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After years of feeling like I was just an intrinsic asshole, feel guilty because the pain of others did not affect me, I finally accepted this very thing. I cant be everything to everyone all the time. I cant even be that at any time.
I have great concerns for others, but limited capacity to react or act on it. That realization makes me wonder what it is like for young people today, so inundated with all the negative news, the over-the-top posturing of politics, and the outright demanding nature of social media. I am especially concerned about my fellow ADHD types and the explosion of attention demanding channels out there.
Yes, very concerned. But it doesn’t keep me awake at night. I too think that is a good thing.
I control this on the demand side. I don’t watch broadcast TV at all, or listen to the radio, and I stopped habitually reading general interest news sources.
As for social media, a few years ago I deleted my Facebook, X, Instagram, and Threads accounts, which helped enormously—especially X, which is an absolute cesspool. And while I’m still on Reddit, I’m not hesitant to drop subs that are unedifying. (And then there’s LinkedIn, which may be a bastion of toxic positivity, but it’s still positivity, right?)
To some extent here I’m conflating requests for me to care about something with requests to be angry about something, but even if those are not exactly the same thing, they certainly live on the same street.
I still typically run out of fucks, but that’s because my twenty-something kids are still working their way into productive adulthood. But at least one’s own children are supposed to be part of one’s monkeysphere, so it’s okay.
You are exactly right. The level to which “care about this” has become “be outraged by this” is frankly disturbing. And I don’t believe it’s getting us anywhere. I find myself wondering what it would look like to recognise differing levels of empathy instead of just “you are all in against it or you are complicit”