You Should Really Stop Caring

Face it. Being apathetic about politics, economy, or ecology - take your pick - is just like smoking cigarettes - it's cool, everybody knows it, but no one will admit it.

You need to make that last donation you made to charity, that last time you read about hungry kids in Africa and went "Aw, that sucks," that last time you saw ice cubes melting in your soda cup and was reminded of something global - truly your last time. There's a mountain of reasons, but I will give you the three best ones. One - the problems are way too big for you to actually make a difference. Two - that you are no sucker to waste your time trying instead of doing work or blowing off steam. Three (best of the best) - you are you.

First of all, the problem such as that of world poverty is just too big. Let's leave it to the Bill Gates' and Warren Buffets of this world to do philanthropy. So what if one out of two people worldwide live on less than $2 a day? This sucks, sure, but why is it my problem? It's not my fault. If they just study hard, they'll get good jobs and make lives to themselves. If not, then they just did not work hard enough and cared too much about what's happening around the world, instead of focusing on what's really important.

Anyway, who's going to make me give away hard earned cash? How is my life going to improve? What's in it for me?

Nothing.

You should not care about anyone except maybe people you actually met, such as family, friends and maybe roommates. If you see the same people around the campus only once in a while, then amount of apathy they deserve is inversely proportional to the number of times a "Hey ... uh, what's up?" is exchanged during the year. But still, you shouldn't care. If you start worrying about the well-being of every living being on this planet - that's just useless worry. Worrying is a full-time unpaid job with no benefits. If someone is really going to give away personal property to someone with less, then it's that person's business. The entire point of working hard, making a life for oneself, making money is in order to have a life. This way you can spend money on the house, on vacations, buy a little something for that special someone.

In order to care about your own life, you must not care about injustices, ecological disasters looming on the horizon, or human rights abuses going on right now. That's life. You have to be a realist. Everybody knows that you have to be a realist. Realists are the ones that will help you take care of the rent and utilities once you are living on your own, so they must be listened to.

Forget what happens outside the walls of that future house of yours, yawn proudly at the ecological destruction trends that have been spotted worldwide - they're not going to get to you in your life-time. What about today's kids? Well, it's going to be their problems once they grow up. People who are living their lives need to be concerned about their lives. It's so obvious.

You are no sucker to be drawn in by the touchy-feely posters of little kids with bloated bellies and big fearful eyes, standing and chewing their own fists, the feet ankle-deep in garbage. The people who put up these little flyers in the supermarkets - or anywhere - are just after your money. Everybody wants to make a living, to have a life, to make a little something. You knew that.

You know what you want out of life, and you know who can or cannot help you get that. Why waste time after all we all know the saying: "time is money." And money is how I make rent, how I take care of the whole business of the routine.

You must not care. It is so obvious. Whatever happens, happens in the newspapers, or it happens on the television. You don't have to read about it, you don't have to watch those programs. If it was really all that important, then they would assign it for homework and give proper credit. There is one and only one question: What use is it if I can't put it on my resume?

You are important. Period. You and your life are more important than everybody else's. If everyone will just see that, everything will become clear and if everyone lives their own lives then surely everything will be okay.

Staff writer Nikita Shpilberg is a 7th-semester philosophy major. He can be contacted at Nikita.Shpilberg@UConn.edu.