No F*cks Given

tarazkp (85)in Reflections • 9 days ago

While working in the garden yesterday, I started (but only got about halfway through) another book on the list which was popular a decade or so ago - The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, by Mark Manson. I chose this one because I wanted something lighter and bit more conversational for the day, but still offered insight and points of interest to reflect upon. While I won't go into any detail about the book itself, it is basically about the benefits of "not giving a fuck" - which is completely different than being indifferent to everything. It is actually more about giving a fuck about things that matter, and letting go of the things that don't.

Again, a recommended read or listen.

Once Smallsteps came home from school and joined me, I stopped listening and spent the time talking with her while we worked together instead. But one of the things that I had been reflecting upon was the idea of "problems" and what we are willing to suffer in order to get what we want. this is something I have thought a lot about in the past myself, but it was a timely reminder for me to dive back in and build more clarity around the subject.

The thing that resonated with me from the book though was that often we are looking at problems from the wrong perspective, as we are looking to solve our problems as if it is possible to have no problems, rather than recognise that we are just exchanging one set for another. The example given was of Warren Buffet and a homeless person who both have money problems, it is just that one has a better set of them than the other.

As I have posited numerous times in the past, problems are what help us evolve as a species, because we find solutions, then get more problems, and are forced to find solutions again. This makes us smarter. However, if we are only solving the same problem over and over, then we have no need to evolve very far - which is what we have largely been doing over the last few decades, because we aren't learning from our past history enough.

But, since attention is the most valuable resource we possess, if we are spending our attention on solving problems that don't need to be solved, or have little value to solve, then we don't have the availability to solve the things that actually matter. There are many, many examples of this happening in our world today, aren't there? And a lot of the solutions that people are finding for real problems are not solutions at all, but substitutes fooling the mind and body into thinking the issue is fixed, but they persist. Like loneliness and lack of intimacy, being solved by porn and cam models. Or a lack of feeling relevant being solved by ever-finely sliced identity labelling.

This is all attention energy being spent in ways that don't actually offer a solution, but do offer the impression of a solution, or the chance to avoid the actual problem, putting off having to actually find a solution at all. And while we all have problems, there seems to be a "wealth gap" in terms of the value of where we are investing our attentional resources, with some putting their energy into solving for what makes their lives better, but most putting theirs into finding ways to avoid solving anything at all.

I give too much of a fuck about too many things, so what I have to do is reduce the amount of fucks I give, and focus fucking with things that lead to solutions to problems that bring value to my life and the things that I give a fuck about. These things are personal of course, and no one need feel the same about them, but I think we should all be honest with ourselves about why we care about one topic over another to check if we are just justifying spending our attention there, so we can avoid thinking about things that actually affect us, or hold us back. Is supporting a social movement a true passion, or the avoidance of dealing with personal trauma? Are the hours in front of a screen consuming relaxing, or is it the avoidance of finding something truly meaningful and rewarding to do?

Are we tired because we have been adding too much value, or not enough?

As always when I write, I write for myself and my audience, but I don't give a fuck what people think about my thoughts. They are my thoughts, and I don't care if they seem useless or some great thinker has said the same things in the past, I create what I create, and I think what I think. Yes, I listen to some books occasionally, but what I often find is a lot of thoughts I have had coming up in them too, so it doesn't matter if it was said by another, my thoughts are still mine, as are my reflections and application after.

What I do value is the interaction and feedback on the thoughts and especially where people spend time reflecting on them with their own experiences in life. What I find is that the people who criticise are not actually critical thinkers, they are fearful - because they don't actually have much thought for themselves, so rely on the quotes of others to support them. Nothing wrong with learning from others and quoting, but I also wonder, is the learning to improve, or to avoid dealing with the things that actually matter in their lives.