You Are What You Choose to Care About

Whenever there’s a national or global tragedy, I’m interested in seeing how the world reacts.  But I’m even more fascinated by the ways people don’t react — and why they choose to do so.

For every Iran or Haiti that tops Twitter’s trending topics, there are a million #whyyouinchurch or #PantsOnTheGround just waiting in the wings, providing distraction and empowerment for the people who can’t be bothered to care about life’s larger landscape.  This dividing line between caring and ignorance used to bother me, until I realized that what we choose to care about is entirely subjective — even when it comes to epic disaster.

One Person’s Fiery Death Is Another Person’s Reminder to Mute Her Blackberry

A few years ago, I was in a Pittsburgh restaurant (an Eat ‘n Park, unsurprisingly), overhearing the conversations happening around me.  A college student and her mother were eating at a table nearby, and somehow the conversation turned to September 11.

“I remember you called me that morning,” the daughter said,” and I let the machine get it, and you were all like, ‘Turn on your TV, a  plane just hit the World Trade Center and  people are jumping out the windows!’  And I just turned the machine off and went back to bed, because I’m thinking, ‘Why are you telling me this?  I don’t even live in New York City!’”  (laughs)

Choosing to Care (And Why We Do… Or Don’t)

The truth is, everything you do is a value judgment.  Which headlines you read, whom you invest your time in, which obligations you allow yourself to believe you’re beholden to.  None of these interests or beliefs are pre-coded in your DNA.  They’re the product of your personality + environment + culture + immediate reality.  And all of those aspects combine to form the value system through which you process all incoming information, deciding what matters to you and what doesn’t.

The truth is, we’re all wild animals.  We only adhere to social norms as a way of streamlining the feeding and mating processes, and because living in a mutually-beneficial society has its benefits when compared to a life of anarchy.  But if the pros of being a part of a society ever cease to outweigh the cons, the only thing stopping us from checking out is the law.  (Jailers and hangmen are always the last line of defense against people who decide they’d rather not play along with our constructed normality.)

The truth is, you don’t need to care about your family, or about the next iPhone, or about Haiti.  Doing so doesn’t make you a better person; it just makes you feel better about being a person.  It also makes you more civil, which your fellow humans appreciate because it gives them a positive example to follow while simultaneously alerting them that you’re “normal” enough for them to not have to worry about (or defend against).

Caring also provides your life with something it would otherwise be missing: context.

I Am What I Laugh (or Cry) About

Maybe caring about a cause gives you something to feel good (or bad) about, and this helps you frame your choices.

Maybe championing a cause leads you to believe you have an externally-imposed purpose.

Or maybe you just enjoy feeling like the only person who cares about something no one else cares about, which reinforces your outsider status by way of empathizing with your fellow underdogs.

The people and ideals we choose to invest our time and emotions in are what defines us, both to ourselves and to the people who observe us.  Our causes are signals to others, and so is the degree of effort we ascribe to them — whether we profess to believe something in passing or whether we’re willing to stand up and take action when the need to defend our beliefs arises.

Whatever you choose to care about, or whether you choose to care about nothing at all, remember one thing: nobody can make you care.  Except you.  And that makes caring the only true freedom we have.

Tags: audience, common sense, ethics, news, perception, politics, pop culture, trending topics