I am neither an academic nor a philosopher, but a normal human living in this technological phantasmagoria we call the modern world. Applied Apathy provides a coping mechanism or an intellectual-emotional trick to keep you level-headed in the midst of the modern madness and its corollary stressors.
The physical results of living in a constant state of stress are legion. Musculo skeletal issues due to constant tension can lead to everything from migraines to bad backs. Increased levels of stress hormones like cortisol coupled with increased heartrates and blood pressure wear on the cardiovascular system and may leave it unprimed for the moments you need the stress response. And the emotional drain and commensurate fallout can be devastating. All of these things lead you straight onto the primrose path of doctors of medicine with their prescriptions and doctors of psychiatry with their prescriptions and soon enough you are not just miserable, you’re dead. Apathy can help.
Apathy gets a bad rap. People conjure images of sloth, numb callousness, or some combination of the two. Someone slumped on a broken down couch sporting a stained t-shirt and saying “, whatever, man” through a cloud of smoke. Or perhaps its the subway riders watching another passenger assaulted while doing nothing but hold up their phone wondering how many Likes they’ll get when they post the video. These are labeled apathy by our “experts”. As all human emotions become pathologized, we become nothing more than chemically imbalanced states to be fixed by their shoddy methods and incomplete knowledge. Next thing you know they’ve created an entire country deadened with SSRI’s and other psychotropic drugs, which are near certain contributors to the horror portion of the clown show we see around us.
But for me, and apparently ancient philosophers, apathy is a virtue. They used the Greek word apatheia and it meant something like mastering your passions. It was considered a state of elevated spiritual understanding or moral good — aka virtue.
A man without ever the least appearance of anger, or any other passion; able at the same time most exactly to observe the Stoic Apathia, or unpassionateness, and yet to be most tender-hearted: ever of good credit; and yet almost without any noise, or rumour: very learned, and yet making a little show. —— —Marcus Aurelius in Meditations
After the horror that was WWI, soldiers returning from the horrific death of trench warfare were diagnosed with what was called shell shock, now named PTSD. Since this was the Progressive Era, social “scientists” in the form of psychologists studied and made definitive proclamations about things they did not understand. Apathy became a symptom, like so many other human responses to trauma, and this state of “unpassionateness” became something to be avoided rather than cultivated.
My own opinion is that we don’t have enough apathy in the world. People have been counseled and marketed to feel strongly about everything, We are bombarded by constant propaganda and advertising. And this propaganda works on some level, affecting all of us. You must be Happy! You must care about Things! But why? The psychiatry/psychology push for some “well-adjusted happiness” as a natural state is insane. It is also a magical call for more pills or therapy provided by your benevolent therapist. And they always lead with the pill.
For me, the philosophy works on situations in the micro and macro — whether about your damn judgmental Aunt Karen or the Situation in Gaza, the philosophy holds nearly magical powers to keep you on the level. You neither have to blow your cool at Aunt Karen for her constant petty judgements nor the guy in the comments section saying things you find caustically ignorant.
This philosophy becomes ever more pertinent as the State encroaches and you are forced into interactions with a bureaucracy that rules over you, officially.
Some people will immediately think, “what you want me to just roll over and take it?” The answer is an emphatic, “No.” But getting angry, letting your mind and body get worked up into a state of fight or flight response ain’t helping either. Accept the things that are beyond your control in the moment. Once you do, observe them, ignore them, make jokes in your mind, but do not let them get to you. Screaming at the lady at the DMV will not make the bureaucracy ameliorate its ways. Instead it will respond in horribly mechanistic and convoluted ways to add layers to protect the DMV from monsters like you — who are probably racist, misogynistic, creeps anyhow (see Jan. 6) You see, you can’t win that way. But accept it and save your energy for more important work.
From my perspective, there’s no voting our way out of the morass. We are ensconced in a massive, convoluted bureaucracy where we have yet to have a single modern President or Congress do a single thing to shrink the monstrosity of mediocrity that constitutes our Federal Overlords. Apathy can help. It doesn’t mean you don’t care, it actually means that you care so much that you are going to train yourself to find solutions, not contribute to the noise.
So there is no reason to blow up the family gathering. You know who Aunt Karen is, you know the type of things she is likely to say and you know yourself. You also know that it is important to people you care about to show up and for Aunt Karen to show up. Given this set of facts, the proper response is apathy as applied to Aunt Karen. You can avoid her, use obfuscation, ask misdirecting questions, or amuse yourself. But none of it need produce more conflict or stress. By taking an oblique angle to the interaction, you may also find that you meet aspects of your aunt that you did not know, maybe even some you like.
Applied Apathy is something that is helping me cope with the world at large and keep a level head. Perhaps, it can help someone else but, if not, I guess I really don’t care.
Since the piece is about apathy, here's a quip that should bring a chuckle. Graffiti seen on a wall "What's Apathy?" Someone had scribbled below: "I don't know and I don't care"