To give a fuck or not, ’tis the question

Balancing ourselves in relation to society

In society I have noticed that we are drawn to formidable characters who are ruthlessly themselves, sometimes even to a fault. That’s why even bad, malicious characters sometimes attract us. People who are fans of the Walter Whites, the Tony Sopranos, and the Tommy Shelbys. It doesn’t necessarily have to be criminals, but we sure like to see people who are strong, ruthless, and confident. The people who are larger than life, who dare to dream and speak exactly what they want they want. They do not care too much about the superficial. It is a fascination that lives deep in us because we truly want to be that liberated, yet we cannot find our way there in our normal day to day lives.

I truly believe that this is why stars like Conor McGregor are such popular figures in the world. Their unshakeable confidence in themselves strikes a chord in the hearts of millions of fans causing them to root for the stars as if they’re rooting for themselves. Maybe it is also the underdog effect, a fantasy that everyone has seen in the theaters of their minds: an average bloke begins truly living life on his own terms, not giving a shit about the complaints of the world. Nevertheless, it’s a fact that there’s a different level of fascination and magnetism such characters bring to people.

A shortage of fucks to give

We notice one common pattern amongst these people: they just don’t seem to give a fuck. And this is contrary to most people’s existence by a long shot. Generally speaking, people tend to give too many fucks about too many things. This is obviously diametrically opposed to the strong superstars who live and breathe freedom. Sigh… What a wonderful idea, right guys? If only we could be that way too.

“I care about everything, that’s my problem. It sucks my energy, my drive, my desire to live… all of it”

“Even when I don’t care, I care that I don’t care. I feel like there’s something wrong with me. Why am I so hyper sensitive about what other people think? Even those that I do not know at all!!!”

“The number one thing that stops me from achieving my goals is the judgement of society. Whether it be parents, teachers, friends, strangers. I feel it so acutely. I see some people be able to shrug it off and plough ahead anyways. What do they do? What’s the difference between me and them???

As an agreeable person who oftentimes puts other people’s comforts over my own, I am no stranger to these questions. I have faced a lot of (self inflicted) pain due to this nature of mine. In this post, I will distill all the phases I went through, including steps I took to mitigate this weakness.

I will talk about the reflections, observations, and people watching I’ve done, throughout my teenage years and further in an attempt to find answers. On top of that, I will juxtapose my natural agreeableness with choosing to not care for my own mental sanity. The hope is that this exploration draws us an exact line through which we can identify when to give a fuck and when not to.

Why and when to care

First of all, why should we even care an iota about other people and society? We are bestowed this life once and once only. We are the first person player in this video game we play. What is our responsibility to others anyways? When my neighbor screams at me for turning up my amplifier too loud while practicing Sweet Child O’ Mine… why give a solitary shit?

Because we do not own the world or the things in it. We share the world with our fellow inhabitants, which includes resources, space, utilities, etc. Thus, we cannot hoard everything to ourselves because it leaves other people hanging, breeding misery. When this happens long enough, it shouldn’t be too long before complaints from others make our own world crumble.

How many complaints is it going to take unti the landlord evicts you for noise complaints? We don’t know but we sure wouldn’t like to find out. Everybody wants to guarantee a smooth passage through life and nobody wants an upstairs neighbor tap dancing at 2AM. If we do not want that for us, it follows that we should not want that for others as well.

The Golden Rule

This is why the golden rule is king.

Next up, why care about the opinions of our family, friends, teachers, or society? We imagine the super badass characters of the world dancing to the rhythm of their own hearts, treating everything else as white noise. While this may be true some of the times, it is not always the most appropriate reaction. The reality is that we don’t really know as much as we think we do.

I invite you to do an experiment with yourself. Ask yourself: “what do I really know?”. After making a list of these things, see how deeply you can delve into the minute details of these. Compare the information you have against the WikiPedia page you find about the topic. What do you see? Did you miss anything? How much?

The human advantage

We need to rely on people who have bits of experience about things we know nothing about. I trust my pilot to take off at the right angle so I reach Thailand, not Timbuktu. You trust your pharmacist or nurse with giving you the right medicine at the right dosages to heal your issues and not make them worse.

Collaboration has founded the history of human evolution, giving us a clear competitive advantage. Our ability to invent languages and communicate is why I have a laptop, sit in a cozy house, and write these words for you to read.

We need to learn from other people, yet there is too much out there.

We have to filter the tons of knowledge embedded in society. But we cannot be arrogant enough to dismiss this knowledge that has been accumulated by millions of generations and lives. Not all of it is will exactly be applicable to you, but you will be able to find bits and pieces there which could help you out. An open mind is critical here.

Trust and collaboration requires care. We cannot be reckless and not care about other people and expect them to give a fuck about you. The people you serve trust you, whether at your job, at home, or in other places you frequent.

The nature of our happiness

This is why justice and equality are such essential concepts. If our own happiness is related to others’ happiness, we need to ensure that everybody gets what they deserve. No one person should be hogging all the resources. Again, everybody shares the world, so it is our imperative duty that we keep equality in mind for everybody. We make it a point to care. Because if you don’t, then what’s the guarantee that anyone else will care when you are the one demanding justice?

Finally, there’s the morality aspect of why we should care. We did not come into this world alone. Thousands of people have been involved since you were born, and thousands more will be involved in the future. Turning the pages of your book, even things you fiercely argue that you achieved all by yourself, you are going to find somebody or some people’s handprints on the pages.

The person who sat at the college application committee who advocated for your acceptance. The viewers who watches your YouTube channels. the audience who enjoys your content and fuels you to keep writing. Can you even fathom how interconnected we really are and how much of a facade “a self-made man” really is? Other people’s important fingerprints fill the pages of my book. They can be minor or major, but they’re there.

Who and how much to care for

Why and when not to care

Here’s the counter argument: sometimes we need to not give a fuck and just do what we want. Sometimes we become hyper attuned to the opinions spilling in from the grapevine. They confuse us, they diffuse us, and they overload our brain. We lose our focus, both on our own wants and what we need to do. If we listen to others all the time, when are we going to listen to us? Isn’t that important too, given our wishes and the fact that WE live the one life we have. Our hopes, dreams, and aspirations are not something that others think about: we do.

Furthermore, in general, we tend to get the most risk-averse opinions from society. From the many different simulations of life that the people around us have seen, we come up with rules for life that can go contrary to what we truly want.

“Son, don’t become a painter. You will not be able to make money”

“Daughter, get married early to a guy with good finances. It will make life for you and your future kids easier”

“Starting a business is risky. Working a 9-5 job is stable all around. Doing things where there isn’t certainty is not the way to go”

Becoming an Essentialist

These are, of course, good pieces of advice, but they cannot be applicable to everybody all at once. There comes a time when we have to find the courage to break these rules to follow our desires, not as a middle finger to society, but as a hug to yourself. We follow our gut instincts about what would make us happy and what kind of person we want to be. After all, society is not going to live the little moments you’ll be living for you and the affects of those moments on your soul. You do that and when you see that your soul is not happy with where you’re going, you must stand up, not give a fuck, and work towards what YOU want.

To begin doing this, we have to think about the ideas written in the book “Essentialism” by Greg McKeown. In this book, the author argues that we need to choose what to focus on with a laser focus and ignore the rest. We need to learn to say no to the trivialities that do not pertain to what we need to do. This is the philosophy of strong characters who seem to be unbothered by the world.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck

It is not that they don’t care about anything at all. That would be psychopathic. They have a small set of things they care very intensely about and the things that fall outside are discarded without second thoughts.

The trick is to know what to care about and what not to. Kobe Bryant certainly lived by these principles. He treated the world as an open playbook of learning. He pulled anything that could optimize his basketball game from any domain into his way of playing. Things that did not matter disintegrated into nothingness. It is a paradigm shift on the idea of not-giving-a-fuck. It really is about choosing carefully where we give our fucks to. This is also what Mark Manson has said time and time again, in his book – The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck – or in his blogs. These are core Essentialist ideas.

How to care about the relevant things

Once on a flight from Nepal to Qatar, I met a gentlemen who worked as a laborer. I was just a second year student trying to make it to Minnesota for my studies while he was on his way back to work, hustling, sending money back home, and making ends meet for himself and his family back in some poor village in Nepal. This man ended up being a big influence for me when it comes to becoming more Essentialist and learning how to reserve my fucks for when it counts.

Labor work in the Middle East

The context we need to have for why this story affected me so much is that this person’s life was very challenging. Many people from small villages in various regions of Asia are drawn to work in the Middle East, a well documented fact. The work itself is far from glamorous, involving construction labor in peak middle eastern heat. To put into perspective what kind of work it is mostly, we need to look no further than the 2022 World Cup controversy involving Qatar’s construction of the stadium utilizing migrant workers.

The conditions these workers are put through are not exactly ideal, not just in terms of the difficulty of work but also the status with which they live in the countries they work in. They’re oftentimes treated as third-class citizens who are manipulated into giving up their identity documents, forced into taking inferior pay, amongst many other transgressions.

A short chat revealed to me that the man worked in such conditions. During pauses of conversation, I felt him peering at me expectantly from my peripherals. I looked at him and got the idea that he wanted my help communicating with the flight attendant, as it didn’t seem that he knew English. The man proceeds to ask for a peg of Black Label whiskey and slugs it down. Soon enough, he begins gesturing me to stop the attendant every time he walks past the aisle to ask for more whiskey.

The pains of agreeableness

I feel slightly uncomfortable. My agreeable nature had never allowed me to comfortably demand things from people, even if it’s their job. It seems inappropriate to ask for more whiskey every single time the attendant shows up anywhere near us, so he could assist other passengers with different things. My fear of being an over-demanding person is so strong that looking at this gentleman is filling me with annoyance. Yet, I want to help him get his drinks, something his language barrier is preventing him from doing.

Eventually, even the flight attendant starts getting irritated and starts showing up less frequently. Noticing all these behaviors, the gentleman looks at me and asks:

“Why are you so bothered about someone who you are never going to meet again?”

Hmm.. That’s a good point. By the time we land on the next airport and take our shuttles or taxis to our final destination, this current flight will have been packed with a fresh round of passengers on its way to an entirely new destination. I, and the gentleman, will have become two (brief but annoying) characters that the attendant had to deal with on one of the hundreds of flights he’d done from Kathmandu to Doha. In fact, the gentleman himself would become a speck of a story in my mind, and my grievances with his constant whiskey assistance would wash away; the only thing that would remain is the lesson I learnt to not care too much.

Tempering how much we care

This story may sound very trivial, but the little idea I took away was powerful, personally. I learnt something about reserving your fucks for things that warrant it. Besides all the difficulties that life had thrown at him, the man had developed a bulletproof mentality, at least in this regard. The man did not care whether he was making things difficult for me or the flight attendant; he only gave a fuck about whether he got his whiskey or not.

Essentialist!

Should we not weigh how much importance we give to people by whether we will cross paths again or not?

Yes!

If we’re meeting people only once, perhaps it would be overkill to be too bothered with what they think, whether we’re causing them trouble, etc. Of course, it is still necessary to be courteous and the gentleman was as well. But worrying too much outside of that initial courtesy is unneeded and damaging.

The judgements of people we’re never going to meet or encounter infrequently should not be a factor in our decision making. These include social media comments, random Google reviews, or a strange guy yelling obscenities to you on FIFA Live. Unless we can see valid concerns and pointers that can affect our lives positively, judgements from these faceless souls should be ignored. They’re just going to disintegrate in the jumbled pool of our memories anyways, and we should not give a fuck about that.

Trying to find a balance

I started pushing myself to not care too much over everything after this event. In the beginning, it was forceful and unnatural. When you’re used to being right-handed your entire life and suddenly try to write using your left hand, it isn’t exactly smooth.

I would find myself being erratic, sometimes too harsh towards people and sometimes too lenient. More often than not, I’d have to be hyper aware to care for myself more and push ruthless self advocacy due to my natural agreeable state. And so like a pendulum I swung from side to side, until I started noticing some warning signs that occur when I fall into either end of the spectrum too deep.

Aristotle and the golden mean

Whenever I would notice symptoms occur in batches for either category, I started to recognize that I was veering too far into one direction. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics was instrumentally helpful when it came to me recognizing the importance of balance in everything, or, as Aristotle phrases it, following the golden mean.

The ancient philosopher astutely recognized that every single virtue, even virtues that are universally recognized as net positives, can have negative effects when taken too far. Let us take the virtue of courage. The entire world applauds courage and this isn’t anything new. It was so for cavemen or Roman warriors; it is true for Navy SEALs or a new business owner. It doesn’t seem that having too much of such a universally lauded virtue could be a bad thing.

But no! Aristotle argues otherwise. Even bravery can be taken too far if it reaches the territory of recklessness. Of course! What would you say when you see a young man dangling from the side of the building trying to capture a viral video? You could say he is being brave but you could also criticize him for his needless rash behavior.

Every wonderful virtue we can think of can be overdone or underdone. Kindness can definitely be underdone but it can be overdone as well, if it starts affecting your own life and sanity. This is the vital point: the virtue of giving a fuck and not giving a fuck should also be balanced according to the principle of golden mean.

What to model your behavior on?

Now that we know that every behavior can have an extreme or a deficit, the natural question that remains is to how to anchor yourself. We need to have solid pathway for the right way of behaving, for situations that require us to care and to not care. The best way this can be done is through role models, real, fictitious, theoretical, doesn’t matter. If the model is behaving in a way that we want to portray in the world, we need to align ourselves to that. The actions that are expected of us become our anchors and we have a map of the road now. The only thing to take into consideration is to be careful of who we’re choosing to listen to and follow.

This cannot be done arbitrarily because we may reach somewhere we never intended to, if we don’t pay attention. In today’s day and age, it is easy to get influenced by people we see on the internet. These people claim to be and have what we want, so our ears perk up whenever we hear them talk. This is what is happening with influencers such as Andrew Tate and the red-pill movement, who spout the “concepts of masculinity” and hypnotize large sections of people into accepting these opinions.

I noticed how subtly this hypnotization happened within myself. I’d begun to listen to some opinions about how Tate formed workout habits and was intrigued with how he had captured public consciousness. I listened to a lot of his opinions and found myself liking the things he had to say. Eventually I found myself agreeing with things that were completely contrary to what I originally believed in!

Choose who you listen to wisely

I had mistakenly entered an idea bubble where only the people who believe in a certain set of ideas exist. Ideas in such bubbles are like maggots: they slowly worm your way into your head, even if you promise yourself you’ll never allow them to. I had to root myself out of this rabbit hole to find myself again.

This was a lesson to pay extreme attention to who you listen to and choose to model your behavior on. I wasn’t an Andrew Tate fan or anything, but I had chosen to listen to him, which is the same as letting him influence me into his worldview, the same worldview that I had a lot of contentions with. It is necessary to vet the people we listen to and know that they truly know what they’re talking about and the ideas we’re getting are not some reflection of some weird echo chamber.

And finally, we have to learn to separate the posers from the players, the pretenders from the authentic ones. With posers, usually there are telltale signs that they are not who they state to be whereas this is wholly absent in the actual people we want to follow. Charlatans usually push you really strongly to take some actions that benefit them. They’re defensive and vague when prodded for more information. Quickness to rage is also another trait to keep in mind. Real people, who want the best for you, do not do any of these things and is something we need to bear in mind.

Conclusion

The dance of giving a fuck and not giving a fuck is something we will have to do for a lifetime. It makes sense to begin thinking about it concretely and systemizing it so we have an appropriate response to situations, and an ability to be fine with whatever decision we have made. Choosing either is really dependent on the situation, what we’ve done in the past, and how we want to be in the future. These are important decisions that shape how we look at ourselves and how the world will look at us.

But the good thing is that we have a lot of tools at our disposal to make such decisions: the feedback we get from our internal state, our surroundings, the reactions and advice of our friends and family. Most importantly, we have ourselves, forever vigilant and aware of what’s happening and what our choices mean for us. We need to trust ourselves to make the decisions that will make us the happiest, whether we give a flying fuck or not.