The Power of Selective Care: How to Survive the Wave Pool of Everyone Else's Causes
He's on the sidewalk just out in front of the Smith's grocery store, gesticulating and having an argument with someone no one else can see.
I approach him. He seems to be having an argument about the number of cars in the parking lot and how they aren't from America. He's really worked up about it.
"Excuse me? Can I take a second of your time to ask a question?"
He stops and looks both at and through me with a sense of malevolence and hostility usually reserved for family members on the wrong side of the Thanksgiving conversation.
I smile. It has no reactive response. "I'm just curious how you feel about whether the new MCU Ms. Marvel will be more like a CW show or more like the current shows on Disney+?"
He stares at me as if I had slowly grown a baby's foot out of the side of my neck.
"I'm a huge MCU fan," I continue. "So far, I pretty much love everything they've put out—I grew up reading the comics so seeing them come to life as it were is a real blast—but I wonder if, in order to capture a youth market, they're going to start making the shows more kid-centered?"
He stares for a beat and then barks "GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME! I DON'T CARE! I. DO. NOT. CARE!"
For the past few years, I've been trying to understand why Donald Trump is considered such a danger to democracy, a blight upon our crops, a monster who occupied the Oval Office. People on my side of the political fence don't just despise him as I did Bush Jr. and his disfigured Emperor Cheney—they HATE him with the white-hot hatred of a child grown up to avenge her mother who was killed by the local rancher and now she has a pistol.
I'm not suggesting the man was anything but a wholly incompetent head of state but the hatred is so palpable. I try to figure out why he is so hated when all he did was pack the SCOTUS with zealots and completely fuck the COVID response (although, seeing how half the country won't get vaccinated anyway indicates that he was just the tip of the COVID-denial iceberg). He did foment a riot against Congress, so there’s certainly that.
He was (and continues to be) a complete narcissistic asshole but that can be said for 78.98% of everyone with a Twitter account of Instagram and we don't collectively hate them, right?
I believe our horror over Trump has more to do with his active apathy to anything we think is important and that he answered so much of what We the People decided required serious thought with a simple "So...?"
"Mr. President, you're a racist!"
"So...?"
"Mr. President, you're a rapist!"
"So...?"
"Mr. President, you're a crook!"
"So...?"
He didn't even pretend to care.
And it infuriated us. What a complete dick. An amazing fucker. How dare he brush off our concerns and accusations? We have just realized the power of our collective Tweets to influence society and this asshat comes in and does it better than us? WTF?
I remember having arguments on Faceborg (back when I gave a shit about that non-discourse vacuous wormhole) and being told (amongst insults) that people could care about more than one issue at a time. Wrong. It takes so much energy to solely get up in the morning, read the news of ongoing impending disasters on all fronts, and prevent yourself from blasting a 9 millimeter hole out the back of your head. To assume that with all that you can then devote attention and action to solving more than one big problem with any hope of forward traction is absurd.
I imagine that issues in the world are like writing tasks. Do I spend time today working on marketing copy for the company that employs me? Blog posts for them? Going over notes for the casino book I'm writing? Researching some philosophy for a Literate Ape piece on the absence of evil in the world? FUCK. If I don't practice some selectivity, some prioritization, some discrimination on which thing I focus on, I'm going to sit in the stew of my own inactivity and do absolutely nothing.
Hell, maybe I go on social media and bitch about the trauma all of it causes me instead of doing any of it?
I do and am assaulted by causes: #BLM, #METoo, #StoptheSteal, #VoterRights, #COVIDVaccines. There are people angry about mask mandates, police reform, the attempt to hold accountable Republicans for the January 6th insurrection, DaBaby's homophobic comments (who the fuck is DaBaby?), reproductive rights, transgender issues, cancel culture, whether Simone Biles was brave or simply choked, and I suddenly understand my friend in front of the Smith's screaming "GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME! I DON'T CARE! I. DO. NOT. CARE!"
Ever since Trump came into office in 2017, I've felt that those on the left side of the national parking lot decided to adopt his strategy and become the biggest cunts in the party, insulting, yelling, over-simplifying complex issues, and embracing their inner bullies. My reaction has been to eschew any tactic used by that shithead.
I was wrong.
The strategy I believe can be mimicked to our advantage is that practice of Selective Care. Decide which issues matter, which solutions are feasible, and ignore everything else.
Choose the thing you want to zero in on—say, income inequality.
"You believe in biology? You're transphobic!"
"So...?"
"You believe that looting is not legitimate protest? You're racist!"
"So...?"
"Biden is a Chinese agent put into power by the Chinese!"
"So...?"
"The government can't tell me that I have to get vaccinated! It's my right to refuse!"
"Huh? Were you talking?"
"The minimum wage has been stagnant for decades!"
"Yeah! Right? Let's talk about that."
Refuse to be distracted by anyone else's bullshit and spend your time and energy running one race at a time. If your issue is important enough to you, everyone else's cause can slide into the background.
This is not about self-care nor is it about avoiding important issues in the world. It is about recognizing how effective you can be during your tiny, insignificant presence on the planet. Funny that, in earlier days in America, most people did not feel they were terribly important or that their opinion mattered so much as their support of the unity of society and today 7 out of 10 believe they are very important and their opinions are essential.
Most of us are not important to many more than a handful of others and your Faceborg friends are mostly not your friends.
Pick and choose those issues you deem important because that issue is more interesting than you are.
