The universe doesn't give a damn

The universe doesn't give a damn. That's why we're here. To give a damn.

It's a simple, powerful philosophy of life.

No God necessary. No saviour who loves you. No inherent meaning. 

This philosophy accepts the cold realities of known existence. It tempers nihilism with purpose by placing life — and especially consciousness, with its unlikely capacity to care — at the center.

One of my kids' favourite cassettes was Really Rosie by Carole King, based on stories by Maurice Sendak. We played it constantly in the car, and later watched the animated film version at home. It’s the whimsical story of a group of inner-city kids singing, dancing, dressing up, and play-acting — what children used to do before cellphones colonized boredom. Flamboyant, imaginative Rosie leads the gang through their small urban adventures.

My favourite song was Pierre, about an obstinate little boy whose answer to everything is: “I don’t care.” His loving, bewildered parents ask him to do things. Pierre shrugs and answers, “I don’t care.”

Then one day, while his parents are out, a hungry lion arrives and asks Pierre if he wants to die. “I don’t care,” Pierre replies. So the lion eats him.

When Pierre’s parents return home, they find the lion sick in Pierre’s bed. They ask him, "Where is Pierre?" The lion opens his mouth and Pierre’s trademark phrase comes out: “I don’t care.” Realizing what happened, they rush the lion to the doctor, who eventually extracts Pierre intact. By the end of the story, the ordeal has transformed him. Pierre finally learns that he must care.

I find the story shocking, funny, touching, and oddly profound all at once. The best children’s stories often are. Think of Grimm’s fairy tales.

Pierre struck me as emotionally detached — a child so disconnected he cannot even recognize obvious danger when it presents itself. I used to wonder how a child becomes that numb. His parents seem loving enough, merely confused and exasperated, like most parents are.

Pierre’s indifference feels less like stubbornness than emotional self-protection. Caring makes you vulnerable, to disappointment, rejection, grief, embarrassment, dependence.

But the story’s moral is that ultimately not caring is even more dangerous.

The risks of not caring may at first look like safety. Emotional detachment can protect you from pain. But it also isolates you from the very thing that gives life meaning: connection to other people.

The rewards of caring are never guaranteed, but they include friendship, love, family, community — and the possibility of being cared for in return. The qualities that nurture life.

Caring is simply the acknowledgement of life's interdependence.

The universe is mostly airless, empty, dark and inert. 

It doesn’t give a damn. 

That’s why we have to.