One of my favorite movies in the pre-UFC days, when your brain didn’t scream, “THAT’S SO UNREALISTIC” at you every three seconds when one guy was fighting off like 10 bad guys with his bare hands, was Steven Seagal’s Marked for Death:
In the movie, Seagal is a burned-out ex-DEA agent who is disgusted by the things he’s done to stop the bad guys and decides to retire and come home. Eventually, the bad guys in the movie, a Jamaican drug gang, make the horrible mistake of coming after Seagal’s family. That’s when he gets together with an ex-military friend of his, and he tells him this before they decide to basically wipe the entire gang out like they’re playing a game of Grand Theft Auto:
“The way I look at it, you come home, mind your own business, watch your own yard. And then, if trouble finds you, you go after it, and you bite its head off before it does the same thing to you.”
I may be the first person ever to say this before, but there was great wisdom in those words from Steven Seagal.
When I was younger and people would tell me about their problems, I would want to help them so much that I could be pushy about it. I’d know exactly what to do, I’d tell them to do it, and if they hesitated, I pushed them. In retrospect, was I wrong about the things I strongly suggested that people do? No, not at all. In pretty much every case, these people would have been considerably better off if they did what I suggested.
The thing is, they weren’t MY PROBLEMS, so why was I getting emotionally invested to the point where I probably annoyed them by trying so hard to get them to do things they didn’t want to do?
It was because I was getting caught up in somebody else’s business.
I’ve seen this happen a number of times when a relationship implodes, friends get into fights, or neighbors start feuding, and next thing you know, everyone is supposed to judge who’s right, who’s wrong, and take sides.
But who says you have to take a side?
Why can’t it be, “The two of them have a problem, but I don’t have a problem with either side.”
When you say things like that, people always try to come back with the most extreme examples imaginable. “Oh yeah? So, we should have been neutral between Britain and Germany in WWII?” Sorry, but Susie and Tammy getting in a fight because one of them said something snarky about the other one’s dress isn’t the equivalent of endorsing or opposing the Holocaust.
Granted, there is a time and a place to step in and get involved in someone else’s problem. If your neighbor’s house is on fire, do what you can to help get it put out. Once when I flipped my car over on a North Carolina back road and climbed out of the car covered in blood, I was profoundly grateful that someone stopped to help and was extremely impressed that EVERY SINGLE CAR that passed (there were about half a dozen) stopped and asked if I needed any help. Were those good people who did the right thing? I certainly think so.
But when I got handgun training, I also remember the instructor telling us about this scenario:
Let’s say you come around the corner, see someone on top of another guy, pummeling him, and the guy on the bottom calls for help. So, you pull your gun and tell the guy to stop hitting the other one, or you’ll shoot. He does, and the guy on the bottom runs off. Then, the police show up, and the guy you stopped from beating up the other one says, “Some guy robbed me, and I was fighting back when his accomplice (he points at you) forced me to let him get away with my wallet.” You’re going to have a lot of explaining to do in that situation.
You might think, “Well, that sounds farfetched. When would that ever happen?” Well then, let’s talk about something you might be more likely to see. A man and a woman who are obviously a couple are arguing in a restaurant, and he slaps her. Do you intervene? For a long time, I would have said, “Absolutely,” but Sci-Fi writer Vox Day changed my mind about that many years ago with a blog post that has apparently been lost to history in a server migration.
He said in that situation, he wouldn’t intervene unless he thought her life was in danger because she has probably been through that situation before and hasn’t left, she’s probably not in danger at the moment, and if he kicks the guy’s ass, she’s going to side with him, not you, when the police show up and quite possibly lie to make him sound like the bad guy.
That changed my thinking on the subject, and when I was leaving a restaurant a few months back, I saw an unhappy older couple who were both probably in their seventies. The man gave the woman a little shove – and you know what I did? I chose not to get involved because I don’t know them, it’s not my problem, and I can’t fix the lives they’re both choosing to live.
I’m happy to help people, give advice if I’m asked, and I do care about things that impact me, my friends, my family, and my country, but once you get past that, how much time, effort, and mental energy are we supposed to put into situations that don’t involve us?
You could even talk about this on the national level. “Did you see what that billionaire spent his money on?” Not my business. “Some people are still wearing masks. Don’t they know COVID is over? Hahaha!” As long as they aren’t trying to make me wear a mask, I don’t care. It’s not my business. “Did you see that we’re not giving money to Nepal and transgender people are turning to sex work because of it?” That’s a problem for people in Nepal, not people in America. So, it’s not my business. While we’re on this topic, we could use a lot more rock stars, movie stars, businesses, and sports franchises saying, “We have customers on both sides of the political aisle, so unless it directly impacts us, political issues are not our business.”
So, who cares about the latest celebrity gossip? Why would you harass somebody just because you disagree with them? Why would you insert yourself into someone’s relationship troubles or problems at work? Why go out of your way to disrespect people? Why get involved in things that don’t have anything to do with you? How worked up do you want to get over things you don’t have control over and that aren’t about you in the first place?
You don’t hear it said a lot anymore, but “mind your own business” is some of the best advice most people will ever get.
The parable of the sun and wind is a great lesson. Competing to get the man to remove his coat, the wind attempted to blow it off. It failed as the man just clutched his coat tighter. The man grew resentful at the wind for its force. The sun shown hot and the man removed his coat on his own. That man believed he removed his coat of his own free will. The sun was cool with that because... well, he is the sun.
Because of my long corporate career in leadership positions, I see clearly this need for balance that always sides with enabling and encouraging free will without force (including without direct advice). Within the philosophy of nudge and the ideology of libertarian paternalism, I think, there is this near perfect prescription for providing that balance.
Some people need help or they will materially and quantifiably harm themselves and others. They might require some force, but it should be designed as temporary with the delivered expectation that they will reform of their own free will to a place where they are not at risk of material harm to themselves and others.
Everyone else should be left to their own pursuits. It is none of our business what they do. Again, unless their behavior becomes prone to cause MATERIAL and QUANTIFYABLE harm.
But this is a slippery slope in the wrong hands. Consider the global pandemic where so many decided that it was justified to use authoritarian force to prevent people from getting infected and spreading the virus. The problem is that force was used when there were not enough material and quantifiable risks of harm. The postmortem analysis is that we accepted WAY TOO MUCH force against us for nebulous and, significantly disingenuous, justification.
Frankly, the pull to insert oneself into the business of others is a mothering thing. Mothers do that with children. Children do that with other children. It is a somewhat infantile behavior where real adults that are more father-oriented would say "his life, his choices, his outcomes... he is really not hurting anyone else, and he is getting by... I hope he learns how to do better." and leave it at that.
I've been doing this my entire life. Does that make me a callous bastard? Maybe, but I don't care what they say, if it's not my business, I'm staying the hell out. When a tree toppled over in a wind storm last month, did I walk over to a stranger's yard and ask if he needed help? Yes, I did. I had a chainsaw and the morning free so I helped a neighbor I'd never met. (We got a box of cookies from his wife in my mailbox next week.} However, I would say that's what makes me so pissed at Demoncats who are always in everybody's business, esp the white women "Karens" out there. That B.S. "silence is violence" mantra of theirs makes me want to pick up a ballbat and demonstrate that you can't open your big fat mouth after its been wired shut. Yeah, you could conclude that this has been a bone of contention of mine for some time. Thanks for posting this essay, John.