Today’s artwork is “The Course of Empire: Desolation”, by Thomas Cole (1836), courtesy of WikiArt
apathy [a-puh-thee]
17th century. From French “apathie”, via Latin (from Greek) “apatheia”; from apathēs; from “a pathos” (“without feeling”).
- lack of interest or concern
- behaviour that shows no interest or energy and shows that someone is unwilling to take action, especially over something important
Mutability does not exist to fan the flames of hopelessness, but to quench them. Not to dig deeper into the pit of despair, but to hatch an elaborate escape plan. Most importantly, it is to care - deeply - to feel, and be impassioned, in revolt against apathy - the great terror of our age.
For terror deep and enduring it feels to me. It oozes into the cracks of cities the world over - in the Global North, at least, where many of us have the luxury (or privilege) of apathy. Who among us has not surrendered to its intoxicating embrace? In days past, I’ve found myself in the uninspired, apathetic places I would not wish on my direst foe.
It is normal to feel overwhelmed. To feel the world and all the manifold problems within it are too big for us some days. As apathy is a privilege, so too, can it be a choice, an unconscious emotional response, a coping mechanism. All these co-exist.
None of us experience apathy in exactly the same way, or for the same reasons.
The exhaustion of the past few years (there was a global pandemic or something?) has bred the fertile conditions for apathy - that vile weed - to thrive. Environmental, social, political, and economic upheavals have been battering each tender, central nervous system, and shall continue to, it would seem, for some time.
In the presence of stressors such as these, our CNS has but few options. When we are dysregulated (or unable to process everyday stressors), our acute stress responses - fight, flight, freeze, or fawn - kick in. Our bodies try to regulate, but can easily remain in hyper (or hypo) aroused states. Personally, when life gets overwhelming, I tend to shut down (hypoarousal), and I often feel spaced out, disengaged and numb.
I recognise apathy in all places. I see it in the faceless white men upholding colonialist patriarchies in an extractive, capitalist system of oppression. In politician’s glacial indifference to the implications of their lawmaking. In the grievous neglect of how the actions of a few are affecting the many. Passing off climate disasters like the 2019 Australian “Black Summer” fires, or the current Canadian wildfires as “normal”.
I see it in young people increasingly disengaged and disembodied from the living world under their feet, a world they've been handed even as it burns. I see people hoping that society will just do its thing so they can maintain an individualistic “you get yours” attitude. I see it in how innocent man like Jordan Neely can be choked to death - on camera - on a packed New York subway while no one intervenes.
From the internet to our neighbourhoods, we are met with the insidiousness of apathy. Apathy is as apathy does - or doesn’t, I suppose.
This apathy leads to one place only, and this is the ever increasing despair and destruction of our world. To borrow the rhetoric of conspirators the world over (and trust me, I don’t like to), the "systems" or "powers that be" want us subdued or unable to revolt.
In our world, it is easier by design to be apathetic, ambivalent, disengaged, indifferent, than it is to be an active participant.
When matters of state, agriculture, and economies are abstracted from everyday people, how are we to feel connected to the societies we occupy?
Our economies have designed our societies, which are too complicated and large for us to face and affect in isolation. Toxic capitalism has imbued us with toxic individualism, deepened by Neoliberalism, and underpinned by colonialism and patriarchy.
We are left with few options. To be a willing and profitable part of systems of domination; to be unwilling, and crushed by them while within; to create alternatives that can be used in their stead.
Apathy, then, is this - this grinding down of our wills and souls until all hope or belief is wrung from us. Apathy is dehumanising.
It is the absence of our human feelings, connections, and passions.
I do not have a cure for apathy. If I did, capitalism would tell me to sell for the low low price of 4 instalments of $49.99 (plus postage). The tonic, balm, elixir is practice - it is the revolutionary act of caring. It is not Manson’s “The subtle art of not giving a fuck" but its antithesis; caring (preferably without burning out).
It is not glutting ourselves on the overconsumption of doom and injustice. It is what the authors like Tricia Hersey and adrienne maree brown have told us to be - kind to ourselves while playing the long game. We can craft lives that allows us to see there is more hope, more chances, more inspiration in this world than there is cause for despair.
But to counter the terror of apathy, we must decide, daily, that despite being down, we have the capacity to rise against the injustice of domination. That joy can be conjured, found, crafted. That while the world is too big for me and I cannot possibly solve all its problems, I can choose to care.
I can be aware of the scale of destruction and disaster of our age. We all are (I hope). I can recognise that we are a world in ecological decline. And, I can steel each sinew of my being, and fortify every fibre of corporeal frame to strand firm in my resolve to not abandon hope.
I find inspiration in the people all over the world who are standing up and making change. The growing numbers who are willing to take a stand in the face of domination and apathy. To feel and care and give a shit.
Let’s allow ourselves to be impassioned and inspired, even by the mundane. Let’s remind ourselves that people are worth caring about. That we can leave this world slightly better than we found it.
Maybe that’s enough to ward off the apathy.