Time & Perspective Quote by Ric Ocasek

"Never mind a world that can't see past brutality" lands like a shrug with a bruise under it: a refusal to beg for empathy from an audience trained to fetishize violence. Ocasek, the cool-headed architect of The Cars' sleek, neon-edged alienation, isn’t moralizing here so much as drawing a boundary. The line has the crisp economy of a lyric meant to cut through noise. "Never mind" isn’t apathy; it’s triage. If the culture’s default lens is brutality, don’t waste your tenderness trying to make it squint.

The subtext is about perception as much as cruelty. A "world" that "can't see past" suggests a collective attention span hijacked by the simplest, loudest story: dominance, harm, spectacle. Brutality becomes not just an act but a filter, the way we’re taught to read people, politics, even art. Ocasek’s phrasing implies there’s something on the other side - nuance, softness, interiority - but it’s being edited out. The frustration isn’t only with the brutal; it’s with the spectators who treat brutality as the whole plot.

Contextually, this fits a late-20th-century rock voice watching cynicism become a lifestyle brand: punk’s scorched realism curdling into pose, mainstream media turning damage into entertainment, masculinity marketed as emotional illiteracy. Ocasek’s genius was always the tension between polish and dread. This line keeps that tension: sleek dismissal masking a plea for a different kind of seeing.