Guess what? It’s okay if you don’t have an opinion on that big thing. Or if you don’t give two shits about that other topic. Or if you have no idea what that trending thing is even about. It’s healthier, actually. Saner.
We live in a time where all of the world’s information is available, updated, curated and presented in the most addicting, dopamine-inducing, divisive way imaginable, directly to you all the time in your pocket. It’s an insane way to live, but if you’re looking for an icon of ignorance, a man whose philosophy you can follow by not following any “breaking news” or news at all, I’ve got just the guy for you.
His name? Sherlock Holmes.
Yeah, that Sherlock Holmes, one of my favorite literary characters of all time and someone you may not have thought about for a while.
In a day-and-age where a single tap on a screen will show you a deadly car crash, a crypto bro pumping an alt-coin, a politician who said a thing you must hate and five dudes telling you to take peptides or die, it is imperative that you listen to the esteemed Mr. Holmes.
Because long before TikTok, long before X and iPhones, long before the concept of “dopamine hits,” Sherlock Holmes, in 1887, gave a timeless, brilliant monologue on the need to unclutter your mind.
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The speech took place in the book A Study in Scarlet, and it came on the heels of the ever-loyal Watson becoming completely and totally flabbergasted with Holmes over something simple.
Basically, Holmes didn’t know or care about most “popular” things going on in the world in the late 1800s. In Watson’s own words:
His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing… My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
“You appear to be astonished,” [Holmes] said, smiling at my expression of surprise. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.”
After this comment, to put it simply, Watson loses his shit.
How could the brilliant Sherlock Holmes, one of the smartest men ever to live, not know about Copernicus?
Then, Holmes hits him with his now-famous answer, known as The Brain Attic speech:
“I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.
Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order.
It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before.
It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
How brilliant is that? Arthur Conan Doyle wrote those words for Holmes nearly a century and a half ago and they still apply.
Even better and more apt is Watson’s reply, which is much like the response you’d get from someone today if you tell them you don’t follow the news or you don’t have social media.
After hearing Holmes’s brain attic answer, Watson is beside himself. He can’t even put together a full sentence when Holmes says he doesn’t care even about the solar system.
He says, “But the Solar System!”
“What the deuce is it to me?” Holmes says. “You say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”
Boom.
I love this so much.
In other words, he’s saying, “I don’t solve crimes in space so who cares how space works?”
Think about that.
It’s freeing, right?
You don’t need to know about breaking news in Sri Lanka or the school board ruling in Tuscaloosa or the thing the mayor of that city 1,500 miles away said. Doesn’t help you to be a better dad, or husband, doesn’t help you spend more time with your buddies or to reach your goals, to have more fun, to get stronger or smarter or work harder or enjoy life more, does it?
This is your reminder to stop giving a shit about shit that has nothing to do with you. Don’t let the crap on Twitter/Tiktok/the news crowd out knowledge you actually want.
And the next time someone asks your opinion on Big Divisive Topic X that you’re supposed to be following, just shrug and say, “What the deuce is it to me?”
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Jon Finkel
Editor-in-Chief, Midlife Male
follow me on Twitter/X, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Check out my latest books at jonfinkel.com
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