Not Giving A Shit Is a Superpower
We live in hypersensitive times. Today someone’s entire business, career or their entire person can be “cancelled” for just saying the wrong thing, or even thinking the wrong thing.
Everyone on every side is sensitive, and expects the world to cater to those sensitivities.
I mean I bet you can think of at least one thing that caused national OUTRAGE over the last week. Something that in the past would have just been easy to brush off.
We’re getting selfish, and we’re getting soft. We’re all catering to and trying to become the biggest victims on earth. Outrage sells, rational response does not.
Attention is not given to people who see adverse circumstances and overcome them. It’s given to people who see adverse circumstances and tweet about them in capital letters.
I don’t really know why this is happening, and I’m not going to postulate on that.
In The Last Dance there’s a good 10 minute segment where Michael Jordan is raked over the coals and made out to be a bad person because he didn’t take a side in a political election.
He didn’t make any statements, he didn’t become an activist. He stayed quiet and did what he did best. He played basketball.
Now for simply doing what he gives a shit about, he was made out to be a bad person. You’re expected to care about 7,000 things every day, and we’re expected to be outspoken about every single issue that comes across our twitter feed.
Michael knew something that made him great, and something that allowed him to keep his focus. Not giving a shit is a superpower.
He wasn’t an activist. He was a basketball player. His stated goal in life was to be the greatest basketball player that ever lived. He didn’t give a shit about politics, and he didn’t pretend to just to score some social currency.
He stayed focused on what he gave a shit about and he accomplished his goal.
South Park has been on the air almost my entire life. They’ve skewered, lampooned and offended every single religion, sexual orientation and political party. Yet they’re still on the air. They’ve never been cancelled.
The writers know that not giving a shit is a superpower.
They’ve never once apologized for their jokes. In fact, they even double down when presented with offended viewers. Remember the scene where they told the entire church of scientology “So sue me!”?
They know that when you apologize to loud, outrage seekers you only give in to their behavior. You give them your power of autonomy. Once you become powerless you can’t help yourself.
They know that if a viewer is offended, it’s the viewers choice. It’s not the writer's choice. They don’t have to cater their words to anyone.
Part of the reason why I love my job is because it’s invulnerable to politics. That’s something I would have said 5 years ago. Today, it seems like politics has invaded every nook and cranny of my industry.
Health movements are constantly being taken over and becoming hives of activism. Health At Every Size is the prime example. I lost a client because I used the phrase “caloric deficit” because they said it was offensive….
It started out as a good idea. Teach people to love themselves regardless of the way they look, regardless of what the scale says. That’s a great idea, and no one will disagree with that.
However, lately they’ve turned a corner and have warped that idea of self love into this perverse idea that the world should cater to their insensitivity. It’s no longer about self acceptance, it’s about forcing the world to accept their language and changing biological facts to cater to their unearned self esteem.
Sorry, but obesity ain’t healthy. It’s one of the most stressful conditions you can place on your body. It warps every metabolic and hormonal system in your body. It’s. Not. Healthy. As controversial as that is, I'll die on that hill.
Obesity isn’t healthy, but that’s not saying a damn thing about obese people. There’s no judgment from me, or from 95% of my industry when we say that. It’s like cancer patients being offended when you say that “cancer is bad.”
We’re criticizing the condition, not the person suffering from the condition.
I bring this up because these activists are always messaging me, or commenting on my social media posts.
I try really hard not to be offended, and I try just as hard to not offend people.
They’re always telling me how the words I use trigger them.
The words they refer to are “diet”, “caloric deficit” and “energy deficit.”
Sometimes I’m so stupefied that I apologize and then rub my head in confusion. I take all the criticism to heart, because my role is to help people build inner peace through the vehicle of exercise and nutrition.
I genuinely don’t know how facts and terms like that can be offensive to someone. That’s like me being offended that someone used the term “rotations per minute” or “pulley mechanism”. They’re just words used to describe a process. They have no moral judgment. They’re just words.
What I’ve noticed lately is that I’ve started kowtowing to these conversations, and I’ve started self censoring myself so as not to offend a small minority of people.
Fuck that.
It’s one thing to censor yourself so as not to hurt someone’s feelings, it’s a whole other thing to censor yourself when discussing facts because of someone else’s sensitivities.
By censoring myself about nutrition FACTS I was robbing a lot of people of clarity and strategies to change themselves. By catering to a small group of people I was robbing the majority of people of true understanding and knowledge.
I did not know that not giving a shit was a superpower, but now I do.
When someone declares “this triggers me!” what they are really saying is “You need to change your behavior to suit my needs”. I can’t think of a more destructive behavior towards personal improvement. Only children expect the world to stop when they say, and they eat bugs.
We can’t let other people project their sensitivities and issues onto us. We’re all fucked up. We all need therapy, but most of us understand personal autonomy and most of us can navigate the world without crying every 2 minutes or complaining that the color of a tree is offensive to us.
On top of that, you’re not actually helping the person who you’re catering towards. You’re giving in to their weakness, and giving them no reason to practice introspection and improvement. You’re telling them that their feelings are the supreme arbiter of the universe.
When you stop giving a shit you free yourself from other people’s issues. You take your power back from the zeitgeist and are able to express your true self, for good or bad.
When we give up our freedom to communicate openly we give up our humanity. Would you rather someone tell you a hard truth to help you? Or would you rather someone tell you something nice to hurt you?
You really only have so many things you need to give a shit about. I know that’s tough to hear in an election year where CNN is telling you to monitor, predict and have an opinion on every state’s election and election practices.
It’s true. You don’t have to care about everything.
Remember when I talked about MJ earlier? Do you remember him for being an activist?
Nope.
You remember him because he ruthlessly cared about one thing. Basketball.
Would he have been able to achieve singular greatness if he decided to give a shit about what people pressured him to? Absolutely not.
We’re all pressured to have an opinion on everything. We’re all pressured to share the latest activist meme, or post our “I Voted!” stickers.
You have a limited amount of mental space to dedicate to the world. Don’t let others muddle your priorities in your head. You don’t have to care about politics, hip hop or even the latest restaurants in your town. You don’t have to care about social media, you don’t have to care about comedy.
You get to decide what you care about.
Once you’ve made your list of what you really care about, it’s your job to stop giving a shit about things that take your energy away from it.
It’s not apathy, it’s selective, disciplined priorities.