Modern Stoicism

If I cared about human suffering, not to mention the special plight of women, I would be unable to eat or sleep in the face of my awareness that the United States of America has, over the course of the past two presidencies, coldly abandoned to tyranny, plunder, and predictable catastrophe people to whom the U.S. had solemnly vowed solidarity and security against the nightmarish slaughterhouse of the Taliban.

If I cared about justice and integrity, I would be looking at Joe Biden right now, and at Donald Trump before him, as the most callously inhuman monsters for what they have boastfully, mindlessly done to the people of Afghanistan.

If I cared about earthy power and the dream of decent government, I would be writhing on the floor in agony at the horror show of bloodlust and hatred for humanity, foreign and domestic, that is the federal government of the United States of America right now.

If I cared about anything other than my “advantage,” my comfort, my pleasure, my entertainment, my bank account, I would be ashamed to be living through this moment on planet Earth, ashamed of my species, ashamed of those people with whom I used to half-align myself as some kind of kindred spirits — my god, could my kindred spirits do such things?

Luckily, I have been rendered at least half-numb to all such concerns. That emotional paralysis, a self-imposed moral blindness to what is really happening around me, is my only and necessary defense against the debilitating shame I would be subject to today, if I truly cared.

Thank God I don’t care.