What do you care what other people think?

What would your life be like if you did not care what other people though of you? 
If we were completely independent of People's opinions, good or bad, and would go about my day without so much as a single self-conscious decision. It would be wonderful freedom, of course. You would feel free to do what you wanted, and have a clarity of mind that comes with not being constantly preoccupied with thinking about the judgment of those around you. 

Looking at our current state of affairs, it would seem that the culture we humans have created for ourselves is driven by "what other people think," the tension between the desire for approval and the fear of disapproval. Businesses, families, friendships, sports, politics; everything is, not completely driven by this tension, at the very least heavily influenced by it. And this we can see very clearly when looking for it, how much our existence relies on other people's judgment of you; that you exist only as a mental image in other people's minds. Which is mostly unconscious, of course, because when we drag it up to the surface and into the light we can see clearly just how insane it really is.

The ego and approval

In the world of ego, the promise and the threat of disapproval are commonly used tools that people use to get what they want from each other - or rather a single tool, a double-edged sword where one always follows the other. And you've all seen how this works: one person can be said to almost purchase another person with approval, and then attempt to control their behaviour with the threat of disapproval. This takes on many forms, but usually it is characterized by people winning each other over by approval and then keeping each other captive with the threat disapproval. 

physicist Richard P. Feynman