I’ll admit, I’ve generated wicked fantasies of Elon and The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) storming into behavioral health clinics and exploiting the absolute lunacy being passed as billable service. My love for missions like DOGE started many moons ago when I first worked as a mental health technician in an acute psychiatric ward. Circa 2016, my purpose was that of integrating exercise (primarily weightlifting) into group treatments offered to those in psychiatric units and outpatient or partial hospitalization programs. About a week into my prestigious role as adult babysitter on the ward, I was pulled aside by a psychiatric nurse wielding a horse-size dose of Ativan for a client that “refused” to stop crying.

“You really need to make sure you’re not creating an unsafe environment.”

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These words of advice were given after I’d played Master of Puppets by Metallica on the ward’s PSA system and suggested the patients do laps down their fifty-meter hallway for the full 8 minutes and 36 seconds that was the song’s length. This would be their only form of movement throughout their entire stay. Me being the person I am, I laughed at the suggestion that the psychiatric unit would devolve into a bloody scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I’d never again take behavioral health seriously, and this conviction has proven true even after two Master’s degrees in behavioral science and clinical psychology, five years as a licensed professional, and in working with hundreds of people with varying psychiatric illnesses and disabilities.

I need not prove my love for operations like DOGE, as I work in a field that needlessly bills obscene amounts of money to do little more than email back and forth and schedule meetings about meetings. This sounds like hyperbole; it is not. Below are examples of emails I’ve received in the past week (changed slightly in case they’re reading this---ha!):

“The only way that we’re all going to get on the same page is if we up the frequency of meetings. I’m thinking two times a week so we can meet and discuss getting on the same page.” A double-meeting about a meeting. How productive!

“We are going to create a safe space for people to talk about how the dismantling of the Department of Education might affect us.” Not a joke, not a thought experiment.

“Timothy [client named changed] threw out his apple and sandwich at lunch today. I wanted to share with you all at the group home to make sure you were aware he might be hungry when he gets back.” This preceded a thread containing over ten exchanges about possible psychological reasons for throwing out food.

Did I mention that all of the above time is billable?

Money squawks and it talks and it bellows and rumbles, as it always has. To meet a problem with financial capital is a little social sleight of hand as old as our richest institutions. To lob money at a problem is to absorb the role of noble giver, of a humanitarian sugar-daddy whose hard earned cash is laundered through charities and special needs kids and schools and low-income neighborhoods all in the name of what’s beneficial for the greater good. Except that… well… only a microscopic fraction of funding actually goes toward the people who could use it. Below are examples of how much money has been shelled out for endeavors motivated by emotional masturbation (e.g., “trauma-informed teaching for teachers”, “social-emotional learning”, “DEI”, etc.), taken directly from X and doge.gov/savings. Take a look at their website--- it is unbelievable, albeit sickening, what our government spends money on. Squawk squawk!

One of the more recent X Posts:

Over the last 3 days, agencies terminated 121 wasteful contracts with a ceiling value of $351M and savings of $156M, including a $1.6M DEI contract for “strategies for implementing ‘social emotional’ learning”, and a $143K Dept. of Transportation contract for “social media support services”.

And another X Post:

Great work today by

@USDOL

@SecretaryLCD

@Sonderling47

cancelling $577M in “America Last” grants for $237M in savings, including: - $10M for "gender equity in the Mexican workplace" - $12.2M for "worker empowerment in South America" - $6.25M for "improving respect for Worker's rights in agricultural supply chains" in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador - $5M for "elevating women's participation in the workplace" in West Africa - $4.3M for "assisting foreign migrant workers" in Malaysia - $3M to "enhance social security access and worker protections for internal migrant workers" in Bangladesh - $3M for "safe and inclusive work environments" in Lesotho

Today, agencies cancelled 47 contracts with a ceiling value of $185M and savings of $90M, including: -$3.1M for “healthy relationships social media presence” -$3.5M for consultants “to provide professional IT cloud, software, hardware expertise, and expertise in customer experience, data analysis, project mgmt and technical writing”

Astonished yet? Just wait until we begin to unravel the kinked-up knot that is our own sense of self-importance.

Futile, self-indulgent pseudo-efforts toward being recognized as noble helpers is the very reason I’ve decided to respond to work emails, supposed problems, and hedonistic questions (including my own—I’m human, too) with variations of the phrase “who cares.”

This perhaps sounds like yet another neurotic dress rehearsal. But fear not! It is a thought-experiment carried out in real time by yours truly, one I find particularly valuable for those of us digital peasants to our employees and to our clients, whose very existence is grounded in a skewed perception of superiority. Should you need another example beyond the ones provided in above paragraphs, a client called me seven consecutive times, all of which I ignored, only for her to text me with “I need to talk to you right now it’s very important, my Dad won’t let me buy Jordans.”

Allow me to entirely decimate your conception of that which is urgent or dire by means of two simple words: “who cares?” “So what?” will also suffice. I do guarantee, though, that once you’ve managed to move past the sting of disappointment in realizing your problems are not problems, you will find utility in this bid for caring less.

Any time you find yourself ripe for bellyaching, you can respond to your own decadent bullshit with “who cares” or “so what” or, my personal favorite, “who gives a fuck?” I wholly expect that those whose salaries rely on understanding themselves as noble helpers may recoil at the thought of their futility. “But I just want to help people!” they’ll exclaim. To a mild degree, I can attest to the fervor that is altruism. My follow-up series of statements, then, goes like this: in what way would you, as the provider, benefit from your clients being healthier, physically, emotionally, or mentally? Who, exactly, benefits from resilience? The obvious answer is those exact people who are chronically ill and/or emotionally fragile. The people leveraging their political influence and educational expertise, though, the very people promoting resilience via paid courses and consultations (maybe this is you)… how will they benefit, other than financially?

I do realize these questions put clinicians in a bit of a hitch. Our salaries and our livelihoods are dependent upon there being a problem to address, with many of our roles providing little more service than exchanges of emails, documents that won’t be read or even edited, and complaining about how little impact we have because of the systems in place. I implore readers, particularly healthcare providers, to think beyond the scope of that which is insurance-friendly. There are ways to help people that do not require your attention--- at least not the form of attention you’ve been taught is vital to their everyday functioning.

If you haven’t worked your way up to most hated and outspoken employee the way I have, you can simply practice the “so what” technique behind the curtain of your own mind. That is, practice silently, or practice out loud while on mute and with your camera off to protect that precious public perception as compassionate listener. Maybe you even type “who cares?” out in an email response without sending it if you’re feeling especially empowered.

You’ll quickly find, at least I’m assuming, that 90% of your day is comprised of futile decisions whose outcomes are nonexistent and whose absence would result in zero change, despite the sender’s convicted belief that their thoughts or concerns are urgently important and profound. Of course I’ll attend two meetings a week to discuss the importance of meeting twice a week, it’s what my clients need! False. It is what you or your employer or your boss needs to meet the arbitrary criteria for productivity or significance.

“But won’t people get upset?” Yes, and who cares? The purpose of this assignment is not to intentionally hurt someone’s feelings or help reveal to themselves what pathetic losers they are. It’s actually quite the opposite. The goal is to help people understand that the attention they’re giving to complaints, grievances, and reported problems is precious time wasted, time and energy otherwise spent engaged with meaningful activity. I can’t define for you what meaningful activity is- only you can. All I can do is guide you to more of it. I strongly suggest doing one of Sahil Bloom’s assignments from his book, The Five Types of Wealth, in which you must color code your week based on how energizing or how draining scheduled activities are. I did this on my Google calendar and color coded red as particularly draining, yellow as neutral (i.e., busywork that isn’t draining but also doesn’t qualify as inspiring), and green as energizing, inspiring, freeing, and creative. It provides a nice visual representation of how much or how little of our time is allocated toward that which we value.

“I can’t say who cares to my boss!” You probably could. You’re just afraid to, and rightfully so. We’ve been duped by modernity. I am by no means instructing readers to invite their boss to devour feculence (this is a multi-syllabic way of saying “eat shit”, per the last episode of Severance), nor am I writing this piece from a place of abundant financial privilege. I dream of having enough money, enough capital in what Mark Cuban famously named the Fuck You Fund, to leave my career behind and paint my entire life’s schedule with broad hues of green. But I’m just another somewhat miserable employee like you whose comfortable lifestyle requires you to devour the feculence while your boss watches and cackles. With this in mind, it’s ever more important we learn to approach life with a deeper sense of indifference. This has been wildly hard for me to do, so I’m aware of the potential for an existential crisis. Below I’ve provided guidelines for the Who Cares method:

* Do not say “who cares” with even a whiff of condescension, even if the concern or question raised warrants it. This method will not work if your genuine question that is “who cares” rests on superiority.

* “Who cares” cannot be about you. Just because you do not want to hear it or because you find it uninteresting or stupid doesn’t assume that the other person should or should not care about something.

* Genuinely care about who may care. Allow people to complete their full thought, no matter how many winding turns the tangent may whip them around. Only respond with “who cares” and its variations after you’ve thoughtfully listened to their problems.

* You can preface “who cares” with a buffer statement, such as, “What I’m about to say may sound like a joke or an insult, but I genuinely am asking: Who cares? As in, who is actually affected here?”

* If you’re a noob in the art of provoking people to think, dip a semantic toe in by responding only with “Huh…” or even “Can I be frank with you? I’m not fully hearing what the problem is.” Pssssst: they must say “sure” if you’re asking permission to be frank.

* Maybe this point should’ve been first, but ah well (who cares?). Practice this tactic on yourself every time you’re reaching for your phone to complain. Who cares? So what? Maybe in meetings when you’re compelled to share a thought you put a Post-It smack dab in the middle of your screen that says “Who cares?” as a reminder to can it.

Stoic philosophy minimizes self-importance. In doing so, we can more closely align our behaviors with that which we find virtuous and valuable, and our actions are driven by reason over external drivers. Epictetus said it far more succinctly than I did throughout this piece: “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.”

Go get ‘em. Because, in the end… who cares?

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