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This lack of concern for our neighbors was crafted by the elites so that we won't organize against them.
When we're hurt, angry, scared, broke, stressed out, we become selfish, like animals backed into a corner.
The elites have studied this and they know exactly how far they can push us before we fight back. They are keeping us hurt and angry so that we won't work together and they stay in power forever.
Apathy? maybe.
Selfishness? Focus on my issues and only my issues or I'm out? Yeah.
In the scope of human history, we have addressed a shitload of issues and bettered the lives of billions in a very short period of time.
Yes, there is more to do and more can be done. But let's not act like there's no good done. It is incredible how better most everything about life as a human is today relative to most of our history.
most people are caught up in their own day to day lives. it's just the nature of things.
you have to go to work to pay your bills. your girlfriend wants to go out to dinner every once in a while. you have to go have dinner at your parents. you have to walk your dog. you have to brush your teeth, do your laundry. you have to figure out what you're gonna eat for dinner. should probably schedule that dentist appointment soon. need to do my taxes.
etc
really doesn't leave you that much time or energy to worry about the big problems of the world.
That’s pretty accurate! I just wish they wouldn’t be so insistent on defending the status quo when it has problems like world hunger.
"Put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others."
There's little to nothing I can do to fix world hunger, if I can't feed myself.
The battle against global starvation is one of the few things that's actually going well...
https://assets.ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/03/Famine-death-rate-since-1860s-revised-768x540.png
Apathy is a coping mechanism
I basically came to say this, but also that the cause is systemic.
When modern society, so thoroughly ravaged by late stage capitalism, requires you to spend the majority of your day working or doing chores and your leisure time is resting just enough so you can do it so again, there's no energy left to fight.
I can't say that those in charge are smart enough to do this on purpose, but it's definitely effective.
And a surviving mechanism ; don't do anything (use up energy) if you don't need it like now.
Our brains are made for fruit picking and running in the jungle.
In a single day, I can't worry at the same time about LGTBQ rights, palestinians, Ukranians, animal abuse, 100000 diseases that need research, racism, facism, basic needs for the third world, police brutality, the state of democracy, a migration crisis, climate change, polution, and many many many more things.
It is just too much to handle. So when faced with the horrors of the world for the bazzilionth time a day, I just can't bring myself to care anymore. If I did, I would be in constant stress about everything that is going wrong with the world. Instead, I throw away the booklets I get from the charities I donate monthly to, I tell the collector at the door I can't spare any money for children in Palestine, and I scroll past the post about how many children were raped in Ukraine today. Hence, I will come across as apathatic.
But that apathy is a survival mechanic, since without it, I would go insane.
You are right, and it is usually just a (very moral eh) tactic to get your clicks. You aRe okAy with MurDer and Rape? If noT click "click bait article".
I have decided to follow seriously only one topic (the russian ukraine aggression, so I gonon the lookout myself for information), some others more on a surface level like LGBT+ where you don't need to know a lot about the topic to understand what's happening (it's quite straightforward, terfs are bad, let people be who they are ffs).
But again, if you don't engage in most of the "news" you are not a bad person, you just prive shady companies advertising money.
I’m. Tired. I wish I wasn’t.
It certainly has become one for me at any rate..
I used to care a lot about everything, and now I’m just so so tired of trying. Apathy feels like a poplar grove; just keeps growing, spreading, and outcompeting everything else until it takes over and ruins everything, because it takes an absolute ton of energy control spread.
The problem with answering that, is that there's no set standard for the appropriate amount of apathy so really however much there is, that's how much there should be and not too little or too much, that's just how apathetic humans are and there's nothing to compare against for judging appropriate levels. Why are we as apathetic as we are? In my opinion it's pretty similar to why climate change is so difficult to address, which makes sense as apathy is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to addressing it. In general, it's more difficult to energise, co-ordinate and sustain collective human effort on a large scale for issues that don't seem immediate, tangible, easily attributable, physically visible and where the solution and action to be taken isn't simple to understand, or the improvement simple to observe and also reasonably short term (or at least promises to be). Long term, society wide projects usually require more than just an appeal to better nature. People caring, people wanting to help each other, people wanting fairness or kindness or just treatment, as innate desires does work to motivate, but I think tends to work on mostly on the smaller scale, when it's for small in-groups, preferably people we've actually met and with immediate social pressures to reinforce these pro-social desires.
Human beings are capable of complex, difficult, awe-inspiring projects for "good" or "bad" but those tend to involve more diffuse motivations and more immediate rewards/incentives where those motivations are their most removed from the original instigators. Some few people involved might be motivated by altruism or something esoteric like an interest in science or a religious belief, but if their goals involve the masses it's usually going to mean filtering their motivation down through stakeholders, to careerists, money makers and then on down to people looking for subsistence and in many cases down to people who are enslaved and don't want to be killed or harmed and so work.
To top all that off there's the more obvious problem of the difficulty in keeping more and more people in bigger and bigger projects all on the same page about what to do, how to do it, or if we even want to do it. If the important issue you're thinking of is for example inequality, it's going to be very hard to get agreement on what that actually is, if that's even a good or bad thing, how we should deal with it or even if we should deal with it and many of the people in this debate will probably be passionate in their position. Complex "important" issues also tend to involve beneficiaries who would somewhat understandably not want to work against their own interests and so shape their environment to the best of their ability such that the easier thing to do is tolerate the issue making the near impossible mountain of getting human beings together for the greater good harder still by design. This theory maybe has some flaws, depending on how you frame the important issue. If for example the important issue were crime, you could argue that for the most part for most people it's fairly easy to get them not to just murder strangers on a whim or for some petty gain, even racists probably walk through an average day surrounded by people of many ethnicities and cultures but don't generally (with notable exceptions) need to be convinced or induced not to physically harm everyone they walk past and this tends to hold true on a larger scale not just the in-groups as I described, but as a rule of thumb, in my view I think this is basically how we operate. How much we care, how much we can muster courage, how much personal risk or resources or energy we can spare for manifesting ideals is usually proportional to the degree of direct impact they have upon us personally, how close we are to the people affected by an issue and how easy it is to identify and rectify the issue and also how long it will take and how often you'll have to act. I think you could probably draw direct, inversely proportional lines on a scale of how much apathy is shown and a declining slope on any of those measures. I suspect this is from our nature and biological origins, but this is not an assertion I can back up rigorously.
Finally, depending on the issue, sometimes it really is rationally better to tolerate an issue where all the solutions are bad and could make things worse. Tends to be difficult to reach consensus on when we're in such a situation.
First a large enough group has to agree that something is a problem. Then they have to agree there is a solution. Let’s look at the problem of labor abuse in China. First, does everyone agree that it’s a problem? There are a significant number of people that think it’s fine or even a good thing. Some people think that everyone should be willing to sacrifice or be sacrificed for the greater good of the economy.
Okay so we manage to convince the shitheads that humans, even humans in China stuck assembling iPhones, have rights. What’s the solution? Not buy iPhones? Pay more? All out war against an oppressive regime? Countless other solutions exist, and until there’s agreement there, unlikely any of them will take hold.
The apathy is engineered, and can be easily furthered by injecting more disagreement on possible solutions by the people that were never really convinced slavery is bad.
I mean when I try to educate folks
Maybe that's one of the reasons they don't listen? I'm really sorry if what follows sounds a bit agressive, it's absolutely not what I wish, I just don't know how to say it more formally in English.
Sure, many people are very much not interested by anything that goes out of their usual ways but I would not be so certain it's the main issue at play, here.
I mean, why do you try to educate them? Are you their parents, or their teacher? Are you some kind of (moral/scientific) authority they (and we all) should listen to?
Personally, as one of those 'people' you're referring to, I tend to steer away from any person thinking they should educate others. Not that I refuse to educate myself and certainly not that I know all there is to know, far from it. It's just that in my experience, way too often, all what those self-proclaimed teachers teach is how great/admirable their little person is and, incidentally, more often than not why we should then rush to buy their latest book, or their whatever it is they're selling. Imho, there is little value in that kind of teaching and most people would be right to ignore it. I would even say that I wish more people would stop listening to those snake-oil vendors.
Once again, I'm not saying, you're such a person — how would I know, I don't know you — just that it's too frequent to not express some serious reserves when faced with it.
As tor the reason why people refuse to listen? Beside what I just said, I think most people already have enough things to deal with in their day to day lives, a lot of real shitty things, to not be willing to spend their free time listening to some 'teaching'.
Instead, you may want to show by example, by doing things and not by speech? Let them be surprised or intrigued by your very own actions and then, maybe, let them start a conversation by asking you question. They should be much more receptive if they do the first step, and you may get more positive results. Hopefully.
Gaza is all I need to know about humanity...
Never again until Israelis do a genocide then it is america, fuck yeah! Kill 'em all!
I mean the US has done a lot of genocide. Hitler took inspiration from how the US dealt with it’s native people. It’s not that strange that a nation founded on genocide and slavery is okay with that.
We at least we are coming around that genocide is cool when the good guys do it!
Decades of bullshit undone!
Yes, in every and all aspects.
Wars? Ukraine or Gaza.
Production? Chinas slavery
Sickness? 4 years ago.
Gaming? Triple a studios
Its everywhere to the point in hitting apathy against apathy myself
It's always been wars, always been slavery, always been sickness.
If anything, we have it much better than before. How do you think it was growing up during the world wars?
Those where just the easy ones out of the top of my head, we both know those are the the miniscule tip of the eisberg.
But dont you think you are just dismissing it yourself by saying we "always had those", sounds pretty apathetic to me.
Not to me, it just sounds normal. The reason people feel apathy is because there is a difference between expectation and reality that is very big for them.
It's the thought of "I need the world to be different for me to feel good" that is causing the apathy. You can change the thoughts on this and feel much, much better by being very grateful for having so much choice as a human being to find things you enjoy.
The French - Would you like me to burn your fucking car?
It really makes me understand why we don’t see any advanced space faring civilizations as we look to the stars. Life just isn’t good at cooperation.
Life just isn’t good at cooperation.
Our only data point for life is carbon based life on Earth. And from that we have
a variety of insects that live in colonies that cooperate in a profound way, putting themselves in harm's way for the sake of the colony. Ie ants, bees, termites
a variety of insects (and fish and birds) that have swarming behaviors, which involves individuals coordinating movements to confuse predators, conserve energy, or find food. ie locusts, sardines, starlings
a variety of animals that work as herd animals, which intuitively agree to use the power of numbers to increase the safety of the herd. Ie gazelles, sheep, cattle
a variety of predatory animals that cooperate in order to bring down animals they would have a much harder time getting alone. Ie wolves, lions, and arguably humans
a variety of primates that live in tribes ie chimps, baboons, and again humans
a variety of trees that share resources through vast underground fungal networks, known as mycorrhizal networks. so not only are trees cooperating with other trees, the fungus is enabling that cooperation in exchange for a piece of the pie
and that's just complex life, there's many more examples in cellular life. animals have been known to show altruism, social animals take care of each other, like feeding and caring for the wounded.
cooperation has evolved in virtually every branch of the tree of life and oftentimes independently. it wouldn't happen if life wasn't conducive to cooperation and cooperation wasn't a positive selective pressure of evolution
and i mean, just look at modern human society. do you really think our globalized society would work without a profound amount of cooperation? we even have a word for this idea, the social contract.
I really don't get this viewpoint of yours. I see the opposite. Yes, humans run into problems at large scales but life absolutely is good at cooperation and in fact the most successful species tend to be the most cooperative
We are approaching the second time life has changed earth’s atmosphere enough to cause a mass extinction. Sure, on a small scale, we’re great at working together, but on the biggest scale we’ve reached, we seem to be really bad at it.
Maybe it's you.
pfft. what do I care. /s honestly I think its more the stress of survival because at least in the us even if you are doing pretty well its setup so a few bumps can have you completely fall into poverty. You pretty much have to be independently wealthy for it not to and even then medical things could take you out if your on the low end.
It's a disgrace! Somebody should do something!
Someone should at least try to do something!
Someone should talk about doing something because they want to feel involved.
I think that this problem is similar to the monkeysphere: there are too many issues and problems for us to worry about, so we typically pick the problems that are closest to us and most solvable.
This is basically the same idea that someone else mentioned in this thread.
Maybe globalism was a bad idea? Maybe we should just create a lot of monkey spheres and each find our own local and relative level of happiness?
Nah i wouldnt blame globalism if anything id blame on the human tendency to take the path of least resistance. Where convenience trumps all
The shifting of manufacturing outside the region is a massive problem.
Even then, people tend to not even give a shit about local issues unless its something so obvious. People wont really give a shit about electing the right officials but will complain about their flammable water until someONE stands up to organize and rile up the politicians
Given that, i believe its something worse than simple overload of issues.
The issue is people are too distracted and living in their own world. Its not that they cant handle worrying about other issues its because people are living on autopilot
Either too much or too little depending on who we're talking about. You have the people who will amass a protest in the thousands because one person was mistreated and sometimes only a single person who will react at all when a thousand are mistreated. And people wonder why sociopathy exists.
It's a cross between our innate limitations, a societal system which works against us but continues from sheer momentum, and then by design by those who benefit. I don't think most people woke up and decided to live apathetic lives. We are chronically cognitively tasked
Yes. Me included.
I don't care.
Meh.
Oh, certainly. Don't forget the equal parts of hatred!
It's from experience. Older people know this world well. Doesn't matter what you vote for, power stays with corporations.
Young people tend to believe you can change things by voting, which is naive and a bit cute.
I used to feel apathy until I realized there is one thing I can control - me. I can choose to do fun things, replace bad friends with new ones, learn new skills, grow as a person. I can put my phone down and read books and stop watching social media and porn. I can change who I am right now. And I will feel good from doing so.
The society will stay the same, but my perception of my life will be enjoyable, which is all I can actually do. You don't have power over anything except yourself. Once you get that through your head, you understand how to not feel apathy anymore.
I did, but I don't care anymore.
...I'll see myself out. :P
In all seriousness I just don't know if I have it in me to keep paying attention to a trainwreck that I have no control over. I can only help my local community in some limited manner, anything outside of that all I can do is vote and yell at a "representative" that is bribed to not listen.
