I've been self-examining this quite a bit. People want to not care so they can avoid the pain one can feel... One makes themselves vulnerable, or at least *believes* they are vulnerable.
They still end up in pain's the problem, they just can't identify it. The ignorance of themselves is also the root to repetitious cycles they could very well escape if they'd just let themselves think about it.
Oddly enough, taking these nootropics and supplements to alter oxytocin, I was better able to manage the ups and downs of ordinary emotions, stress, etc. My ADHD was better, or at least not as stressful. There were other positive changes. The negative seemed to be that other emotions and attachments were heightened and longer-lasting. Emotions were able to reach deeper and actually be explored more. Now, as I've been gradually going off these things, I already feel the slide back into shallower emotion, detachment and more cognitive empathy-style thinking.
Do you think you'd be able to carry any of that into your shallower mindset? Would you say you were better off with intense feelings, or worse?
What has changed? What has remained? I don't know.
You still have the experiences you can carry with you, which could be enough for you to still explore your feelings in spite of the shift.
As regards caring -- to bring it back on-topic -- I think one can examine neurobiological impacts of the environment the state of our culture and society is undergoing. There is heightened sensitivity, reactionary societal outrage, the rumblings of potential violence in some places, massive uncertainty and hyper-awareness. People are pacifying themselves into numbness.
True that, it's a big part of how the artful aspect of drug culture is changing in the present day.
Every so often we get an art renaissance from drugs, but more often we see people using it to numb themselves, to get "Turnt up". By recognizing that they have no power over the outcomes of their world they're stuck finding ways to either control their more immediate environment or themselves. A lot of the "I don't care" types I've met have at least one vice that helps them keep up that mentality, but in the end it builds a queue of stress they past a point can't even recognize anymore, that they blame on not having something in their system.
Even our music aims to numb us more now, reminding us to breathe and to let go and shit. The war we've found ourselves in as a society is not a physical one, but rather a spiritual one.
The extreme reactions are being compensated by opposite and equal attempts of extreme reaction. People in the middle try to find their solace in detached disillusionment, probably.
So sort of like how I felt like eating the food in question during PETA videos to see if I should continue to eat meat?
I think in the modern age that the middle ground of caring is healthier. To care too much is a poison too, especially if you're flooding yourself with World News, but you can be informed of the problems in this world without having to do something about it directly.
You should enjoy the emotions you have. All of them. If you didn't have any, you'd be dead. That's no fun at all.
Agreed.
I think the fear revolves around a sense of control being lost or something. As though caring means you won't be in control of your emotional life, at the whims of the fate of others, etc.
I see self control by contrast as being able to see what might trigger you without becoming triggered by it, by having once cared enough to become jaded to it in an informed way.
The hardest thing to do these days is to choose to care, to notice that something got your attention somewhere deep and try to not bury it.
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