Why Bother
The Price of Not Caring

ELIZABETH GEORGE
May 19, 2026

In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Prospero, who has been betrayed and sinned against by his own brother, finds an opportunity to right the scales of justice when a ship carrying that same brother—along with the king of Naples, the king’s son Ferdinand, and various other functionaries and nobles—sails quite near the island upon which Prospero and his daughter Miranda have lived since Miranda was a toddler. Indeed, Miranda has no memory of any life other than the one she’s been living on the island, nor has she seen any other people beyond her father and the creature Caliban. Prospero has used his time on the island to perfect his magical pursuits, the study of which perfection was at least part of the reason he lost his dukedom since his attention was largely elsewhere, i.e. on magic.

Noting the ship and recognizing it, Prospero uses his magic to whip up a violent storm, the severity of which sinks the ship. In the ensuing chaos, the sailors and passengers on the ship panic and are scattered in various areas of the island, temporarily lost to each other. Prospero is watching all of this. So is Miranda. But unlike her father, Miranda has no idea who is on the ship and, witnessing its peril, she begs her father to ease the waters if, as she guesses, he is the cause of the sea’s turmoil. She has seen the ship “dash’d all to pieces” and the cries she has heard from the people tossed overboard “did knock against [her] very heart.”

Prospero alleviates her worries by telling her “there’s no harm done” and when she still cries “O, woe the day!”, he says—memorably—”I have done nothing but in care of thee,/ of thee my dear one, thee my daughter, who/ Art ignorant of what thou art, naught knowing/ Of whence I am; nor that I am more better/ Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell,/ And thy no greater father.” Thus, he reveals to her that more is going on than that which she sees in front of her.

He is acting for her, in care of her. In taking note of the ship he “sees the future in an instant”, and he knows the future is about his daughter and not about himself. He sees what the future can hold for her. But he must act to secure it.

I’ve been thinking about the idea of caring about the future of other people. We’re living in a ghastly period of US history about which I predict countless volumes will be written by people who will want to sift through the remnants of American society in the aftermath of Donald Trump. I won’t be one of them since even if I live twenty more years, I will at that point be nearly 100 years old. But for younger people, the aftermath of Trump’s reign of corruption, horror, death, and destruction will be something they must face head-on.
This is why I don’t understand those parents of young children who are not engaged in the fight against not only the growing danger of democracy’s demise but also the present danger represented by the criminal behavior of those in power and what that criminal behavior is bringing down upon us.

For example, not long ago I mentioned the rising cost of gasoline to a father of two young children. His answer was something of a surprise. He told me he didn’t pay attention to the price of gasoline because he and his wife both drive electric cars. So the price of gasoline wasn’t his concern. This remark widened my field of vision a bit. In this field of vision, I took in his house. It had been purchased for over $2 million financed in part by an early inheritance and the sale of another house that itself had been purchased from the profits of the sale of a first house that had been financed by an early inheritance. Thus, he would never have a mortgage payment about which he might have to worry. Because of this, he was able to afford after-school child care in an expensive city, summer activities in that same expensive city, organic produce from an expensive market, along with various products to entertain his children in their leisure time. He works in a secure position where he is paid over $100k per year. His wife—also a professional—works in a profession for which she is paid over $100k per year. They have no debt. Their children are healthy. They attend highly rated schools with class sizes below 20. They live in one of the most liberal cities in their state. So, really, why should they consume themselves with worries? Why should they care about what’s happening to other people whom they do not know? If others are struggling, is it their fault? After all, they didn’t vote for Donald Trump, and what he’s doing to individuals lesser than they is something they can do nothing about anyway.

Perhaps the idea of caring about what happens to others is a waste of time and a waste of energy for people who are not affected by the circumstances in which those other individuals find themselves. It is, after all, easier to consider oneself far too busy to bother with something that doesn’t—at the end of the day—touch one’s own life. But if we are each, as John Donne points out, “a piece of the continent, a part of the main” and if, as Donne continues, “any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind,” then isn’t it true that caring is actually demanded of us?

What Donald Trump is doing at the moment does not affect me. Like the aforementioned young couple, I too live in a liberal city. Like them, I too live in a liberal state. Like them, I am extraordinarily busy since despite my age I have never retired and it’s unlikely I shall ever do so. But unlike them—and perhaps because I’m a child of the 60s—I have reached the point that millions of others in the country have also reached: the point at which it is not enough to shake one’s head somberly or read the newspaper with a sigh or yell at the television. For people are losing their jobs, falling ill without medical insurance, finding themselves frighteningly behind on their rent or their mortgage payments, making choices between filling a prescription and going to the dentist, being disappeared off the street, being locked in cells without adequate food or water or even beds, and things are not getting better. While Donald Trump builds ballrooms and erects gilded statues of himself and manipulates the stock market and suffers not a single penalty for the laws he breaks, things are getting worse.

So not caring is no longer an option, even for people with electric cars and $2 million houses and healthy children in excellent schools. Because even for those people, there is a day of reckoning, a moment at which they will have to look at themselves in the mirror and ask what they might have done to prevent the inevitable that even now is slouching in their direction.

© 2026 Elizabeth George
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104