How to escape the reductive-corrosive "So what?"

Although an irritating affectation among adolescents; there is more to the "So what?" attitude than is first apparent. 

To respond to information thus is a form of reductionism; and reductionism (aka. scientism, materialism, positivism) has been and is the ruling reality of our civilization - hence the world. 

"So what?" expresses the conviction - and the fear - that nothing really matters; with the possible temporary-exception of how I personally feel in the here and now...

But actually that doesn't really matter either; because how I happen to be feeling is brief and unstable, and a matter of indifference to the mass majority of "Who cares?"  

"So what?" encapsulates the characteristic, all-but inescapable nihilistic-hedonism and hedonic-nihilism of the modern West - manifested as pessimistic selfishness and immersive distraction - occulted by vast, soaring, ineffectual abstractions; such as universal altruism, planetary peace, cosmic environmentalism... 

From inside; the attitude expressed by "So what?" finds that the two extreme replies of "Everything what - i.e. everything matters, or "Nothing what" - i.e. nothing matters; are equally un-tenable as a basis for living - which is all about discernments, choices, motivations and the like. 

In practice, the problem of answering the "So what?" question is ignored, because of its difficulty. The difficulty is that any valid answer would, itself, need to be stable to the repeated question of "So what?" - and this is very difficult to achieve, even to our own satisfaction (leaving aside the impossibility of finding an answer acceptable to "other people")!

The fact is that in this mortal life on earth, everything material is subject to entropy, to death; and therefore is easily dissolved by "So what?". 

If we desire to answer this question, we must move beyond the material world, we must consider the world of "spirit", and tackle the questions of "eternity"... Indeed, we must consider whatever will lead to an answer. 

For most people, such philosophical questions are regarded as irrelevant, unanswerable - indeed meaningless. 

But in this matter, if we decide to seek an answer; our civilization provides no help. Indeed it is the basis of the problem. 

Worse than this; we find inadequate, misleading assistance by looking behind our civilization into the past. 

We find answers that are incoherent, based in arbitrary or dubious values; and we find possibly-helpful answers to be packed inextricably with all kinds of other stuff that is said to be mandatory. 

And we find the modern people who assert these old answers, actually are assimilated to modern values - so the traditional answers seem to be little more than just-another lifestyle option.   

In sum: we cannot find anybody to tell us a good answer to "So what?" If we want an answer, we will have to find it for our-selves. 

So our civilization (and nearly-all of its members) is self-trapped in a down-spiral of compulsive distraction and underlying futility; trapped, on the one hand, by its own assumptions...

And, on the other side, doomed by an overmastering mental laziness.

Rather than admit that it is important for each one of us to be able to answer "So what?" - each to our own solid satisfaction; people find it easier to pretend either that the question is trivial and does not need answering, or else that the question is un-answerable - hence best left-alone. 

But who suffers from such a dishonestly slothful attitude? 

The answer is that every-single-person suffers, who has not found an answer.

He suffers necessarily; because for people like us, in a society like this; the question of "So what?" will not go away, and is inescapable.