What tool is available to break the hold of apathy?

[coberst]

What tool is available to break the hold of apathy?

Our habit of seeking accustomed satisfactions prevents us from finding new sources of energy with which to see or create new meanings. Blind habit controls our every turn. Familiar modes of thought and accustomed perceptions lock our imagination and will into a strait jacket of passivity.

What tool is available to break this passive mold of inaction and apathy? It is playful imagination that can lead us from the jailhouse we have trapped our self within. We need to remind our self of Plato’s wise expression that the gods are happiest when man plays. This playful attitude applies both to our sciences as well as our arts. It applies to all of wo/man’s symbolic activities.

Physicists found the world inside the atom to be non-intuitive. The world inside the atom seemed to be totally different from our world. Heisenberg’s principle of indeterminacy was about an alien world. If, however, we were able to climb into the atomic world it is quite possible that the principle of indeterminacy would be ‘just doing what comes naturally’.

Some of history’s great thinkers have penetrated into the human mind long before Freud. Rousseau, for example, comprehended an aspect of “unconscious motivation”. “The moral of this anecdote is that the honest man can see through himself even quicker than the honest scientist can see through nature.”

We could have comprehended the science of the human condition much sooner than we did and the reason we did not is because of the “intolerance of method, the claims to exclusivity, the doctrine of a single valid approach to the study of man…The place where this took its greatest toll was in the fragmentation of the disciplines, the isolation of the various approaches to man. But undoubtedly the most harmful intolerance of all was the intolerance of philosophy in the science of man.”

In the reaction to various philosophical speculations, the scientific community in the mid-nineteenth century shouted ‘no more speculations were needed about the nature of man’. The scientific community followed by the population in general decided that it was only important to discover what was going on within the organism. Psychiatry became uncompromisingly organismic. Science failed to see that its methods were narrowing significantly humanities real striving.

Pragmatism at the end of the nineteenth century was a response to this narrow scientific approach toward the “science of man”. It became obvious that we must understand what wo/man is striving for, “as a part of nature, as a dimension of life”.

Rousseau taught us that humans wanted meaning and maximum conviction but a major question that the scientific method could not resolve “What was behind all of man’s peculiar urges, what was he trying to do as a vehicle of the life force? For only if we could understand this abstract problem could we answer the greatest practical puzzle of all: What were the possibilities of life on the level of human existence; and, conversely, what was there about the human condition that was hopeless?”

What are the limitations and possibilities for human life?

Ideas and quotes from Beyond Alienation by Ernest Becker

[The Atheist]

What tool is available to break the hold of apathy?

I think fear is probably the only one, but as nothing scary enough to put the bejesus up all humankind, it ain't gonna happen.

I'm not even sure how humans have become so apathetic, because it isn't exactly a survival trait. Maybe we're just reaping what we've sown by way of moving away from the rules of the jungle. We've gone from survival of the fittest to survival of the least fit.

If people cannot be motivated by deaths of thousands of children, the rape of millions of women, or other appalling abuses of human rights, what can possibly remove the apathy?

[coberst]

It appears to me that the 18th century Age of Enlightenment was a century that broke the back of a period focused exclusively upon 'God and the here-after'. Could that transformation be a guide to such a similar transformation of scale that is needed today?

[cidkid]

Government control in a political sense is no longer necessary, the truth must be spreading with worldwide media, and now we, the peasants, all over the world have the opportunity to see eachother on television, on the internet, and I propose that as those in their twenties today reach their forties, and then those in their twenties would have been raised by that generation, the bourgeois of the world will realize that all of us are completely the same; working men and women, raising families, with personal interests and cultural beliefs. The aims of governments and especially the militaries don't reflect the people anymore, if there could be worldwide referendums where hypothetically every single man and woman cast a vote, should anybody doubt that we would vote landsliding for global disarmament? The apathy on the part of suffering.. I don't believe is quite justly described as apathy. It comes back to the question of what one man can do. Should world suffering be ended if I become a missionary? If I bring my whole family and all my friends and we spend the rest of our lives active in ending hunger in Africa? No.. we certainly shouldn't dent it on a global scale. I think almost all of us, I hope, take pause for moments and consider the question as best as we can, but no matter how hard you try to put together not only a plan for saving the world but also somehow a way that you alone are capable in the initiation of it, life will always sweep up and take you to buy milk before you have had time.

It's not apathy, rather I say as societies we are getting more and more anxious for action. If you can only give us a plan, perhaps we shall burn the gates.

[The Atheist]

It appears to me that the 18th century Age of Enlightenment was a century that broke the back of a period focused exclusively upon 'God and the here-after'. Could that transformation be a guide to such a similar transformation of scale that is needed today?

No.

We've moved so far from there that the circle has swung full measure. People dislike science & reason now not because they don't know, but because they don't want to know.

First off, you have to subtract the still-wide majority of people who are theists. You must know that the smarter the theist you talk to, the more in keeping with reality the theism is. You don't find many Creationists among the NAS. Theism's a virulent form of apathy because it says that some sky-daddy's going to kiss it all better when we die.

On top of them, the fundamental agnostics, who will insist that since we can never prove reality anyway that the whole thing's bunk.

Throw in the number - which I'm convinced is a majority of the remainder - who want to believe in the Cottingley Fairies or some other nonsense and will therefore never accept fact as fact, and there's you, me and half-dozen others. We're in such a screaming minority that reason won't be allowed to prevail.

Pity.

One more example.

Childhood vaccinations.

The number of anti-vaxers is small - probably 5% of the population - but exists because people who accept and revel in the success of vaccinations will not generally get worked up about, they spew their disgusting lies across the internet. Because I'm not a very apathetic type of bloke, I confront these scumbags head on. The ironic part is that many times, the most vociferous supporters of people's "right" not to vaccinate are people who do vaccinate their children but put some idiotic notion of human rights before the rights of every child on the planet.

We encourage apathy in idealistic matters. We've built a planet designed to encourage apathy, with endless pointless pursuits, where one's right to believe the most ridiculous thing you can think up is given room to grow and flourish.

Because nobody cares.

Edmund Burke again.

Coberst - you and I should have been born during the Age of Enlightenment.*

*Trouble is that I'd have been born into abject poverty, press-ganged into service before the mast, and ultimately keelhauled for being a malcontent ****-stirrer!

:D


Government control in a political sense is no longer necessary, the truth must be spreading with worldwide media, and now we, the peasants, all over the world have the opportunity to see eachother on television, on the internet, and I propose that as those in their twenties today reach their forties, and then those in their twenties would have been raised by that generation, the bourgeois of the world will realize that all of us are completely the same; working men and women, raising families, with personal interests and cultural beliefs.

What a perfect defence of apathy!


The aims of governments and especially the militaries don't reflect the people anymore, if there could be worldwide referendums where hypothetically every single man and woman cast a vote, should anybody doubt that we would vote landsliding for global disarmament?

Yes.

Not only doubt, I see it as impossibly Utopian and so unrealistic as to be immaterial.

Even if the near-impossible occurred and you held a vote, I say that giving up weapons as a way of life would lose in the referendum anyway.


The apathy on the part of suffering.. I don't believe is quite justly described as apathy. It comes back to the question of what one man can do. Should world suffering be ended if I become a missionary? If I bring my whole family and all my friends and we spend the rest of our lives active in ending hunger in Africa? No.. we certainly shouldn't dent it on a global scale.

Excellent description of apathy.

Crikey. Don't take offence - but you couldn't be putting a better case if you were my sock-puppet.

If all the ones did one little bit, it all works. Where's that one world spirit you were showing a paragraph ago?

:D


I think almost all of us, I hope, take pause for moments and consider the question as best as we can, but no matter how hard you try to put together not only a plan for saving the world but also somehow a way that you alone are capable in the initiation of it, life will always sweep up and take you to buy milk before you have had time.

It's not apathy,...

Yeah, it is.


... rather I say as societies we are getting more and more anxious for action. If you can only give us a plan, perhaps we shall burn the gates.

The plan is simple.

Everyone start doing something. Don't be put off by being "only one".

If all of those ones do one little bit, everything gets done.

Remember when you were a kid and there was some huge, overwhelming job to do, but soon enough, half a dozen people joined in and it took no time?

The earth is a bit like that. Unless you believe that a deity is going to arrive on earth and clean it up, it's down to those of us who live here to fix it.

One bit at a time.

[blazeofglory]

We are so much dull, passive and un-reactive.
The easiest way is to unlearn or deprogram. If we can deprogram ourselves and behave like babies with great deals of curiosities or wonders we can really be active.

But we have scores of ideas and thoughts and knowledge or experiences that heavily weigh down on us.

And these unbounded thoughts and experiences give us pre-knowledge or preconceived notions of things or ideas that deaden our power of enjoying things or of being creatively oriented.

[PierreGringoire]

Deprogram from familiarity? It seems our minds need a comfort zone. Some minds are more capable than others of getting outside of strong behavioral presets. And then again, even some of the most creative people are the most dangerous. However, being as much in the realm of improvisation as possible...could that break the hold of apathy? Hmph...the hold of apathy...is merely the symptom of our inescapable Ignorance

[coberst]

Deprogram from familiarity? It seems our minds need a comfort zone. Some minds are more capable than others of getting outside of strong behavioral presets. And then again, even some of the most creative people are the most dangerous. However, being as much in the realm of improvisation as possible...could that break the hold of apathy? Hmph...the hold of apathy...is merely the symptom of our inescapable Ignorance


We cannot help but be ignorant of many things but we can prevent our self from being ignorant of the culturally based ant-intellectually driven intellectual apathy.

[blazeofglory]

In fact apathy is dangerous and it leads to a state wherein man loses interests in everything. Life is something that can be molded into anything, It is really important that we take interest in creativity, for creativity engages us in life.

Creativity kind of busies man with something all the time, and man occupied with something inventive can live a very peaceful life.

[cidkid]

No, Atheist, using logic and reason to direct your energies is not apathy. It would be apathetic in a sense to volunteer and do your own little bit, under the guise of the theory that "if everyone does their part", and to feel personally gratified for it even if you acknowledge that it's not denting the problems in the world; in a sense you're still totally apathetic, using the city kitchen to justify it. You'd still be apathetic of the big picture. Perhaps if everybody did their part the world would be a better place, but if every single person was busy doing their part they wouldn't have time for war anyway. I find it ironic that you suggest I'm being too utopian, but you will only argue in utopian terms, as it's ridiculous to think that people should just keep plugging along but do a little bit in their own little way and everything will turn out alright. Like I said, I'm not about to go join a mission because if I was to put my energy into change, and I certainly hope in my life I will, I shouldn't jump at any opportunity to help and sacrifice a lifetime creating very very little changes here and there, I would reserve and build on my energy and educating myself for a small moment of great change. Apathy doesn't even suggest a lack of action, it suggests a lack of thought. I believe there are other people who care deeply about the world and it sounds like you are one of them and one day one of might figure out exactly what the right answer is and when there's a solution to get behind some of us will be there with our energy showing the concern we always had. You will do better in a game of chess by thinking out your moves rather than jumping at the chance just to move any piece and doing so quickly just for the sake of chess in itself. You want to win the game, the object of the game is not to prove it's existence by demonstrating it.

And yes, I am offended that you would assume me apathetic. I contribute to my world in the little ways, I do my part to an extent to make the world a little better, but until I feel I've found a philosophy or a movement which I can believe that expending my vast young energy for it will truly change the world, I'm absolutely not going to dedicate my life just for the sake of not *appearing* apathetic, which you seem to hold higher than the mental process itself, which is what apathy is.

[MarkBastable]

Who cares?

[Lynne50]

What tool is available to break the hold of apathy?


What tool is available to break this passive mold of inaction and apathy?

It is playful imagination that can lead us from the jailhouse we have trapped our self within. We need to remind our self of Plato’s wise expression that the gods are happiest when man plays. This playful attitude applies both to our sciences as well as our arts. It applies to all of wo/man’s symbolic activities.





I was intrigued by this question, but so far, only coberst have given a concrete answer to the question. It seems everyone else is just defining apathy and not given any suggestions. I was interested more on a personal level than on a global one. As you can see, I haven't offered any either because I was selfishly looking for help for myself, not the world. Can I pose another question? How can one learn to 'think outside the box'? Is it possible or are some people just not programmed that way? I know it has alot to do with your upbringing, but how can one break out of those limitations?

[coberst]

I was intrigued by this question, but so far, only coberst have given a concrete answer to the question. It seems everyone else is just defining apathy and not given any suggestions. I was interested more on a personal level than on a global one. As you can see, I haven't offered any either because I was selfishly looking for help for myself, not the world. Can I pose another question? How can one learn to 'think outside the box'? Is it possible or are some people just not programmed that way? I know it has alot to do with your upbringing, but how can one break out of those limitations?

For 25 years I have been a self-actualizing self-learner and it has worked for me and I am confident it can work for anyone who gives it a good faith effort.

I am a retired engineer with a good bit of formal education and twenty five years of self-learning. I began the self-learning experience while in my mid-forties. I had no goal in mind; I was just following my intellectual curiosity in whatever direction it led me. This hobby, self-learning, has become very important to me. I have bounced around from one hobby to another but have always been enticed back by the excitement I have discovered in this learning process. Carl Sagan is quoted as having written; “Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.”

I label myself as a September Scholar because I began the process at mid-life and because my quest is disinterested knowledge.

Disinterested knowledge is an intrinsic value. Disinterested knowledge is not a means but an end. It is knowledge I seek because I desire to know it. I mean the term ‘disinterested knowledge’ as similar to ‘pure research’, as compared to ‘applied research’. Pure research seeks to know truth unconnected to any specific application.

I think of the self-learner of disinterested knowledge as driven by curiosity and imagination to understand. The September Scholar seeks to ‘see’ and then to ‘grasp’ through intellection directed at understanding the self as well as the world. The knowledge and understanding that is sought by the September Scholar are determined only by personal motivations. It is noteworthy that disinterested knowledge is knowledge I am driven to acquire because it is of dominating interest to me. Because I have such an interest in this disinterested knowledge my adrenaline level rises in anticipation of my voyage of discovery.

We often use the metaphors of ‘seeing’ for knowing and ‘grasping’ for understanding. I think these metaphors significantly illuminate the difference between these two forms of intellection. We see much but grasp little. It takes great force to impel us to go beyond seeing to the point of grasping. The force driving us is the strong personal involvement we have to the question that guides our quest. I think it is this inclusion of self-fulfillment, as associated with the question, that makes self-learning so important.

The self-learner of disinterested knowledge is engaged in a single-minded search for understanding. The goal, grasping the ‘truth’, is generally of insignificant consequence in comparison to the single-minded search. Others must judge the value of the ‘truth’ discovered by the autodidactic. I suggest that truth, should it be of any universal value, will evolve in a biological fashion when a significant number of pursuers of disinterested knowledge engage in dialogue.

In the United States our culture compels us to have a purpose. Our culture defines that purpose to be ‘maximize production and consumption’. As a result all good children feel compelled to become a successful producer and consumer. All good children both consciously and unconsciously organize their life for this journey.

At mid-life many citizens begin to analyze their life and often discover a need to reconstitute their purpose. Some of the advantageous of this self-actualizing self-learning experience is that it is virtually free, undeterred by age, not a zero sum game, surprising, exciting and makes each discovery a new eureka moment. The self-actualizing self-learning experience I am suggesting is similar to any other hobby one might undertake; interest will ebb and flow. In my case this was a hobby that I continually came back to after other hobbies lost appeal.

I suggest for your consideration that if we “Get a life—Get an intellectual life” we very well might gain substantially in self-worth and, perhaps, community-worth.

I have been trying to encourage adults, who in general consider education as a matter only for young people, to give this idea of self-learning a try. It seems to be human nature to do a turtle (close the mind) when encountering a new and unorthodox idea. Generally we seem to need for an idea to face us many times before we can consider it seriously. A common method for brushing aside this idea is to think ‘I’ve been there and done that’, i.e. ‘I have read and been a self-learner all my life’.

I am not suggesting a stroll in the park on a Sunday afternoon. I am suggesting a ‘Lewis and Clark Expedition’. I am suggesting the intellectual equivalent of crossing the Mississippi and heading West across unexplored intellectual territory with the intellectual equivalent of the Pacific Ocean as a destination.

[Lynne50]

I am not suggesting a stroll in the park on a Sunday afternoon. I am suggesting a ‘Lewis and Clark Expedition’. I am suggesting the intellectual equivalent of crossing the Mississippi and heading West across unexplored intellectual territory with the intellectual equivalent of the Pacific Ocean as a destination.

Thanks, coberst for giving me much 'food for thought'. I, too, am in the same 'September Scholar' time of my life, although I am not retired yet. I have always thought of myself as a 'work in progress' and consequently enjoy learning new things. However, it's the 'grasping for understanding' that I have to work on.

I loved your last paragraph. (Quote above). What a wonderful motivating suggestion. Boy, I better get moving- time's a wastin'. Thanks

[MarkBastable]

How can one learn to 'think outside the box'? Is it possible or are some people just not programmed that way?

In my experience, most of those who think outside the box do so because they are too lazy to master what's in the box. Thinking outside the box is useful only if you know the box inside out.

[coberst]

In my experience, most of those who think outside the box do so because they are too lazy to master what's in the box. Thinking outside the box is useful only if you know the box inside out.

Our (American) educational system has prepared us to become good producers and consumers. One aspect of this preparation is to kill curiosity and the desire to learn. After our school daze are over we must first restore curiosity and the desire to learn.

[DanielBenoit]

Who cares?

Thank you so much for contributing to the conversation

[MarkBastable]

Thank you so much for contributing to the conversation


In case the irony escaped you, let me put my point another way...

Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes?"

[Apathy]

My Name only refers to interactions with people

I believe there are two tools:
1-The thirst for knowledge that disappointingly few few people seem to be endowed with these days.
2-Fear, nothing exposes the ingenuity of mankind more than when they are in ****.

[Hurricane]

Apathy is inherently self-interested. For people to not be apathetic, there needs to be some motivator that connects them to what's going on, whether that's fear, empathy for someone's suffering, or anger. The majority of people are selfish, and it makes sense. It's a survival trait: why should I worry about you when I've got me to worry about?

Apathy isn't ignorance: the facts are out there about what's going on in some of the worst places of the world. People just choose to ignore them and ignore the atrocities there because there's no connection. No reasonable person is going to believe that the violence in, say, the Congo is okay, but the majority of people also wouldn't really be in favor of military intervention because it doesn't effect them.
After the discovering the horrible evidence of the Holocaust and bringing those responsible for justice, we as a world said "Never again". But it's happened again and again and again, with no end in sight. We just don't care, because there's no connection.

"Building awareness" does nothing. Getting people upset enough at what's going on to act does. Yeah, an individual has limits on how much they can do. That doesn't mean you shouldn't push those limits.

[Dirtbag]

A truly apathetic person would do nothing with their life, and I don't think such a person exists. We all care about something. We can thank our brain chemistry for that. But theoretically this could be fun to talk about.

Money means survival now. It also means satisfying worldly desires and a lot of people get their kicks out of that. So, cash is one tool that we could use to get people to do stuff.

People can be apathetic towards many aspects of life. For clarity, I'm now going to focus on self education.

Money doesn't work as well this time. It doesn't inspire creativity which we need in order to find out what it is we want to learn and to find out ways of learning it. If we want people to believe in self education we need to immerse them in a crowd of other self educating people. Nothing motivates people like other people.

But why would we want to motivate anyone if not for our own self interest? To use people to create a world that we think is better but to them is not significantly different. Our perceptions of the world are different. Your problem is not always mine.

[The Atheist]

My Name only refers to interactions with people

I believe there are two tools:
1-The thirst for knowledge that disappointingly few few people seem to be endowed with these days.
2-Fear, nothing exposes the ingenuity of mankind more than when they are in ****.

Outstanding opportunity to post, though. Well done!

I like your sig, too.

[blazeofglory]

Of course by nature we choose to be confined within a comfort zone, and getting out of is really a venture and we do not choose to venture out for fear of risking life.

Had we chosen to be unaccustomed to confinements of comfort zones or betrothed zones we would have been more inventive and the world would have been really a better place than what it is now currently in point of fact.

And above all we need security and nowhere we are better secured than within confines of traditions. Man is hooked to traditions and wall himself against invasions of new ideas, cultures, societies, ideologies.

People in tribes choose to live with their superstitions and therein they find their comforts and a sense of harmony and outside lies insecurity and hence their apathy to what is outside their camps.