TL;DR

Caring is a social taboo, reluctance is the norm. But it’s not normal.

It is very easy to spend life on solving global problems that are by definition unsolvable (e.g. global peace, aging, etc). It keeps us busy. It gives us a feeling that we are working on something really meaningful and important so we are superior over other people around. It is also a descent excuse not to think about small problems.

It is an easy strategy where we are not accountable for outputs but double down on the fact that we are TRYING, we are on our way, we are on a mission. No responsibility, no outputs.

A really hard thing is to be thoughtful and conscious about how our immediate physical presence in the world affects twenty people around. Not how we think it affects but how it affects for real.

If I take care of twenty people around. And each of them takes care of twenty people around (and so on). It covers all humanity around the world. So everyone is taken care of.

What does that mean to take care of someone? It means.. I see you. I have time and attention for you when you need. You can put your head on my shoulder any time you need without explaining why. You can always share what’s on your mind, your fears, happy moments, any moments. I am here for you and I never expect anything back. Whatever is happening – I am in it with you.

It’s not a one to one mapping. If I take care of you it doesn’t mean you should take care of me. But everyone should take care of twenty people around they feel like taking care of.

Taking care is socially improper. Being too caring, too attentive, too warm, too sensitive, too touchy, too gentle, too sweet – all of that is socially improper and strongly condemned by the society.

All relations are strictly regulated according to social roles: the level of attachment, how close you can be, how often see each other, how to touch each other. Everything. For example, hugging a friend – very briefly, better almost without touching. Seeing a friend – once per week max if a very good friend. If an average/regular friend – not more often than once per month. Meeting an average friend more than once per month is pathetic one should be busy busy more busy than the average around otherwise how to feel superior?

The normalized behaviour is being cold, reluctant, busy, bla bla bla (you can tell me it’s not like that and you are busy for real but comm’n)

As our brains were trained like that, we are deadly afraid to look into eyes more than couple of seconds, to touch and be touched, to tell good sweet things to each other. Because what will people think? Even though believe me or not, people won’t think anything because they won’t think about you at all, neither will they think about me.

We rarely make decisions on ‘how it feels’. Most of the time, we make decisions from ‘how does it look like’ or ‘what do people around me think of it’.

As expected, we often get lives that look properly but feel dead. With people who fit by formal criteria but with whom we do not ‘vibe properly’. We do not really know each other and see each other. As a consequence – we can’t take care of each other. As a consequence, our life turns into some type of coliving with random strangers even if formally we have binding documents proving that they are not random. Weird, I know, but does it make any sense?

Modern society set up quite a robust defence mechanism to prevent people from being sensitive to each other and reality overall. The only way to overcome it is not giving fuck at all about what people think. Which can come either from high consciousness or extremely poor social skills. Or maybe both =)

Imagine you tell a person of another gender ‘ah that was so nice meeting you, i feel a real connection’ and they answer ‘I HAVE A BOYFRIEND’ and you didn’t really mean anything like that at all. But feels kinda a bit embarrassing. Or very embarassing.

There is some middle ground between not trying to connect at all and connecting to everyone who looks fun – being sensitive to the reality and people around. Trying to sense empathically what is the comfortable personal space, what is the type of physical touch that feels comfortable and safe for a particular person in a particular environment. There is no rule for it and no algorithm. It’s just about being sensitive and attentive and trying to see someone, to see for real.

Another life aspect strictly controlled and condemned by the society – joy and pleasure. I mean real joy and pleasure. Not just fine or okay, but things that feel really really really good.

We try to impress, to meet expectations, to satisfy, but we rarely try to just make something that feels good. Not good overall but good for this particular human in this particular context. Feeling pleasure is vulnerable cuz sense of pleasure is relaxing and it puts armouring off.

We want control over people around to protect personal area and boundaries. We think that we need more space. We want control over our relations with people. We treat our relations with people as projects on the trello board. But hear me out: authentic connection and control are incompatible. Control is a matter to create relations that have a proper image.

The matter for connection is trust. One can’t force the connection. It happens voluntarily on both sides. It relies on trust. Trust and control are incompatible. Trust is real. Control is illusionary.

We say ‘I am fine’ or ‘I am okay’ even when we are not fine and not okay. It all circles back to the control: we want to control how people see us, what they think about us. We want to look strong and not to long vulnerable otherwise.. i have no clue what happens otherwise my best guess is that nothing happens otherwise and control is a scam (worse than memecoins). But most people probably won’s agree with me on that.

This is a topic for another blog post, but briefly speaking… otherwise we’ll disappoint people and they will leave us or cancel us or do something else that will make us feel socially excluded. And life is over. The point is that if that happens – life probably will become better because social manipulations are a control tool and control is scam. It gives illusion of security but security is also scam. How one human can have control over the endless university? Every second the worst thing in the world might happen. Also infinity of things that we can’t imagine might happen too. We do not have any control. We can build up an illusion of control at cost of disconnection from the world. But this is probably a separate topic.

Psychotherapy is a great tool for particular life cases. It saved quite a few of my close people, mostly in crises situation. But it’s not a magic pill. It encourages people to live self-centric and separated from the outer world. Psychotherapist will always approach the issue rationally while most (not all) of our problems are irrational and circle back to care, being seen, and loved. Psychotherapist will never see your essence but can charge $200 per week for 5-10 years till you work through all issues (whatever that means).

Sharing things with people is the way to connect to the world, feel belonging, feel love. What we think, how we feel, what’s on our mind, what’s on our soul. Talk to people around, share your world, connect. It won’t be always smooth. Sometimes it can be fucked up, we can get rejections, it might hurt. But on a lifelong timeline it’s worth it. Care about people around. Be attentive. Be gentle. Be warm.

To blame someone else except for the society and ourselves, we can also say that Olivia Lang was right and modern cities are built to make people lonely and separated from each other. But fuck cities. We objectively can’t rebuild them today. It circles back to solving huge unsolvable problems with zero accountability. Instead, just build small curated environments (for twenty people =) designed to bring people together, to encourage sharing, feeling comfortable and relaxed, joy, pleasure, and trust. Then the cities will be reshaped automatically. Or at least some tiny clusters inside of those cities. And then cluster by cluster… you know =)

I do not how serious I am about this conspiracy but probably quite serious. In the 20th century, so many brands popped up that they needed to reshape the ‘consumer behaviour’ to force people to want more and consume more. So the concept of ‘happiness’ was introduced to chase it the whole life by wanting more and consuming more. Better suit, better house, better shoes, idk whatever.

To make people chasing happiness through consumerism, they should be basically unhappy and unsatisfied. For the sake of this, they should be somehow separated from joy and pleasure, from being cared and loved. So blame capitalism for this (a bit).

The easiest thing to feel love and connection is watching people into eyes a bit from time to time. It is free. No one has ever died because of it. Even several moments makes you feel happy. (ya it doesn’t work with every single person but there are enough humans around with whom it will work). And nevertheless we do our best to avoid eye contact longer than strictly necessary even with people who are formally our close people. So that we can stay unhappy and consume more stimulating the world GDP.