We have a very convenience driven "me first" culture. While it's healthy to always keep in mind your needs, aside from maybe you close family/friends, few will, you also have to consider other people and learn to reach agreeable compromises.
Sometimes it means driving somewhere you don't want to and spending half a day to make someone else happy when you could spend that same half a day making sure you exclusively are happy. Social relationships, maybe most human relationships in general, are about reaching reasonable compromises that doesn't always put self above all. We seem to be moving in a direction where we put self above all though and you get a lot of lonely people who pamper themselves. Some may enjoy that sort of lifestyle but not me, it seems very lonely.
We bond with people in difficult situations when we need protections and are able to protect.
I've noticed friends who are born in places like South Africa, or Russia are much intenser with friendships.
My theory is that they really have to trust eachother because they have no trust in the system.
Where I grew up, trust in system is strong and it seems people don't need to rely on eachother.
It's not so simple, and of course most people still bond deeply depending on personality and upbringing. But it's why I think most Western societies are so individual.
[1]: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/wealth/save/why-poor-pe...
[2]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-wealth-reduce...
[3]: https://www.pnas.org/content/109/11/4086.short
[4]: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-xge0000595.pd...
But this requires some bookkeeping, that strategies like "always help others" and "never help others" do not.
Seems like many people start with "always help others" as a combination of idealism and... I was tempted to say laziness, but probably the idea just never occured to them. After seeing that people do not reciprocate, they burn out and switch to "never help others". Or maybe it's not even the case that most people do not reciprocate, but rather that there are a few abusers who notice the opportunity and start exploiting the naive person. (So the naive person's statistics would be like "I helped others 100 times, and was only helped 7 times myself", but they forget to notice that of those 100 times they helped someone, 90 times they helped the same person who never reciprocated.)
Building friendships is actually harder. It takes more time and more effort, on many separate occasions. And there's no guarantee it'll be worth it, either.
Maybe individuals becoming less dependent on others due to a combination of earning power and internet facilitating ease of accessing information and communicating with literally anyone and not just those around you changed the parameters of life. Hence relationships are less likely to experience the conditions required to create the necessary bonds.
You can filter friends by putting yourself together in difficult situations on purpose. Like, take a long trip together, some problems will happen and you can see how the other person reacts. Or volunteer for an organization that helps others; the friends you find there are already filtered for their willingness to help others. (This isn't a 100% certain strategy; there are some abusers who know that others use this algorithm, so they go there fishing for easy victims to exploit. But most of lazy and selfish people would refuse to try anything like this.)
If your life is all about fun, then you are at risk of being surrounded by people who are your friends only as long as the fun lasts.
I read somewhere that given a choice between what we know is good and what's convenient, people will choose convenience almost every time, leading to a modern world that feels how a pre-packaged peanut butter and jelly sandwich tastes. It's obviously a subjective statement but I've found it explains a lot about everything.
Hi how are you...
I'm good how are you...
I'm good too...
Then next 1 hour spent on each others problems which usually neither could do anything about.