-Martin Niemoller, 1952, on political apathy
A while ago, before I learned about this website, Jon Stonger wrote an essay here in which he defended apathy as providing a net benefit to the world. Now, perhaps it is true, as Stonger argues, that apathy would yield a net positive effect on the world. Perhaps if we truly, and globally, accepted apathy as a doctrine above all others, then Hitler and the SS would never have thrown Neimoller in Dachau prison. Hitler instead would have eaten potato chips and relaxed on his futon. But we cannot pick and choose where and when it would be best if apathy were applied. If we are to assume that the application of apathy yields a net positive effect, then it follows that universally applying it to every aspect of our lives would increase that positive effect. Otherwise the idea of is false.
What if, faced with the daunting task of keeping a sprawling population clean and healthy, the engineers of Rome had chosen “whatever” over the Cloaca Maxima? Certainly, many lives were lost to Roman legions, bloodthirsty and conquerous, who allowed no quarter and many times killed the men and boys of a conquered people and took the women as slaves. One could argue those lives would have been spared had the Roman Legions chosen apathy over expansion. But how many lives were saved by Roman engineering and technology? How many lives were made better by the trade routes and roads established by Rome (many of which still exist today)? And what of the Roman Republic? How many lives have benefitted from that first attempt at democracy - the democracy we 300 million Americans enjoy today?
Wars certainly could be prevented in one fell swoop if apathy overruled the desires of the attacking armies. But what cannot possibly be prevented is a natural disaster. What if the Red Cross, United Nations, and the Salvation Army said “whatever”? What if a deadly famine tore across central Africa and rather than going to the aid of the afflicted, instead the international aid organizations don’t exist, their membership having not cared to join in the first place?
Stonger suggests that although millions have gained strength and spiritual fulfillment from religion, that the number helped by faith is dwarfed by the number harmed by the acts of religious oppressors like the Crusaders and Muslim extremists. Surely this is a fallacy skewed by the bias of historians towards talking about war and bloodshed! Where I live, Kansas City, every major hospital that was founded between 1890 and 1960 was done so by a religious organization. Back in the day, the wealthy had doctors visit their homes, but those who needed medical attention and could not afford a home-practitioner had no choice but to visit St. Lukes, or Menorah Medical Center, or St. Joseph’s Hospital, or Baptist Medical Center, or several other hospitals, all started by religious organizations. The number of people saved by these institutions, when you consider their international facsimiles, is staggering.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation now controls an endowment worth more than 30 billion dollars, to be used for charity. How much less good would be done if no one cared? If no one donated? The issue of religious oppression vs. beneficence is simply not one to be battled in the statistics, because the numbers clearly and unequivocally side with the caring, not the hateful. Perhaps we instead should turn our accusative eyes at the media, who seems to obsessively cover only violence, hate, and death. Or perhaps we should look in the mirror at ourselves, who apathetically sit in front of the TV and watch daily broadcasts showing human suffering, and say “whatever.”
How many of us, fortunate as we are, went to college on a scholarship paid for by either an endowment fund or a scholarship named in honor of someone that cared? My own college education was paid for in part through those very scholarships, and in part through loans given to me by a government that cares about educating its youth. Would the world be a better, fitter place if no one could afford college? Or if no one cared enough to go? I find that hard to believe.
Perhaps the bigger problem here is that Stonger makes apathy even an option. Consider the scenario proposed:
Suppose you are a member of a particular group on, let’s say, Earth. To your surprise and dismay, a member of your opposing group moves in next door. Maybe you are a member of the KKK, and an African-American family settles in. Maybe you are a Palestinian, and a Jew buys the house across the way. Maybe you are a Kansas Jayhawk fan, and Missouri Tigers supporters show up. The specifics don’t matter.
Seeing that a member of your hated demographic has arrived in your previously pristine neighborhood, you have three options: A) You can set aside your years of hatred and welcome your perceived enemy with compassion and respect; B) You can act on your hatred, endeavoring to make your new neighbors miserable and possibly dead; or C) You can shrug and say, “whatever.”
But in order for Kansas Jayhawk fans to exist in the first place, people must have strong feelings towards the University of Kansas, and therefore apathy cannot exist. And, if one were really able to set aside their old college rivalry and say “whatever” they first have to give up the caring they have for their alma mater. You simply cannot be a Kansas Jayhawks fan and say “whatever” to a Missouri Tigers fan; it violates the central tenet of being a Kansas Jayhawks fan.
So in order to be able to say “whatever” to your Missouri Tigers fan neighbor, you must first say “whatever” to your own alma mater. And the scenario breaks down from there. If we all chose apathy, there simply wouldn’t be a KKK to say “whatever” to their black neighbors. There wouldn’t be Jews or Palestinians. There wouldn’t even be an Israel, because the U.N. wouldn’t have cared enough to establish a Jewish State in the Middle East. If we all chose an attitude of “whatever” there wouldn’t have been an Industrial Revolution (people say “whatever” to the invention of the steam and combustion engines), there wouldn’t even be an America (people say “whatever” to their reasons for leaving Europe), there wouldn’t be roads (we all collectively say “whatever” to taxes and road crews say “whatever” to paving in the blistering summer heat), there wouldn’t be schools (teachers say “whatever” to students, students say “whatever” to tests and quizzes), there wouldn’t be grocery stores (farmers say “whatever” to growing more food than they alone need), there wouldn’t be trash collection or clean water (city government says “whatever” to paying for it, if people even cared enough to form a city government) and disease runs rampant. Simply put: if apathy were the rule, society would grind to a halt.
One cannot selectively pick and choose where to apply apathy (viewed through the convenient looking-glass of hindsight). Either we universally choose apathy, and our society fails in one huge lackadaisical moment, or we take the tougher route, where the majority choose compassion and caring, and have to tolerate (and hopefuly convert) those who choose anger and hatred.
If I post a comment, am I undermining my own thesis?
There are many points to discuss, and I’ll try to touch on them briefly.
I think that you are equating apathy with catatonia. Maybe I should have chosen a better word (disinterest? un-attachment?). You can still experience pleasure and so on, but you tend not to get overly passionate about things.
That’s why society would not collapse if everyone became apathetic. You can still do most jobs without being passionate about them (or even interested). There are certainly a few jobs, like surgeon or biomechanical engineer, where a level of caring is valuable. If everyone became apathetic, those areas of expertise would certainly be a loss.
[As a side note, Mediterranean people are known for being passionate ... but certainly not about work. In Spain, it was easy to take time off, and on a nice day you mite end up having a beer and some tapas in a shady plaza with the boss instead of working. On the other hand, it's damn near impossible to get the plumbing fixed (or so I've been told). There is a trade-off here, but it's just an example about how apathy about work and a livable society are not mutually exclusive).]
So much for brevity.
I’ve had this discussion before, and what it usually boils down to is our perception of human action. No one can deny that humans do a lot of good things, and many of these are driven by passion, as you pointed out.
No one can deny that humans to a lot of rotten terrible things, and many of these are driven by passion as well.
If you think the good actions outway the bad, then you go for passion. If you think the bad outways the good, then universal apathy would be an improvement.
So much of the violence and suffering in this world is caused by fanaticism and zealotry and greed and hatred. If we could convince everyone to care less, then the loss of compassion (and here’s where the perception of human action comes in) would be more than offset by the end of racism and war.
One more thing, and then I promise I’ll stop.
I’ve often heard people criticized for being apathetic (stoners, slackers, etc). This criticism is misdirected. The apathetic aren’t hurting anyone (as long as they’re not surgeons). It is the people who are passionate about the ‘wrong’ things (whichever ones those are) that cause the greatest harm.
That’s why we should all care a little less. Unless you’re a surgeon.
Jon,
I just see a bias in the idea that we can somehow ‘assign’ more apathy to people who need it, but exclude more apathy from people who shouldn’t have it. How do we decide who needs to be more apathetic, unless we do so based on our societal values and personal judgement of the necessity of passion?
“You five be more apathetic, because I think you should, but you two people need to keep your passion, once again because I think you should.”
It seems to me that we cannot assign apathy to groups we believe need it, and then exclude it from other groups we believe don’t, fairly.
Also, you make it seem like racism and war have caused more suffering than compassion has caused goodness in the world. That is surely a dark view of the world! Cheer up!
This all seems like a strong arguement for apathy!
In all reality, like you said, it is difficult to “pick and choose” where apathy is applied. Instead, as Jon seemed to clarify, what we actually want is a benevolent emotional detachment…like the Jedi!
You advance the thesis that universal apathy has value, and then use that as a springboard for condoning non-universal apathy.
Worse, your language rigidly accepts the notion that people who can stop tragedy bear zero responsibility for doing so. Quite the contrary, the only paradigm that counters special interests is the involvement of impartial interests.
I realize the original article was a good bit of dry (in a good way) satire, but I think it’s still worth raising the point.
Adam, you are rite in that I was having a bit of fun with the original article. It was cynical and dark; not philosophically rigorous.
Brian: if I was being serious, I mite well argue for a Jedi/ Buddhist sense of compassionate detachment. Thank you for a sympathetic interpretation.
Alex and Adam: I am NOT arguing for selective apathy, altho I can see where you got that from the comments ( I was joking about the surgeon- he’s apathetic too, and surgery is probably not a reliable practice). Of course the world would be a better place if villains were apathetic and heroes weren’t. That’s obvious.
In my cynical thot experiment, I ask: what if EVERYONE stopped caring? Evil doers would stop doing evil; good doers would stop doing good. Would the world be better off?
I think so many people get so cot up in their own projects and their own beliefs, that they don’t really stop to carefully examine their actions. Many people who think they’re doing great things are either wasting their time or actually causing harm (think of Kyle’s mom on South Park. Or Fred Phelps).
Alex, you are correct that my article implies that racism and hatred have done more harm than compassion has done good. I probably only hold this view about 2 days a week.
Adam, you are correct that apathy would preclude people from acting to prevent disasters. This may well be a deal-breaker. On the other hand, there would be fewer man-made disasters to be rescued from. Maybe God would see that we had mellowed out and stop sending hurricanes.
Of course, there’s still the constant danger of shoddy construction. I mite stay away from skyscrapers in an apathetic world.
I have not been on the site in a while but I do not understand why anyone cares what this guy writes. Did anyone read “The Church of Engineering”? No? (big shocker) Well you would have realized that this guy is a total douche bag who wrote the first Heretical Ideas article in history that said absolutely nothing……..seriously read it……….nothing. Either Mr. Waller is a genius and actually wrote that article as a statement that God does not exist or he does not deserve to be on this site. It takes a big ego to state that God is actually in the same profession as yourself. The article would have been much more entertaining if he worked at McDonalds and the article was titled, “The Church of Double Cheeseburger”.
Luke, let’s just go with ‘Mr. Waller is a genius’ for now, at least until the editors start to agree with you and boot me.
I’m glad you didn’t choose apathy!
Passionate ignorance is a lethal combination. I think passion without discipline is bad, too. Throwing out passion completely sounds like science fiction (Invasion Of The Body Snatchers?). I happened to be looking through the Tao Te Ching trying to find a passage that I thought was there and it seems to have disappeared, but perhaps some form of apathy would be a good thing.
I really enjoy this site and the writing. Thank you for this discussion, too.