I'm Paying Attention, But I Don't Care

My Thoughts On Ukraine, Israel & Gaza, The Current Thing, And Any Other Conflict Halfway Around The World

Over the last couple weeks, the focus on the world stage has shifted from Ukraine to Israel. I pay attention to a lot of things going on the world, and their impact on the financial markets and my investments, but to say things in the world are complicated right now is an understatement. Fair warning, but if you have strong feelings about what is going on in Israel right now, this post probably isn’t for you. You might think I’m cynical, or cold, but I’m just a product of the environment we are in now and time I grew up in. Below is an essay from Jack Donovan titled I Don’t Care, that sums up some of my thoughts on the current thing.

I. Don’t. Care.

These three magic words could end so many arguments.

Most appeals in the name of social justice rely on an underlying assumption of universal altruism. They assume that you care if something bad happens to anyone, anywhere, and advise you to take some sort of action to ease or prevent their suffering.

People react by questioning whether or not that stranger, somewhere, is really suffering, or if they are suffering any more than anyone else. They examine the circumstances of the alleged suffering and the motives of the people bringing the alleged suffering to light.

They argue about the details and the proportion of the suffering and point out their own allegedly comparable suffering or the suffering of some person or people who are allegedly suffering more.

Once you’re arguing, they’ve already got you.

Once you’re arguing, you’ve agreed that you could care, or would care — that you should theoretically care — given satisfactory evidence and argumentation.

But what would they say if you stopped pretending to care at all?

There would be no point in arguing about the details.

Of course, as normal humans, we can always imagine ourselves in another humans position. We can empathize with others — that’s what makes movies and novels work. But we can’t really care about the suffering of every single man and woman on the planet. The idea that we should is insane and inhuman. So much of what people say they care about is just emotional pornography that can springboard them into an acrobatic display of moral and political posturing.

I see all of this propaganda online telling me what is NOT OK, and how I am supposed to feel about strangers and other groups of people. If they get me to agree that I care about these strangers and their unhappiness, Im supposed to accept responsibility for that unhappiness and do whatever I can to alleviate it.

This is all manipulation — a political plucking of one bit of human suffering out of an unimaginable expanse of human suffering, all to serve this agenda or that one.

Some kid in Africa probably got his head sawed off with a butter knife while some chick named Shoshana experienced the nightmare of catcalling in New York City. No one cared, because they weren’t told to care. Given their perceivable social class and sex, the guys who were expressing their admiration for Shoshana have probably experienced far more brutality than being propositioned for sex. And no one cared when it happened. Shoshana is just the squeaky wheel who wants to be lubricated with your tears.

If we really cared about everyone, we would never even register feelings or microaggressions or First World problems because our brains would be blown out from watching Third World ultraviolence. We’d be watching and liking and sharing nonstop videos of prison rapes and basement executions and reading stories about sex slavery and child prostitution. We’d be OUTRAGED at the injustice of it all, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Those things are happening right now and they have more or less been happening at varying levels for all of human history.

(If violence is actually decreasing worldwide, as Steven Pinker suggests, then it is probably in part because due to high incarceration rates and widespread fear of sanctioned violence threatened by increasingly omnipotent surveillance and police states in the First World. And omnipotent surveillance states are NOT OK.)

The reason that people care about the same thing at the same time — whatever todays outrage or viral video is — is that we have all have to pick and choose. We decide, if not consciously then by our choices, that one persons suffering is more important than another. Who we — or maybe you, because I’m not talking about me here — decide to care about is almost completely arbitrary. Whatever human tragedy passes our eyes or ears.

I don’t care what happens to everyone, everywhere.

I don’t care what happens to strangers.

It’s an admission that sounds barbaric and unspeakably taboo.

It’s taboo because people have been conned into believing that they are supposed to do something they can NEVER do — care equally about everyone, all around the world.

I care about what happens to my friends and my family and my tribe. I care, and even at this point I am using care very loosely, about the kind of people I generally like, respect or support. People who are like me, or who are like the people I like.

When someone registers an opinion or tells me I am supposed to care about something, if I am even thinking about caring, I look them up. I ask myself if I would be interested in what this person had to say if they were sitting in the same room with me.

Sometimes, I would. Usually, I would not. I probably wouldn’t even have a drink with them, or give them a single moment of my time.

If they’re telling me that something bad happened to them, I have to admit that in most cases I probably don’t care. Why should I care about the suffering of this stranger instead of that one?

If they’re telling me that I should change, I ask, “why?,” and if the only answer is to theoretically prevent the alleged and future suffering of some other group of people I don’t know or care about…then…my answer is: “why bother?”

I’ll change to some extent to gain honor in the eyes of men I respect, personally or in the abstract, but why would I change to prevent the unhappiness of some stranger?

This idea that we are all each other’s shepherds, that we are all responsible for the happiness of all humankind, is paralyzing nonsense. At best, it keeps men busy arguing about things over which they have almost no control. At worst it makes men vulnerable to all sorts of manipulation by people who have already decided that they are disposable rubes — like naive retirees giving away their savings to charity grifters or high-living evangelists. Men end up giving away everything worth having to people who are ideologically incapable of even acknowledging their sacrifice.

I’m not encouraging people to stop caring about anyone, I’m encouraging them to stop trying to care about everyone. If you say you love everyone, you don’t really love anyone. Love is a choice, a discriminatory act.

If you don’t pick your team — if you aren’t willing to draw a line between who you care about and who you don’t, between “us” and “them” — then you’ll be like all of these other suckers who care about whoever and whatever they click on every morning.

Care passionately, but discriminately.

And if you don’t really care, then say it.

“I don’t care.”

It’s simple, but powerful.

It’s liberating, but also dangerous and heretical.

The idea that we are all in this together and are working in good faith to solve the world’s problems is an illusion that traps us in a crisscrossed, impenetrable web of synthetic yarn. If you pull that fuzzy pink string — that completely unwarranted assumption of universal good will — civil society collapses into a Hobbesian war of all against all where no one trusts anyone.

When, free from our attachments to everyone, everywhere, we find ourselves adrift in a staggering, confused mass of drooling and covetous humanity, we can make sense of it all and find our bearings only when we form discriminatory alliances and new tribes built on trust, common interests and mutual admiration — instead of being bound by the great lie of love for all neighbors.

- Jack Donovan

Ask Yourself: Why Am I Seeing This?

Why am I seeing a certain picture or series of events at a certain time? Why is this on the news, or on social media? If it’s on social media, know that the apps will feed you content that is designed to keep you on the apps. Most of the content created today is designed it create engagement and/or clicks depending on the medium, by pushing your emotional buttons. Is this a jaded way to view the world? Probably. Does it give me a more realistic view of the way the world really works? I think so.

If you must pay attention to what is going on halfway around the world, try to filter events through a lens that works for you. You might think that I’m too cynical, and that could be true. I think people should look at the news, social media, and pretty much anything you see on the internet with a healthy dose of skepticism. You might not get to the “I don’t care” attitude, but that’s not for me to decide. I care about me, my family, my friends, and my country, and people outside of that circle are not my problem.

Am I aware of what is going on? I try to be. I also try to figure out what is actually happening, not just what “they” want me to think (who “they” are is another topic for another time). I’m in the distrust but verify camp, and it saves me a lot of time in the upside down world we live in today. I assume that CNN, The New York Times, Fox News, or MSNBC are lying to me, or at the very least are not giving me the full truth on many important topics. This is why we are in the middle of a boom in independent podcasts, YouTube videos, and even Substack. People are looking for truth and authenticity, something that is sorely lacking in our mainstream media outlets today.

The Current Thing

Over the last several years, we have gone from one manufactured crisis to another. I’m very skeptical of the mainstream narrative on any topic. I do more than the surface level research, and I give current events some time to play out instead of reacting quickly and emotionally. That’s why I wasn’t rushing to weigh in on what started last week in Israel. Starting in 2020, COVID (and the ridiculous government response) dominated the news for years, until the Ukraine situation came along. Putin became the villain, and the West poured billions of dollars into Ukraine. We were supposed to believe that Ukraine could defeat Russia, and it was near impossible to get a read on the situation due to the fog of war. I think we will look back on Ukraine as a complete and total disaster for the West. Now the current thing has shifted to Israel and what is going on in Gaza.

Last week, the situation that has been bubbling up for years between Israel and Gaza popped off. The media frenzy was predictable, as it always is when it comes to anything involving Israel. I don’t have much insight other than Hamas started an offensive after what happened at the Al-Aqsa mosque. It sounds like Israel is going to retaliate, but the whole situation is powder keg in the Middle East. I have found Scott Ritter and Ryan Dawson to be contrarian sources for news outside of the typical media outlets, and they have been focused on what is going on in the Middle East. Another Substack worth following on geopolitical events is Meaning In History by Mark Wauck.

Like I said earlier, I don’t care, but I find it interesting. It is also worth following for me personally because of the potential impact on the global financial markets. Because I wanted to be a little bit informed on what is going on, I did some digging into some of the background on the conflict. For example, most people don’t know that Israel is responsible for creating Hamas. It’s an interesting parallel to the US funding the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight against the Soviets in the 80s. Both cases have obviously come back to bite later on down the road.

Personally, I care more about the thousands of immigrants that continue to flow into the United States because that actually has an impact on me and mine. It’s funny that our military is supposedly for protecting American interests, but the one place we can’t seem to get them to go is to protect our borders. Another conflict going on right now is in Sudan, and the total casualties are actually much higher than what has been going in Israel. The civil war there has been going on for years. The fact that it’s not in the news should at least beg the question: what makes Israel different?

I’m paying attention, but I don’t care.

The Wait & See Approach

With all of these things, I take the wait and see approach. With the COVID vaccine, it was “safe and effective”. In case you were wondering, I’m still waiting to see any convincing evidence that it is safe or effective. In Ukraine, there was a ton of fake news and fake headlines flying. One that I remember from the early days in Ukraine was the Ghost of Kyiv, a Ukrainian fighter pilot that supposedly shot down multiple Russian fighter jets. With Israel, I have seen plenty of bad takes and misleading headlines. One notable headline circulating recently that there were 40 beheaded babies. It is unconfirmed at best, and completely fabricated at worst. The point is that waiting for the dust to settle on current events is a better option than reacting emotionally to the current thing.

Conclusion

I know that this is not the typical post on investments, but I sat down to write yesterday and this what ended up on the page. A lot of what I see on social media is people letting their emotions get in the way of rational thought. Whether its COVID, Ukraine, or Israel, there have been numerous examples of misleading news and headlines, all designed to manipulate to get a certain reaction or create an emotion. I take a wait and see approach. I’m not here to tell readers how to think, but I think slowing things down helps me make better decisions (both with investments and day to day life). In my opinion, this has to be an intentional mindset if you want to counteract the 24 hour news cycle.

Over the last couple years, our society has bounced from one crisis to the next with no signs of this pattern stopping. The media keeps the cameras rolling, the lies flowing, and the outrage growing, just to generate clicks and views. I’m not going to stick my head in the sand and ignore everything going on in the world. I’m not going to get worked up over it either. There are over 8.1 billion in people in the world. It’s important to remember that there are a lot of good people out there, but there are a lot of evil people out there as well. With all that has happened in the world over the last couple years, it is just as apparent as ever.

I have found that watching current events is like watching a slow-motion train crash. There’s not much you can do to change it, but at the same time, you can’t look away. I’m pretty pessimistic about the the short-term, but I’m very optimistic about the longer-term future of our country and the world. At the end of the day, I think that all you can do is figure out who your tribe is (your family, your friends, and your country), and care for those groups of people. I’ve said it a couple times, and I’ll say it again:

I’m paying attention, but I don’t care.