Caring

Why do we care? What do I mean, we care? I mean that the issue at hand produces some noticeable emotion with us,and continues to direct our attention to the issue; we expend emotion on the issue. Why do we care (not about one topic, but about any)? Humans have great potential to improve our world. Someone, somewhere, is going to ask what ‘improvement’ is; it is a conviction that what we now have is better than what we had before (less racism, less slavery, automobiles, automobiles that run on alternative fuels — these things are improvements). Improvements, the improvements that humans have, with their potential, created thus far, are not perfections. They are steps forward, in which a positive outcome has occurred (to use game theory terminology). However, our capacity and capability to improve our world will not happen if we don’t care. “‘The act of pronouncing it (the machine — any ‘machine’) wrong’s a form of caring (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig; Chapter 14).’” Yes, if we don’t know it’s wrong we won’t fix it. So what, we’ll never know it’s wrong, right (I mean, correct)? True. And we can never move forward. We have great potentiality to create a more perfect world. We cannot improve our world if we don’t care. It is dangerous not to care. It produces only stoicism and regression. It is also dangerous to care. It produces emotional connection and denies contradictory views.
Let us be determined to care. It is not unusual that one event will grab our (collective) attention, and it shall be in that direction that most effort is spent by all parties building a case to garner even greater attention (and thus more caring). This does not negate worry or appreciation, in short, emotion spent, on other causes or in other places, though I believe such energy is finite and waxes and wanes for each particular topic as it gains or decreases in the collective interest. A case in point, Israel. There is no shortage or caring about Israel, though each side (are there nearly seven billion sides?) has its own view. Are those views irreconcilable? That should not prevent us from caring; it should make us care the more, so that progress might be made.