What Care Demands

To truly care for something demands something great from us. Have we really grasped this?

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

If, like me, you tend to read books written by deep and thoughtful thinkers, who are not afraid to speak their mind and say what needs to be said, then every once in a while, you will stumble across some written words which hit you like a ton of bricks; and if a ton of bricks hit you then one thing is for certain — you will be left fundamentally changed. An encounter like this, when words and the ideas they represent so powerfully impress themselves upon you, it can only leave you speechless — almost gasping for breath as the waves of change seem to overwhelm you. Something has happened deep inside which means you will not see this topic, concept, entity, or whatever it is, in the same way ever again. A new truth, idea, or understanding is indelibly impressed into your mind; you have been paradigmatically changed.

I recently had this kind of abrupt encounter. Deeply unsettling it was, I tell you. I was confronted with a word and concept I thought knew well, but a dead author showed me I was a near total stranger to its true meaning. It was as if I knew nothing at all. On the one hand, it is a somewhat joyful experience to be faced with a truth so compelling you can feel it working on you in the moment. Like how your body when exposed to an ice-cold blast of air reflexively adapts and adjusts, so too does one’s mind to a new, powerful, and convincing truth — either by adapting and adjusting currently held understandings, or by reordering and/or replacing your current conceptions in their entirety. Out with the old and in with the new.

On the other hand, an experience so radical as this is deeply unsettling. For you become well aware that you will be forced to act and think differently from now on — and perhaps radically so. Like I say, being hit with a proverbial ton of bricks is going to leave you changed and is going to cause a certain degree of pain and discomfort for some time to come. So, it is all the more unsettling and discomforting when the subject of the cognitive change concerns something so fundamental as what it means to care.

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You never know when this paradigm-changing cognitive blast is going to hit you. As I sat down to read what seemed like an innocent promotional piece for an event from

Dougald Hine

titled: “Take the Moments of Joy Where You Find Them” I wasn’t expecting anything revolutionary to happen.

Oh, how wrong I was.

For what hit this recently graduated ‘international agricultural development’ student, who thought he cared about Africa, square in the face was this:

(Take a breath before you dive in. The ton of bricks is coming)

In David Cayley’s first book of conversations with Ivan Illich, there’s a story that could sound outrageous. This must be sometime in the 1980s. A student comes to Illich, troubled by something he has said. ‘Don’t you care about the starving children in Africa?’ the student demands.

And Illich – well, he says no:

My immediate reaction is, I will do everything I can to eliminate from my heart any sense of care for them. I want to experience horror. I want to really taste this reality about which you report to me. I do not want to escape my sense of helplessness and fall into a pretence that I care and that I do or have done all that is possible of me.

His point is that we have fallen into a way of speaking in which care is a feeling. A feeling that gives us a sense of virtue. (And how much further down this hole have we fallen in the age of social media?)¹

May you feel the weight of these words — especially that “no”. Properly grasped, they cannot but leave you changed. Permanently changed.

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A like. A retweet (or restack). The signing of a petition. Walking in a demonstration. A few pounds here and there. Even a short, cursory prayer — these actions encompass what counts for the majority of our so-called “care”. ‘Concern’ these actions may well demonstrate — but no longer can I consider them (in isolation) as care. They cost me nothing except a brief fraction of time or a few clinking coins. They involve no ongoing concern, or costly involvement. Nothing is really demanded of me by these actions — I finish them as the same man as I began them. In most cases, I can’t even be bothered to follow up on the situation a few months later:

Earthquake that happened in Afghanistan? “Oh, I vaguely remember.”

Severe drought in Kenya? “Oh yes, that was terrible — but which year are we talking about?”

Local old woman who lost everything in a house fire? “I think I gave the appeal a retweet.”

War in Ukraine? “Oh I can tell you all about it, including what is currently happening in Kharkiv (and how to pronounce it correctly). And I did donate to the appeal last winter…”

Have I really cared about any of the above? Have I let the agony of the situation change me — change me enough to act in a way that actually makes a tangible difference, or act in a manner which coheres with the gravity of the situation? Have I made the costly sacrifice that the situation demands of me if I am to truly care? No, I have not. And Illich says I must not kid myself that I have.