The Dangerous Side of “not giving a F***!”

I recently observed something, that I wrestle with more regularly than I would like, particularly within my family circle.

I have a particular family member that I lock horns with. We just see the world differently in a lot of different ways. I know that there is nothing that I can do to change it, I just attempt to be as loving as I can despite the discourse.

I have also recently enjoyed reading the book “the courage to be disliked” and I really enjoyed the exploration of the psychology in that work.

I noticed behavior within one of my family member that concerns me on the subject of confidence… you see. This person has created an illusion of liberation by “not giving a F***…”, about what other people think… This person does whatever they want within the context of their own personal motives, and give little concern to how that might affect the people around them… However,…

It left me a bit confused. Someone expressing all of the words of a free-spirit but behaving in a way that still very much looked like “my way or the highway, I’m right your wrong, end of discussion… and if anyone says otherwise they basically don’t exist to me” … This narrow-mindedness seemed to really clash with the idea that this is someone who “don’t care about what other people think”… it seemed to push it to such an extreme, that the not caring is a genuine non-consideration of others.

The line seemed to be crossed regularly with this individual….it observably was seen to be a general disregard for how their actions affected the people around them. For example, being a house guest, and not cleaning up after yourself, by most standards is in poor taste. Falling back on logic of “I don’t care what you think of me” while it might seem liberating, becomes more carelessness and often is a general disregard for anyone else involved.

***I have also observed this carelessness as a dangerous mean's to self destructive behaviors. This can be said for people experiencing serious mental health symptoms such as manic depressive episodes. This is not to discount mental health by any means. This is a much bigger issue than this topic and subject I'm addressing today... but people within a place being willing to self-destruct are in a strange place. The care required is sometimes something a person just isn't willing to accept. I may explore this in greater detail once I understand the subject better.

I wrestle with this one I bit… especially after reading “the courage to be disliked” … I let it as a charge or a call to ‘not worry or concern yourself with how others view you’, but the idea is more about removing self-obsession and leans into self-acceptance… This is something that I agree with strongly and think is of great importance.

I’m not sure where wires are crossed, but this family member’s disrespectful nature was puzzling.

This is tough to expand on… because I genuinely do not understand the behavior. I am just wired differently… I am anxious and worry often, and as a result of that, I consider most people’s feelings above my own. (This self-sacrificing behavior is equally as inappropriate and just as dishonest… but we can dig deeper on that one at another time.)

Having “no worries” and living in a care-free existence is the goal for most people. As people, one of the surprising things about our behavior that control us are our guilt and shame… they hold us back from a lot of things, in ways that we don’t even fully understand… but you can have no shame and still be respectful of the people around you…

being careless of others and your affect on them, is incredibly strange to me.

This leans into the article I wrote previously about the paradigm of negativity and how you affect others and they affect you.

I think that this might be an important subject because of the current health crisis. I mean, not only on a physical level, but on a mental level.

People do not realize that when we are “putting out signals” people are also picking up on those signals. Yes, this sounds like it borders on pseudoscience but if you think of the domino effect of everything that we have seen play out over the last few months, it is clear how the people losing their minds and how that has had some effect on the misinformed.

This is another reason why our media interfaces have become so dangerous. We don’t know who to trust any more, because we don’t know who is using their own bias to create and push an agenda of their choice. Information has been weaponized for centuries… this is why people willing to seek truth and can have access to it should share that truth… but they are afraid to. It is a very scary world out there for anyone with real access, because they feel like they will be hurt if they come out with it.

It is why thing have also gotten so confusing… media is changed and affected by the perspective of the broadcasters or whoever is putting the information through their communication filter.

I struggle with understanding this logic.

Information should be open to observation. I however, disagree with opinion being that foundation of a fact based thing. Opinions are too subjective to have any kind of a foundation… buuut again… This is my observation and another opinion in another filter.

It is frustrating …there is no way of being productive with this kind of behavior… I know that despite my lack of information and intelligence, I strongly believe in PROGRESS in whatever form is best, with the least number of casualties. People playing numbers games are psychopaths.

I do not want to push people into “my side” or whatever… or start another opinion war over things that aren’t crucial right now. This is speculative exploration… I just want to encourage people to maybe yourself the questions that might make you a little uncomfortable… a call to becoming self-aware, if nothing else, will become the point of progress.

It is the same with being “carefree” and not caring about what anyone else thinks.

There is value in “not caring” about what other people think of you, but this does not mean people should be so naïve as to assume that you have no effect on others.

This kind of thinking is a little more brutally honest than people would be comfortable with. People hate being in this place, especially if they might have wronged someone.

And for most people, embracing their emotional carelessness seems to be the best alternative to avoiding ownership of one’s own responsibility to others.

This is tough. I am mostly ranting and there is a lot of stuff to unpack, but I was just struck by the illusion of liberation that was actually a clever disguise a complete disregard for others and their wellbeing.

I genuinely think you can “not give a F***!” without having to hurt anyone else, while in the process of your own self-discovery.