which cumulatively results in the hell we can't tolerate.