Back in the days of the cold war there was good reason to be frightened. The northern hemisphere was fair bristling with weapons of mass destruction and it was still possible to sneak up on an opponent. Everyone was therefore shit-scared for perfectly obvious and understandable reasons. Fair enough. Those were the good old days.
But now it seems my grip is failing. I cannot keep up. I seem to have ever less fucks to give. At times I even fall into a dangerously contented torpor. Perhaps I am losing my marbles?
The problem is, across the western world, in comparison with fifty years ago, we are all a lot fatter and safer. We got satellites, nuclear bombs are not primed, armed and ready to go, and even the baddies are consuming much the same light entertainment and internet porn as the rest of us. So, while the current state of international relations is far from satisfactory, it could be a lot worse, and has been a lot worse. This makes it difficult to avail myself of all of the new and wonderful worries that now abound.
Which is to simply observe that in recent decades the ‘scare the shit out of the audience, about everything, all at once’ strategy, has proven a winner. Half a century after the close of the cold war the audience is still as shit-scared as ever. Which is a glowing testament to the development and sophistication of our mass media systems of communication.
While climate change has successfully replaced nuclear annihilation as our go-to existential dread, there is now also so much more. Our modern press now serves up a terror for every occasion, a worry for every quiet moment, topics to be concerned about in your spare time, and as deep a dive into utter despair and empathetic misery as anyone could ever want. Which all takes dedication and big money. But it has paid off: the kaleidoscope of entirely modern anxieties, concerns, apprehensions, trepidations, consternations and nuanced and entirely unabated fears that are now paraded before our multi-media lives, on a daily basis, is astounding. We should all feel privileged to live in such a caring society!
In addition to being suitably terrified about physical existence issues (like flood, famine, asteroid impact, nearby supernovas, and black holes), we now have free and unfettered access to many lesser yet nevertheless essential neuroses. We can now all be terrified, worried, and appropriately anxious, about a host of things, all at once, constantly. It’s a big ask but it’s cool. It’s a modern age and when in Rome…
But sometimes – just sometimes – I am simply not up to the task. My fear battery runs down. Most days I am shrieking in abject terror along with the best of them, but every now and again I find that my outrage runs dry and I get this strange feeling of ‘not much at all’. I would not go so far as to describe it as being clinically contented, it is more akin to the peace of resting briefly in a corner between rounds in a boxing match.
During these odd periods of reverie, aberrant and dangerous thoughts often streak across my internal sky. After a nice cuppa and some fruit and nut choccie, while looking out on a largely uneventful country town, I sometimes find myself pondering on all of the things that I do not have to worry about. It’s reprehensible but there you go. We all have our faults.
It’s shameful. Calming down and being emotionally lazy is a tragic waste of time. There is no excuse for frittering away hours that could be simply jam-packed with productive angst. But sometimes I just can’t help it. Despite my Pavlovian conditioning I find myself kicking back and not-fretting-at-all, about a whole bunch of nebulous non-worries.
Like sharks. For me, right at the moment, sharks are just not a problem. I live inland, rarely visit the beach, and when I do I rarely swim. So, fuck you sharks! Tornados can also fuck off. Along with the bubonic plague, the second coming of Jesus, blizzards, the IRA, and rabies.
Also, while Donald Trump and his merry band of penis rocketeers are eternally fascinating, and are certainly problematic for anyone living in the USA, Greenland, near the Panama Canal, or receiving US aid. When you inhabit a small flyspeck in outback Australia, not so much. And while it might be a big call, I reckon the same applies to Charlie. In my estimation the English Monarchy are unlikely to generate any great deal of upheaval in my life. If I am wrong then I am prepared to put the King up for the night, on demand. But then any God-hating anarchistic socialist would likely say much the same thing.
Also, I am astounded that I rarely cry myself to sleep over the potential for biological warfare, meteor strikes, invasion by aliens, or the exploding of a nearby star. I am obviously tragically warped. Maybe it’s a profound lack of childhood trauma? Plus, I only occasionally dream about getting caught naked in a corridor. Moreover, despite all my best efforts, I am pretty sure Vladimir Putin is still entirely unaware of my address. So, I am increasingly unsure that intercontinental ballistic missiles are likely to be launched at my address. Which is just another worry that I really need to work on. Perhaps I can replace it with agonizing over being insignificant?
Additionally, we all know that piracy is a big problem. I have seen documentaries. They are crowded with big ships and helicopters. They are full of speedboats packed with masked-men and ominous music. But while it freaked me out at the time, I mostly remain tragically unconcerned. Fireweed in paddocks, the melting of the glaciers, my neighbors unmowed lawn, the growing disregard of the international law courts, and renegade man-eating tigers are also topics that I commonly ignore.
Which probably means I am heartless. It makes me fret that I may be just another high-functioning sociopath. Which of course shakes me out of my torpor and at once alerts me to some of the dire problems that are associated with being human that I can get my teeth into without any great amount of intellectual activity. Those sorts of good honest anxieties that flit into clear focus, fully forged, at three fifteen in the morning. Getting old, cancer, fools in cars, lost opportunity, her words, and other people’s bad ideas.
Then my mind and heart will begin racing as all sorts of visceral disappointments and hateful biological realities occur to me, and my period of shameful non-worrying will dissipate. I will once again be thinking and fretting furiously while trying to keep up with everything that everyone is saying and doing, everywhere. Once again I will become a well-informed consumer of news within our desperately fucked up world.
These shameful lapses into non-worrying have occurred less frequently over the last few weeks and I mention them here just as a warning to others. If you look out the window and let your mind wander; it may never come back. The lure of dangerous non-worrying is fatal. If you entertain these sorts of risky thoughts, pretty soon you will just not have any fucks left to give. And where will we all be then?
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I so get it Dr Jim, this sense of contentment, this sense of safety, this lack of fear. It is so hard to get up in the morning knowing in my heart of hearts there is very little to worry about.
I can afford the roof over my head
I have food in the fridge and when I run out of food there is a supermarket nearby where the credit card works on the register
There is a regular top up of money in my bank account
The friendly GP assures me I have a few good years in me yet… so np major health dramas to worry about
Yes, I can see the sense in worrying about not having anything to worry about.
It’s easy to be apathetic when the worst things in the world don’t directly touch you … yet.
To quote Alfred E. Neuman, “What, me worry?”
The war on liberalism and the centre?
Shocking viewing the US, like Brexit, how middle aged and ageing voters are so easily persuaded to vote against their own interests, or the interests of passive working age* and the future (*distracted by ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’, Neil Postman).
Radicalisation or energised ‘pensioner populism’ and ‘collective narcissism’ via RW MSM and Facebook especially, to throw the toys out of their pram, then withdraw into a wtf did we just do?
The passivity of Americans, like Australians, for all their noise and bravado, masks conservative silent obedience or ‘obeying in advance’, in the case of the former, a coup too.
UK journalist Caroline Cadallwdr of excellent ByLine Times wrote in exasperation addressing Americans ‘IT IS A COUP’ and quoting Ben-Ghiat:
“It’s very unusual. In my study of authoritarian states, it’s only really after a coup that you see such a speed, such obsessive haste to purge bureaucracy so quickly. Or when somebody is defending themselves, like Erdogan after the coup attempt against him, massive purge immediately. So that’s unusual.
I don’t have another reference point for a private individual coming in, infiltrating, trying to turn government to the benefit of his businesses and locking out and federal employees. It is a coup. I’m a historian of coups, and I would also use that word. So we’re in a real emergency situation for our democracy.”
https://broligarchy.substack.com/p/it-is-a-coup
Now Trump and Putin plotting to throw Ukraine under a bus as good conservative Christian men avert their gaze or feign ignorance of their RW authoritarian heroes and related events inc Murdoch, Abbott, Howard, Downer, Sheridan et al.; cannot wait for their mealy mouthed cliched responses?
Indeed the caring becomes exhaustion as friends and family declare:”Stop caring so much. Stop reading all this stuff. YOU can’t change it or have an affect. Forget about it. Concentrate on yourself.”
I sigh. Nod.
But I am triggered by them as much as I am about the lies and manipulations and about the reports of the thousands of babies and children bombed and burned by a terrorist “Ally”.
Proof (if you need it) there is no god.
Even the shrinks convention pondered whether altruism was a myth – that there was always a payoff. They of all should know.
Upon learning standing and getting a regular spot, unlike the circadian twinge to avert pain, bolster the collagen and feed the phagocytes, there seemed to be a perpetual What’s next question. Then again, could it be, the nah, nix, nyet, zilch proposition that brought on a rash of floccinaucinihilipilification – a truly concerning vacation. Anyway, I digress …..
Maybe abstraction ballooned at the advent of TV, then exploded into a pan-psychic-mandelbrot. No need for a kiddy’s kaleidoscope. A perpetual onanistic slide in and out from peace through perversity to pandemonium, all brought on by invisible chemical invasions followed by restive digital shadow plays with or without the mask on.
Unsure, I referred to Dr Finlay’s Casebook where it advised, Not to worry, it happens all the time.