None Of Us Care For The World — No One Ever Has
Our care for the world is dependent on what we want from it!
What a strong assertion! How dare I say that YOU— the one sitting and reading this — don’t care about the world when you have woken up every single day, motivating yourself by telling yourself that you will make a difference in the world someday.
You respond:
‘Yeah, it might be your particular problem since you lack the moral, mental, and emotional fortitude to care about the world. Your worldview is LIMITED. Don’t generalize your frailty and flawed worldview to me, please! You are not the right person to tell me that I don’t care about the world. I do care, and I know a lot of people who do too.’
See, I know your answer, yet I persist with this article, WHY?
I say no one cares about the world, no one ever has, and that all we humans can care about is for own self and our family (if we are lucky enough) is because I have a theory of human motive which tells me so! I call it the 4Ps of Human motive. I have derived it after years of carefully observing my own desires and others’ too! And like a good theorist, I will stick to the theory and even try to impose it upon you.
Now let me cut to the chase and say what I have been meaning to say:
What we care about the world is completely dependent on what we want from the world!
So, what do we want from the world?
This is where the 4Ps of Human motive comes into play. For me, all of ours desires can be looked upon as subtle-combination of the following:
- Power
- Prestige
- Popularity
- Pleasure
- We either want power, prestige, popularity or pleasure.
- We may want all of them equally or variably
- Not wanting either of those four means we are either gods or devils.
Like everyone else, I struggle with my desires. This thing called power, especially, bothers me a lot. There have been times when I have told myself I should be the most powerful person in the world and there have been times where I have told myself that pursuit of power is the most disgusting thing a creature can do. The amazing thing that makes me say, what we care of the world is dependent on what we want from it, is this:
During phases where I am dream of power, I have problems with billionaires and political leaders. Bastards they all are, they are cunning people who are destroying the world, I say to myself. But, while I am in the other phase — say a sagic phase (extremely rare phase where I feel beyond 4Ps) where power for me is a disgusting thing — I don’t at all care about those types of leaders and the world. It’s as if they don’t exist and the world is normal all of a sudden without any villains. The world seems great enough to take care of itself, without me. My duty is limited to taking care of myself.
What could it be suggesting? I asked myself.
This is the answer I got:
When you want power, you have issues with politicians and billionaires because you are jealous of them. You rant because you want what they have but don’t have it.
I have had similar experiences from the other angle as well. Isn’t it funny that I happen to care about the world only when I have a certain desire for power? Because it has happened to me! Whenever I have gotten ambitious, I have thought about the future of humanity, animals and nature. Whenever I have been on the sagic phase, however, I don’t seem to care about any of those. The world is alright for me.
I have had similar experiences with the other Ps:
- Whenever there is an urge to gain some social prestige, I care about the society and also tilt towards the socialist spectrum.
- Whenever there is an urge for popularity, I seem to want to spread joy in the world.
- Whenever there is an urge for pleasure, I become a materialist and start looking for the goods in capitalism.
- And yeah, I want to make a dent in the universe when I want to become the most powerful person in the world.
And I have seen other people behave similarly. All a friend of mine cares about in this world is to smoke ganja and when he graduates and develops certain political ambition, he starts caring about the refugees and the underprivileged.
Some are socialist because they care for medals and legacy, some are hedonists because they care for their own pleasures. This is the only explanation I can conjure on why there is such an idealist division among us. We surely haven’t calculated the pros and cons! Our tilt is determined by our will, not the other way around.
This way, I think no one has ever cared about the world. I don’t consider us to have been built that way. Care for the world is only a rhetoric we humans have used — to both ourselves and others — to attain each of our 4Ps.
Whenever I see a critic of a billionaire, I see someone who quietly want to be one.
Yes, our inner voice has told us at times that we really care. When we have seen pictures and heard stories of people and animals suffering from injustices, we have shivered in anger and felt compassionate. We have vowed to make a change in the world. But here’s a question I would like to ask to you, the carer:
Haven’t you at the same time also imagined yourself getting recognition for the change you have made in this world?
‘What’s wrong with that, it gets things done’, you might say.
‘Nothing,’ I will reply. ‘Only that we are lying to ourselves when we do that.’
We are deceiving ourselves and others and that’s why we have failed to solve our mutual problems as we have got the foundation of looking at each other wrong. The premise wrong. IF we started looking at our actions based on our motives, there would be fewer gullible people among us, fewer megalomaniacs, and we would surely be able to organize our socio-political hierarchy better. Which, to be honest, is a disaster considering how we boast of our intelligence. We can build rockets, but can’t build a better political system! It’s because majority of us have always lived in delusion where we have mistaken the ambition of a tyrant with genius.
A world with clarity and honesty is surely a better world than one of deception. Currently, we are living in a world of veils of maya. We better remove it!
We — humans aren’t that perfect. We haven’t reached a stage where we can step out of our own petty selves and care for the rest of the world. Once again, it requires the best among us to deeply and really care about our own family. World-care is far. Too far! Our drives are personal and it has held true for all the Buddhas and Gandhis.
I will ask you another question:
Say, you care about climate change and want to do something about it. And if a god was to come and tell you that you won’t be getting anything in return for your works — nothing at all: no power, prestige, popularity or pleasure — would you still want to work on climate change?
Q: Hold on a second, you wrote above that:
IF we started looking at each other and our actions based on our motives, we would surely be able to organize our socio-political hierarchy better. Which has become very necessary today. A world with clarity and honesty is surely a better world than one of deception???? — — — — Why do you care?
A: I have a desire for power lurking inside me, bubbling to come out. Why else would I say that?
This also applies to us as a species:
Would we care about climate change if it wouldn’t challenge our existence?
Care for the species because we all fall down together.
