“I don’t know. I don’t care. And it doesn’t make any difference.” ~Jack Kerouac
“Doesn’t make any difference.”
In a sense, it’s obviously true. After all, we all end up dead. 100% of us. Should we not eat or drink because it’s a waste of time given the inevitability of death? Obviously, all of us who have access to food and water have made a choice to eat and drink on a regular basis. It makes our limited time less so, and given the right kind of food and drink it also makes things a lot more enjoyable. Or less so, given a lack of food and drink.
Things we do can make a difference to ourselves, to others, and to the world– even if the ultimate outcome is ReaperVille. We can make the world easier for future generations, or more beautiful. Or, if we’re that sort of person, we can opt to make things worse. If you take a particularly grim view, we change things by just dying and becoming fertilizer and helping the grass grow.
“I don’t know” and “I don’t care” make a difference, too. Knowing stuff results in changing what we do/what we know how to do. If you know about nutrition and eat a better diet, maybe you’ll live longer and have more children and contribute to overpopulating the world more heavily than you might have if you’d remained ignorant. (Sorry, grim world view again) Or maybe you’ll learn about agriculture, and through caring about your family or the world as a whole, be motivated to invent improved ways of feeding the world. Or maybe you’ll learn about cancer and save zillions of future lives. Or you’ll become an urban designer who finally figures out where to put all these people. Whatever. It’ll make a difference.
I don’t think you can not make a difference no matter how hard you try not to know or care. The not knowing and not caring also have an impact.
Will anything any of us do change the fact that we are all bound for death? Nuh-uh.
Does that matter? Nope.
Know.
Care.
Make a difference.