A Globe of Shoulder Shruggers: Why Total Collective Apathy Would be Devastating
If anything unites us in our current world of democratically fragile, emotionally saturated, geopolitical intensity, it is, perhaps, our collective exhaustion. Some of us still live lives of relative privilege, some are facing the consequences of someone else's conflict, and just about everyone is driven by some sort of fear or, in what seems a concernedly growing trend, apathy. In the face of this, when a news bulletin that would previously have pierced the soul of a nation or caused permanent alarm becomes just another fact of life, how can we possibly recover?
That is a question I am not best placed to answer, but it is one that deserves the greatest attention. In the loss of empathy, attention and enthusiasm, we lose everything that makes a life purposeful and human, and as we are faced with a world so full of consistent emotional distress, it becomes a social tragedy of pandemic proportions. What also seems painfully obvious is that people do not understand or, fittingly, care about the vast consequences of a wholly apathetic society. The repercussions stretch beyond just social and political beliefs and actions, but also to economics, health, family and the very ability for humans to succeed in life.
Why Should I Listen To a Writer?
I chose to publish on my blog specifically because part of what I think has contributed to the growth in apathy is the belief that only a governmental state or person of topical significance can speak to societal issues. Surely, if the issue is societal, then all members require input? If you are a creative, you will also know that you are regularly faced with the dilemma of whether to switch off to moral duty and follow the opportunity and money or whether, as I have mostly done, take a slower, slightly more depressing route. I say all this carefully in my wording because while I am somewhat of a democratic socialist with typically liberal values, I still believe that we have all failed in providing a universal voice for the fearful.
By failing in this matter, we have contributed to a culture of extraordinary hatred and division that stems from - I believe - a lack of social education, inclusion and therapeutic outlets. No one, sucked in by misinformation or simply by misguided or generational prejudice, has the right guidance or financial capability to access resources that can pull them from those darknesses. So, instead, it grows and manifests on social platforms that live in an echo chamber of enablement. That is not me sympathising with the far-right or of anyone who causes real harm and violence, it is simply to say that it is not enough to tell a person their views are harmful, there must be an easy-to-access journey to unlearn them. As we know, when we are left with little else, it is easier to blame the person we’re told to blame than to question the validity of the accusation. I think it is also true for many of us on the standard ‘left’. I was sitting on the sofa, planning to simply recover from a long month of work and catch up on my reading, when I drifted into doomscrolling and news reading. These past few days, I have been so fatigued by the news that I feel I cannot control, that I sensed myself sliding into a tempting seduction of an apathetic life. I’ve noticed this to be true of many others on the left, those who, if not protesting, are becoming more and more tired of a routine and life that doesn’t seem to get better. That frightened me.
Why Does it Matter?
Once we become numb to life and devolve into these expressions of disinterest, we care less about our neighbours, our dating lives, our day-to-day work, our afflictions, our dreams and our beliefs in a society that looks after us. Apathy breeds fewer protests, less rejection of mistreatment, less self-development and, ultimately, provides an avenue to a future of easy manipulation, communal distrust and to the fundametal erasure of democracy, law and egality.
Yet, here we are.
Across the world, peaceful protestors are being beaten and trampled, and violence continues to erupt as a first port of call for nearly every government, authority and citizen. It all becomes something to which our bodies disconnect from; a reality that, even when we are a part of, or indirectly complicit in it, we cannot comprehend it.
As the Managing Editor of the Times, Lily Rotham, wrote in 2022: "Maybe you don’t need a survey to tell you that, in the first months of 2022, the things that would have once driven you to action—from simply reading to the bottom of an article to marching in the streets—just weren’t doing the trick. Amid the omicron surge, and after noted periods of burnout and languishing, the year opened with a resounding, This? Still? Call it apathy, call it indifference, call it the Great Whatever. It was the dominant vibe with which this year began."
And I'd argue that it has only gotten worse.
The fact that 3 years later we are, if anything, more numbed and apathetic than we were at the tail end of a pandemic should tell you this is something of considerable concern.
When thinking about the scope and impact of a society primarily run on apathy, ask yourself the following questions:
If law creates safety, what happens to our streets when no one cares about the foundation or validity of the law?
If you die, are injured or violated at the hands of a person in power and no one cares, then what does that enable?
If you are depressed and society is providing more reasons not to find sentiment or passion, then where do you find your joy?
If no one cares about who is in power, then what happens to our ability to choose who gets to be powerful?
If no one cares about the death of 1 human, let alone the murder of a nation of them, then who is safe?
If no one cares to protest or speak up to protect our rights, then what happens when they are all taken away?
If you rely on food banks or on universal income and suddenly a society does not care where our governments spend their money, what happens when it gets taken away?
If parents stop caring about what their children do or see or believe, then who do those children become?
The list can go on to an inconceivable number. We can argue passionately on a number of subjects and never come to an agreement, we can diverge down vastly different paths of politics and life but one thing that we cannot, as a society, afford to disagree on is that solving the apathy problem is a matter of urgency.
Wherever you fall on any political spectrum, we are facing a frightening time. More than just the willingness of the powerful to act with impunity on their desires and unchecked impulses, we are birthing a society of people too tired, too lonely and too fed up to protect their own futures.
Those on both sides of the political spectrum will be familiar with the term 'woke' when applied to people such as myself, usually when asking for basic human rights for all, but I think it will begin to descrie something different soon.
Woke was, and always has been, a term that meant to be awake to injustice and to what was going on around you. This was used to demonise our requests for greater universal respect and more life opportunities for all but, soon enough, I think Woke will mean to quite literally not be asleep. Goodness knows, I am both a morning person and a night owl, but it takes me longer to get out of bed as the years and my sense of apathy increase.
Both literally and metaphorically, what will you allow to happen to your life while you are not awake enough to realise it is happening?
