6 Reasons Why “Mind Your Own Business” is the Greatest Advice Ever Given

Religion and pop culture are rife with sage advice to mind your own business. Consider the following quotes:

Take the plank out of your own eye so you can see clearly to remove the speck from someone else’s.

— Bible, Matthew 7:5

Most abominable in the sight of GOD
is that you say what you do not do.

— Quran, 61:2

I’m starting with the Man in the Mirror.

— Michael Jackson

Be the change your want to see in the world.

— Ghandi

Umma do me.

— Rocko

These mantras and missives have been ingrained in our collective psyche, bestowed by some of the greatest influencers humanity has ever known. So why do so few of us seem to live by them?

Tabloid and reality TV show tycoons have amassed fortunes from the business of, well, minding other people’s business. On the flipside, Instagram influencers build lucrative brands almost exclusively on recruiting people to mind their business, leveraging other’s fascination with their personal lives into paid partnerships and marketing clout.

Additionally, modern news consumption has essentially become a spectator sport. We follow politics for little more reason than to root for our party or become outraged by the other. World events seem to consist of little more than bleak stories of disease, death, and moral decay, which we all seem to have opinions about but either can’t or don’t do anything to address.

Justifying an obsession

Maybe nosiness is human nature, or maybe in developed nations like ours it’s a symptom of having too much leisure time on our hands. We convince ourselves that there is civic virtue in what we do: “staying informed,” “looking for inspiration,” “keeping up with the culture,” “sharing opinions” — in practice, all of these generally equate to devoting attention to things other people are doing that don’t directly involve or affect us.

But what about our own homes, careers, relationships, bodies, and bank accounts? As much as we claim to know how to fix the…