> and why must a normal person give a damn about the misfortunes of junkies and alcoholics?

You don't have to give a damn about anyone, but I'm friends and family with junkies and alcoholics, so I care. And even if you don't know any junkies or alcoholics and never will, can you not have sympathy for a person you've never met, even if some of their problems are to some degree their own fault?

I know alcoholics who were binge-drinking at the age of 13 because their parents were alcoholics too and encouraged it. I have cousins that often threw up when they were toddlers years old because their parents gave them too much to drink. If you were in these circumstances, how sure are you that you wouldn't end up a junkie or an alcoholic yourself?

>and why must a normal person give a damn about the misfortunes of junkies and alcoholics?

for starters because they're also normal people. If you think there's no drug users or alcoholics even among all the people you know you'd be very surprised. It takes a lot of callousness to think that people who struggle with addiction or really any other thing aren't exactly what 'normal' people are like.

What I wonder about is when it became normal to put that much lack of empathy and compassion proudly on public display.

> and why must a normal person give a damn about the misfortunes of junkies and alcoholics?

I give a damn about living in a society suffering from a surfeit of junkies and alcoholics. That affects me.

> and why must a normal person give a damn about the misfortunes of junkies and alcoholics?

Try giving up your smartphone for whole one day, and then get back to us on "junkies". :)

So your theory is that poor people in poor countries just keep having babies when they have less and less to feed them. And that’s it. What a genius you are.