Caring and revulsion
I’m seeing a weird little pocket of people on Twitter bragging about how much they don’t give a shit about Ukraine and how fake it all is and how people who are talking about it are just ____ – you know, showing off, virtue signaling, following the woke herd, that kind of thing.
Well, first of all, nukes.
Second – why wouldn’t we give a shit? Why is it wrong to give a shit, and enlightened not to?
I suppose one answer could be that we can’t do anything about it, and paying attention and giving a damn is just self-indulgent or showing off or whatever. But I don’t think that’s right. I think paying attention and giving a damn does matter to the people who are having to live through this. Material help matters more, of course, but then material help starts with giving a damn, so the two are not opposites or either-or. And I think the people huddled in their basements listening to the shells explode do need to know we’re not singing a happy tune all the while.
Also, though…trying to dig a little harder…I don’t want to be the kind of person who doesn’t give a shit. Now that I say that I think there’s a philosopher or psychologist or someone who says that’s central to morality: not wanting to be the kind of person who doesn’t have any. I wonder who. Jonathan Haidt? Joshua Green? Patricia Churchland? I’m not remembering. Maybe it’s all of them, maybe it’s common knowledge. Anyway I don’t. Seeing people make callous jokes about Ukraine makes me feel sick. I suppose you can say that’s a self-regarding reason for caring therefore you don’t actually care at all, but…I still don’t think so. I think not wanting to be cruel or callous is…better than wanting to.
“Seems that when some innocent die
All we can offer them is a page in a some magazine
Too many cameras and not enough food
This is what we’ve seen…”
From an old Police song. Seriously, there are a lot of people who’s realities aren’t based in reality, they are based in media exposure, not the reality of fleeing for your life from military ordnance. No time to focus on anything but ME and My Identity Affiliation.
Until there’s no choice.
On the bright side, there are massive demonstrations protesting Russia’s actions, so there are definitely some people who give a shit, and aren’t busy tweeting pompous bile from the security of their mom’s basement.
Roger Angell said something like that in a different context* in the New Yorker back in 1975.
*It was about baseball. The title of the article was “”Agincourt and After”.
I’m seeing a lot of complaints about double standards and hypocrisy: “How many of the people who now claim to ‘stand with Ukraine’ stood with Syria (etc.)?” There is such a double standard, of course. But there are two ways to resolve such an inconsistency:
a. You care about Ukraine, so you should care about Syria.
b. You don’t care about Syria, so you shouldn’t care about Ukraine*.
The complaints I see, appear to be mainly of the b. kind.
* Our old friend “Dear Muslima” in one of its many manifestations.
I really don’t care except in the very abstract (casualty numbers)… But I do want to live in a world where people without my emotional handicap do give a shit.
Principles matter.
Whether or not people care does, I think, matter here, if for no other reason than that it influences governments. The strong economic and other sanctions being imposed on Russia are important, and may be Ukraine’s best hope in the long run. And part of the reason why there’s been such a strong international response is that those governments look to what their citizens are saying. Even in those countries where the leaders would have done the right thing regardless of popular support, having popular support makes it easier to accomplish.
Even among the U.S. right wing, there’s been a retreat in the face of popular pressure. Trump and Fox News and several other GOP leaders were initially cheering Putin on, but polling data showed that even die hard GOP voters weren’t into that. So now they’re backpedaling and falling back on “the invasion is bad, but it’s Biden’s fault for emboldening Putin.” Which is still wrong, but it’s still progress. And I note that I haven’t heard any noises about any efforts to challenge the imposition of sanctions.