Guys: The Ideal Woman?

[Angrboda]

But if it's sheer apathy: why did he get on the horse?

So you had no consciously subjective reason to respond and responded anyway? I doubt it. I bet it's more likely that you have forgotten your reason because it isn't important.

Let me explain idiom for you.

When someone says they don't care, they can be saying any of several common things:

a) No one cares about it (with the implied 'it' being whatever the person obviously cares about) [speaking in relative terms]
b) No one cares that you care about it
c) No one cares what you think
d) No one cares about what you care about (the more general form) in the way you care about it
e) No one cares enough to be significantly effected one way or the other
f) No one likes you enough to care
g) No one cares whether you live or die
h) I don't care (sarcasm), it's not worth caring about
i) you are an idiot for caring about it
j) others

That this self-serving little Mensch chose to interpret it as "I'm completely apathetic about it," is a bit of a stretch, but well within range, and therefore a good zinger. That you cared enough to kudo his zinger, and now follow it up in an attempt to re-zinger the zinger you apparently feel is slipping away makes it seem like this is something personal with you. Was it the, "As if a guy would actually know what to do with a woman," comment that has your underwear in such a bunch? I can't possibly fathom why that would be.

As regards to the Zen parable. The point of the parable is that our habit is to always be doing and thinking, just to do and think, sometimes, for no other reason, and our complete inability to be still is an example of the horse mastering the rider. The rider should be in control of her mount, not the other way around. But according to Buddhists, this situation is the exception rather than the norm. People's mental dispositions toward activity or simply avoiding stillness and silence, controls them. Taoists such as myself have related tropes.

Now, do you have anything else for me, counselor?


(oh, and, "CBS Cares.")

---

In the interest of completeness, here is what the Oxford English dictionary defines the verb 'to care' to mean: (irrelevant entries omitted)
3. b. To feel concern (great or little), be concerned, trouble oneself, feel interest. Also in colloq. phrases expressing or implying lack of interest or concern: for all I care, see if I care, who cares?
4. In negative and conditional construction:
a. not to care passes from the notion of ‘not to trouble oneself’, to those of ‘not to mind, not to regard or pay any deference or attention, to pay no respect, be indifferent’. Const. for, etc.

Speaking of idiom, the idiom I had in mind prior to posting Spongebob Squarepants was that I had had my armies in the field too long and therefore they were thus vulnerable to loss unless I pulled them out. (Sun Tzu) I knew better than to respond to him, as the odds were quickly closing in on me, but I responded anyway, knowing full well it was unwise. Was this a case of the horse mastering the rider? Perhaps. I think it's more a case of Apo being stupid. But there is the whole question whether, in a social medium, posting about something indicates that you care about that something as much as you simply care to be posting to be engaged in that enterprise in some tangibly beneficial way.