The Case for (Conscious) Apathy
A re-evaluation.
Why go on?
Why keep trying?
- Ad Astra (2019)
There’s a short story called “The Victory” by the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Rabindranath Tagore. It’s about a poet.
He lives out his days as a court poet to his king, reciting and singing the praises and truths of the lover and the beloved, “the sorrow that comes from the beginning of time, and the joy without end…the poet’s songs were on the lips of all.”
One day, a rival poet from the south arrives in the kingdom and proposes a challenge, having been victorious over every other court poet he had encountered along his travels. The court poet struggles to sleep that night.
In the morning, the rival poet goes first. With a thunderous voice, he skilfully crowns a variety of meanings onto the name of the king, weaving each letter through every sort of combination, and in the end, amidst the great crowd, is hailed with cries of “Bravo!”.
The court poet is struck with anxiety. After giving his king a glance full of pain, he begins his verses with the confidence of a turtle hidden in its shell, low and shy. But slowly his head, together with his voice, begins to rise, as he sings of the the king’s ancient lineage of heroism and generosity. He lays bare “the vast and unexpressed love of the people for the royal house”, bringing his audience to tears, and in closing professes to his king: “My master, I may be beaten in play of words, but not in my love for thee.”
Mockingly, the rival poet then responds with the question: “What is there superior to words?” He bursts forwards with “a marvellous display of learning”, with exclamations of the mighty Word, of scripture, the Word of God, the Word above all heaven and earth. With the wealth of his words, he stuns the entire theatre into silence, including the king, and the court poet is left shackled to his seat. Frozen. Stupefied.
What is there superior to words?
Apathy is many things.
In medicine, apathy is both a syndrome and a symptom of other syndromes that frequently occur in neuropsychiatric disorders such as dementia, depression, stroke, and Parkinson’s disease. As an emotional state, apathy is characterised by helplessness and hopelessness, feelings of insignificance, and an overall jadedness towards the world. And as a social phenomenon, apathy is part of a culture of cynical pessimism and collective inaction, often depicted by news outlets as the root of undesirable consequences in society and politics.
But, in and of itself, apathy is also a word.
‘Apathy’ (the lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern) was borrowed into English in the 17th century from the French word, ‘apathie’.
‘Apathie’ is derived from Latin’s ‘apathia’, and ‘apathia’ comes from the Greek ‘apatheia’ (freedom from suffering and from the need for sensations).
Ancient Greek is where it gets interesting, because the noun, ‘apatheia’, evolved from the adjective, ‘apathēs’ (without feeling or having suffered). This is the opposite of what happened in English: ‘apathetic’ was only coined in the 18th century.
Finally, ‘apathēs’ was formed by combining the prefix ‘a-’ (without) with the word ‘pathos’ (emotion, feeling, suffering).
Thus, in its most basic and elemental form, apathy means “no emotion”, “no feeling”, or “no suffering”.
With this definition, we start to see how the ancient concept of apatheia is connected to philosophies and religions all across the world.
The Greek philosophy of Stoicism refers to apatheia as a state of mind undisturbed by instinctive, emotional, or primitive human drives. To attain wisdom as well as contentment, one must eradicate the tendency to react emotionally or egotistically to external events, the things that cannot be controlled, and realise that only one’s own will can be controlled.
This is similar to the concept of Nirvāṇa, the ultimate state of salvation and liberation in Buddhism and other Indian religions. By following practices such as the Hindu philosophy of Vairāgya — in which one gradually develops an inner spiritual state of fulfilment and happiness, thus detaching themselves from the pains and pleasures of the temporary material world — one may be able to end the cycle of rebirth and achieve freedom from suffering.
It is fascinating how both the word and the concept of apathy has evolved over the centuries. Originally a positive quality — a virtue — now it has become a personality trait of a distinctly negative nature. But thankfully, as with all words, there is always space to play.
If someone you know is apathetic, then they must be unconcerned about something. If they are unconcerned, then they may be fearful of what they may have to go through if they do become concerned. If they are fearful, then is it not appropriate for them — either consciously or subconsciously — to choose to avoid the possibility of suffering?
If they wish to be free of suffering, then how can their apathy ever be wrong?
It’s important here to distinguish between ignorance and apathy; they are like brother and sister, but they are not the same.
Someone who is ignorant simply lacks the knowledge necessary to have an opinion, or make a decision, on something; they do not know that something exists or that it is something of value, therefore they are ignorant.
Someone who is apathetic is educated enough to be able to react to their knowledge and take action, but instead choose to ignore it; they know, but they don’t care. And, as implied before, they may not care because they do not wish to suffer, whatever form that suffering takes.
Of course, trying to figure out why a state of mind such as apathy is the way it is may not be as straightforward as a couple of paragraphs, but in the age of the Internet, where the rate of our information consumption has become stupidly ridiculous, I feel as though less beating round the bush may serve us well.
At the end of 2018, I had the privilege of traveling for four months. Halfway through, I was lying down on the grass of a small park in Berlin, with my arms and legs spread out wide, snow angel pose. Eyes closed, all I could hear was the sound of the wind, the crackling footsteps of passersby, and the distant city traffic. At that moment, I felt daylight from the cloudy sky making contact with the top of my forehead, and something unlocking itself within my brain.
In that moment, there was nothing — no job, no studies, no friends, no family, no responsibilities — nothing, but myself and nature. There was nothing pulling me in any direction except gravity. Nothing except a choice.
I realised, there was absolutely nothing stopping me from carrying on like this forever. If I wanted to live the rest of my life cut off from modern society — to just disappear and make the natural world my only true connection — I could.
The fight-or-flight response: fight the battles, or flee the war.
But with that realisation also came time — time to find something to fight for.
I asked myself: what did I actually value in life?
If I choose to go back, what was worth suffering for?
Objectively, if every single person on the planet turned to dust right now, what would be missed the most on Earth?
Human relationships.
Humans working together.
Humans connecting with each other through music, books, cinema, etc.
Humans bound to one another by blood, by faith, by interest, by a common goal.
A human’s relationship with their own self.
To me, human relationships (both direct and indirect) are worth fighting for, worth living for, however good or bad they may be. The fact that we love people who have died defines our human experience: the human relationship between someone who is dead and someone who is alive bridges time and space, defies logic and science — it’s grounded in emotion.
Even though we are the only intelligent life in the universe that we know of, we still remain irrational beings — impulsive yet smart — and that is beautiful, because it means that not every single thing that we do is quantifiable into a data point.
It means we’re allowed to make mistakes.
I am not a psychologist, nor am I a philosopher, but I am an artist (a person who has the desire and compulsion to create and express their inner self), and, at least for now, I’ve decided to call this singular experience of mine a form of conscious apathy. This may sound a lot like mindfulness, but let me explain.
Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us. Mindfulness is about living in the moment, being aware of your body and what it’s doing. The key to practicing mindfulness is meditation, and through meditation, we become better equipped to overcome our anxieties about the past and the future, and in turn become more active in the present.
Conscious apathy, according to my experience, revolves around the power of choice. I choose to not care about anything that I deem irrelevant to my goals or my interests; if something does not contribute (positively) to any kind of human relationship, including the relationship between me and myself, then it’s not worthwhile. Forcing myself to enjoy something is not the same as a worthwhile sacrifice.
I do this to protect myself from needless stress, as well as from the need for external validation. And if something is truly out of my control (e.g. a bus delay, a rainy day, banana shortage at the supermarket), I choose to accept the suffering that comes with it, let myself be free to dwell in and appreciate that suffering, before moving on from it at my own pace, not at anyone else’s.
Much like mindfulness, conscious apathy is a form of self-care. With practice, you get better at saving yourself time and energy, whilst also being okay with having emotions. While being emotional for emotion’s sake is, frankly, boring, being consciously apathetic means only being angry or sad or fearful for a legitimate reason.
But being consciously apathetic also means being able to appreciate what you’re feeling. Feelings of shame, of insignificance — all feelings can be humanised in a way that helps us see and understand how other people also experience and go through those exact same feelings in everyday life.
Feelings are not files on a computer you can just delete; they run in the background. Some feelings drain the battery, while others give it more juice, and some of them can end up doing both.
The Emotional Intelligence Project, an online resource for ways to navigate the mind, shares a similar approach:
“Taking the emotional mind offline allows us to take the necessary pause we so desperately need, and rearrange our thoughts. Apathy allows us to step back from our habitual and reactive selves, observe our actions and emotions separately, and make the necessary corrections. This separation gives us the opportunity to better understand the impact that the two aspects of ourselves have on each other and potentially help us mediate between the two.
We’re told that our unconscious emotional mind is some kind of savage. A primitive appendix that we were cursed to carry around. Something foreign that can never understand us. But if we are indeed as smart as we claim to be, maybe it’s time for us to try and understand it?”
Apathy doesn’t have to be something to fight or overcome.
Like any word or emotion, apathy can be something for us to re-evaluate and redirect.
It’s true that we can’t do everything, but equally true is that we can surely do something.
He captured strange and distant worlds in greater detail than ever before. They were beautiful. Magnificent. Full of awe and wonder. But beneath their sublime surfaces, there was nothing: no love or hate, no light or dark. He could only see what was not there, and missed what was right in front of him.
- Ad Astra (2019)
