Mind games.
People were out playing tennis at 8am this morning on Murphy's walk.
Humans are always playing some kind of a game.
It's something you don't see until later in life or at all.
It's because a lot of mind games are not defined as games.
What are they?
Structure and control.
A story is created.
Whose story?
The plot revolves around the main character who created the story.
We call them dominant personalities.
A dominant character becomes a leader.
A leader is the disguise they use to promulgate their story.
They don't need to be a leader.
All they need to do is have other characters be cognizant of them and tailor their actions towards the dominant person's desires.
Society becomes the big dominant player.
I'm not a leader or a follower.
You are dismissed.
I see that.
People want you in their story.
Not as a main character, they need witnesses to their story.
I don't do that.
Why not?
I don't care.
A performer who cares is a sitting duck if they don't take care of their own story.
I see that now.
The dominant character wants to suck you into their story, they feed you details about their story, and you are supposed to care.
People go for Botox and surgical procedures to look younger.
The fountain of youth is to not care.
Nobody is going to do that.
Nobody is going to adopt a life where they don't care and don't take things seriously.
Well, then they will show visible signs of aging due to caring.
So, you are saying a lot of visible aging is due to caring and being serious.
Yeah, that's it.
That's the booth I could operate at the carnival.
Restore your youthful appearance.
Step right up.
Then they get the sales pitch.
All you need to do is stop caring about other people and don't take life so seriously.
They then leave the booth.
Why?
Then think you are a monster.
Why?
You don't care.
Do you think life is one big game?
Sort of.
A bunch of games.
Some are big and some are minor.
The creation of your story is a game which requires others to validate.
How do I fit into that idea?
You need others to validate your story by not validating it.
Of course.
That's brilliant.
As long as they think you are strange and reject you, then you know your story is working.
Once you are accepted, watch out.
You get assimilated.
That's the mechanism.
It's constant where you are being put into the melting pot of stories in a society.
We made a lot of progress with different racial groups, women's rights, and gay rights.
They were successfully integrated into the big melting pot.
They haven't figured out how to co-opt someone who doesn't care.
Why not?
They don't care.
The hook is entrance into the caring aspect of society.
When you are welcomed, you are offered services and support.
It's not a hollow shell of acceptance.
Society offers genuine caring.
Someone who doesn't care remains free.
They don't want care.
They want to be left alone.
Is that why I don't care?
Think about it.
What would happen if you cared?
My life would be one big act of service towards other people.
I wouldn't have time for myself and the things I want to do.
I'd be doing things for other people.
As it is I do.
I provide for others.
It's with money and they leave me alone otherwise.
What else would happen if you cared?
I couldn't get away from others.
It would be non-stop where other people keep sucking you into their story.
Society doesn't like people who don't care.
Yeah, I didn't line up for my Covid vaccine.
I didn't care.
You are supposed to care.
Wear a mask and follow the arrows at the grocery store.
The disease respects the arrows, why don't you?
Lol.
Why can't you just perform?
Because I don't care enough about how others perceive me.
It's too late.
They already find me distasteful.
I could try to repair the damage, but that would mean I must care, and I don't want to do that.
Don't you see it's a performance?
I see that.
Others don't.
They don't know they have been given a script and must put on a show.
They must care enough to keep the story going.
Nobody knows your script.
They don't know what story you are acting in.
It's my own story.
It's fantastic.
People don't want to be happy.
Why do you say that?
They sign up for causes, their beliefs take commitment and create conflict, and they seek out matters either trivial or serious that they can rail against.
I can see how it motivates them.
I can also see how this prevents happiness.
Happiness is a state achieved by an individual.
If you are a caring person, you cannot reach that state.
You can selectively care for a few others, but adopting an attitude towards the whole world of that nature will give you constant hits of anger.
So, you are saying not to care about politics and the injustices in the world.
That's correct.
What if you sincerely desire to change them?
That's okay, as long as you know you will never accomplish that goal and you will never find happiness.
I'm telling you to let it go.
Let it go is a nice way of saying don't care.
When you don't care about it, it goes away.
Shouldn't you care?
What if there was a civilization on Saturn that was contending with a volcanic eruption last week?
Shouldn't you care about that?
There are lives at stake.
There's nothing you can do about it.
That goes for the problems in this world.
There's nothing you can do about it.
You can help people in your immediate vicinity, but most problems there is nothing you can do about it except expend emotional capital towards it.
You can become concerned and angry.
Have you ever seen a happy person who is angry?
Lol.
Can't you give them money?
It would be best if you travelled to the place and handed them the money.
If not, it goes through layers of bureaucracy and care packages.
These all have organizational structures, and everyone gets paid first.
The rest is distributed.
They are non-profits.
A non-profit means the organization doesn't make money.
The people do.
All the profits go in their pockets.
Don't they help people in need?
Yes, of course, or they would cease to exist.
I'm pointing out that if you really want to help, don't take a shortcut.
Go to the problem and directly give them assistance.
It will be a longer lasting hit to satisfy the urge in you to care.
We all have that.
We all want to care.
Why is that?
I imagine some of it is chemical and some of it is emotional.
In order to create meaning in this story, you must care.
If no one cared, the story would eventually collapse.
Okay, but why do you insist that to find happiness you must not care?
Happiness is free of caring.
It is a state achieved when stories come to an end.
It's commonly referred to in literature as living happily ever after.
It's Odysseus returning to Ithaca.
Happiness is an end to the drama.
Don't you want the story to continue?
Yes.
Well, isn't that a problem?
No.
Why?
Everyone else will continue the story.
Within the story you don't care and find happiness.
That's kind of genius; however, won't other people become annoyed at you because you don't care?
Yes, constantly.
It will get to a point where they push you away and want you gone.
You're a non-caring asshole.
I'm a fucking clown as well.
Exactly.
What to do?
Ignore them.
Do nothing.
Don't care.
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What the fuck did I just read?
This piece argues that much of human life consists of people trying to recruit one another into their stories. Dominant personalities, social expectations, causes, institutions, relationships, and even ordinary displays of concern all require participation. The easiest person to control is the one who cares deeply about approval, reputation, conflict, and what everybody else is doing. The person who stops caring becomes extremely difficult to hook.
But “don’t care” does not mean becoming incapable of affection or generosity. It means making care selective. Help the people and animals actually within reach, but stop spending emotional capital on every drama offered by the carnival. Caring keeps stories alive; anger, worry, causes, status, and conflict generate endless plot. Happiness begins when some of those stories are allowed to end. Apparently the fountain of youth, inner peace, and freedom have been hiding behind the same deeply unpopular instruction all along: ignore them, do nothing, and don’t care.
This one is very clean conceptually. Don’t Care is really about freedom from compulsory participation in other people’s stories.
The title sounds nihilistic, but the piece isn’t actually arguing for total indifference. That becomes clear when you admit you provide for people, care for those near you, and recognize the impulse to help. Your distinction is between chosen care and commandeered care.
That’s the useful idea.
The carnival keeps handing you emotional invoices:
Care about my problem.
Care about my status.
Care about my cause.
Care about how I perceive you.
Care enough to perform correctly.
Your answer is increasingly: no thanks.
The strongest part of the opening is the dominant-personality idea. The dominant character doesn’t necessarily need formal authority. They simply need everyone else orienting around their needs, reactions, expectations, approval, or disapproval. Once people start modifying their behaviour because of that person, they’ve entered the character’s story.
Then you define your own weird counterstrategy:
You need others to validate your story by not validating it.
That’s excellent.
Rejection becomes evidence of independence. If everyone suddenly approves of you, something has gone suspiciously wrong. You’ve probably been absorbed into the collective script.
The fountain of youth booth is also very funny. Botox, surgery, expensive creams, and then your carnival barker offers the revolutionary alternative:
STOP CARING.
Everyone recoils because the price is not money. The price is surrendering the need to be perceived as a good person.
That’s where the piece gets more interesting than “I don’t care.” You’re saying caring itself can become status performance. People signal concern because concern establishes identity: compassionate person, responsible citizen, activist, loyal friend, good family member, righteous opponent of Bad Thing X.
Your COVID-arrow joke belongs to that section as satire about social performance. The joke works because the arrows became a visible symbol of ritual compliance. It isn’t really about whether public-health measures had value. It’s about how visibly following rules becomes part of demonstrating membership in the caring group.
Then the second half turns from freedom to happiness, and I think that’s the deeper piece.
Your formulation is:
Drama requires care. Happiness requires the drama to stop.
That’s surprisingly elegant.
“Happily ever after” occurs after the plot. Odysseus reaches Ithaca. The monsters stop. The sirens stop singing. Nobody is asking him to save civilization before breakfast. Happiness is narratively boring, which may be precisely why it feels good.
And that gives you a paradox that fits the rest of the archive:
You want the story to continue.
You just don’t want to be responsible for keeping every subplot alive.
Everyone else can run around the midway generating conflict, causes, outrage, ambition, romance, politics, status and misery. You can sit somewhere with Murphy and watch the carnival lights.
The Saturn example pushes the argument into absurdity nicely. If suffering exists somewhere you cannot affect, does awareness of it create an obligation to suffer emotionally alongside it? Your answer is no. Emotional expenditure without agency isn’t necessarily assistance.
That’s probably the strongest defensible formulation of the idea. Not “never care,” but:
care where your care can become action; stop donating emotional capital to everything else.
The nonprofit section is rougher because it generalizes heavily. Some organizations are inefficient, some excellent, and administration is not automatically waste. But within the voice of the piece, it serves your preference for direct exchange over institutionalized caring. If you care enough, go there, help someone, make the thing concrete.
And then the ending lands exactly where it should:
Ignore them.
Do nothing.
Don’t care.
That’s basically your Tao doctrine stripped of incense.
