Standard of Care

Chamath Palihapitiya sparked a teapot tempests by basically saying that the plight of the Uyghurs in China wasn't something that he actually cared about. More to the point, he said that "Nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs, okay?"

Of course, he didn't mean that "nobody" literally. He then after all, proceeded to note that the person who asked about it cared. The Internet was, of course, up in arms over the sacrilege of admitting that a foreign nation's persecution of an ethnic group within it's own borders didn't rise to the level of being one of the things that he spent his limited attention budget on.

The American Conservative's Rod Dreher chimed in with this:

I can console myself by saying that I’m not like Chamath, and would never say that I don’t care about the Uyghurs. I do care! I care in the sense that I wish the Uyghurs well, and hold the correct opinion about the Uyghurs. But honestly, so what? Am I morally that much better than Chamath? I don’t even pray for the Uyghurs, which would cost me nothing. They never cross my mind, except when I read a news story about them, and think, “Those poor people. China is ruled by monsters”—and then move on. Chamath is just saying the quiet part out loud about how the rest of the world really feels about the friendless Uyghurs.

I'm somewhere, I think in the middle. I, like Mr. Dreher feel that the Uyghurs have gotten a bum rap. I think this counts as holding the correct opinion about them. But unlike Mr. Dreher, I don't think that this counts as "caring." I'm with Mr. Palihapitiya in that there are things that I care about, things I prioritize; things that I understand cost me something, and I pay those costs. The Uyghurs are not among them.

And it's not because I agree that they should be treated badly by the government of China. It's because I have a budget of time and energy, and I stay within that budget, mostly because, like any other person, I'm not able to overdraw it indefinitely. And nations are the same way. The United States only has so many resources to throw at problems. And since the United States tends to have a poor track record of having anything to show for its investments (note the very expensive War on Terror) a lot of the time it's left with nothing more effective that shouting "Stop! Or I'll shout 'Stop!' again!"

Were it actually important enough to worth spending something on, the world could make China's treatment of the Uyghurs expensive enough to cause them to reconsider the policy. But it's not consider worth enough by enough people. And so people look for ways to tell themselves that they're the right kind of person, but in the end, cost them nothing.

Perhaps I've become too okay with the idea that I'm not the right kind of person. When someone challenges me by claiming that I'm callous or reprehensible, my immediate impulse is to answer "Guilty as charged." Because I don't believe that simply having the right opinions is any better than not having them, if that's the only difference.

Caring should be more than a sense of low-grade pity to be considered worth something. I understand that I care about something when I'm motivated to spend resources on it. And when I'm unwilling to spend resources, I admit to not caring. Maybe that's a higher standard than is warranted. But I find it a form of honesty about who I am that pushes me to do more than I think that I would otherwise.