I have spoken proudly of this before. It’s a very underrated survival technique. Especially in a world where everyone encouraging you to care deeply about almost everything, it is hard to maintain a positive position of not really caring very much about anything.

Rather than carefully ponder a response to the barrage of questions that always, in one form or another, ask, “what do you think of that?” and come up with a carefully considered, politically and culturally aware answer, it’s much more satisfying to respond with the words,

“You know what, mate? I couldn’t really give a fuck.”

Happiness is not to be found in the ups and downs of an emotional life, but in the flat line of blissful negligence.

I wrote the following as a response to a Substack post. I spend time on Substack taking soft swipes at people – which I suppose is a contradiction to my declared ambivalence. Inconsistency is another virtue. I’ll write about that at another time. If I feel like it.

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Happiness, that passing curse

The good times that make bad times worse

The tide comes in, the tide goes out

With nought that you can do about

Cool water lapping round your toes

The joy that comes, the joy that goes

With light and dark, with night and day

Never any other way

Sunset follows every dawn

Leaving you confused, forlorn

So don’t be fooled, don’t take a chance

Stick with pure ambivalence.