The Root of Apathy

Apathy is defined as the state of indifference - without enthusiasm, emotion or motivation. Apathy is such a buzz word especially in the realm of politics and society, whether it is on the school or even the national level. Many people today seem to not care about what the issue over Erap's trial is about or what is controversial about the National Broadband Network deal. A lot of adults point at the youth as being apathetic but, in fact, a huge number of people - regardless of age, gender, and even social class - are guilty of this as well. In a time when vigilance has become a necessity to ensure our rights are respected and our interests served, apathy is becoming a dominant sentiment in our society today.

I would like to believe that I am a bit of a notch above those who are apathetic to the concerns of society. Knowing is a whole lot different from caring since the latter involves action which I sometimes fail to actually carry out. But I always want to look at the bigger picture and try to search for the truth as much as a 17-year-old student can in this age of unlimited internet access and 24-hour news coverage. The main motivation for me is that I know I will be affected, in one way or another, by what the Senate hearings are about, how big the budget deficit is, or what the verdict of the Supreme Court is on an issue (nevermind the notion of seeing history-in-the-making first hand hehehe). A minority (fortunately a significant minority) see politics and the concern of the greater society as something worth looking in to.

Our capitalist society today is based on the principle that each person is selfish. As Adam Smith puts it in his theory of the invisible hand, in an ideal market economy, every selfish act of a selfish entity in an economy will contribute to the greater good of society. This is why competition and free trade are advocated in capitalism. Though I do not agree with this assumption, this structure of society assumes that every man is selfish - he will not do anything unless it is for his own benefit. I believe this is a big part of the whole root of apathy - that every man thinks only of himself.

I have had quite a number of experiences that have shown me this dark side of humanity. When the school calls for a relief goods drive for victims of a typhoon, very few answer the call. The reasons are varied but perhaps the most frustrating one is that a Starbucks frappuchino is far more important than one day's worth of food for a family. Why should I sacrifice my comfort for people I do not even know?

This selfishness of man is not, of course, the sole cause of apathy. This paradigm still holds even if you look at the instances in our history when people actually went beyond apathy. The Philippine Revolution of the 1890s. The war effort during World War II. EDSA I. EDSA II. All these examples show that the Filipinos can actually stop apathy no matter what the motivations are. Some are altruistic, others selfish,but all contributed to the success of movements that brought social change to our nation. In a more localized setting, the notion of Ateneans being apathetic is somewhat proven wrong by the sheer amount of criticism the implementation of a dress code has received in the past weeks. Again, some of the motivations are noble in the defense of the rights of students while others are more selfish in the pursuit of personal interests to keep their wardrobe and still wear slippers. Selfishness, in all these instances, can actually work to stop apathy but only if man sees the use of caring for his own betterment.

It is when selfishness is combined with another cause that it most likely will translate into apathy. Man is inevitably short-sighted. Despite our tremendous capacity to use our mental faculties to think beyond the abilities of any other creature, we simply cannot pierce through the veil of the future. We think more in terms of today and very seldom of tomorrow. We enjoy today because, as the saying goes, there may not be tomorrow. The same short-sightedness can cause apathy when we are unable to perceive how something could affect our lives in the long run. Most of the big changes in the history of humanity did not come in just one blow. The same is true with politics and the concerns of society. A new law like the Human Security Act passed today may suddenly or gradually change our way of life and we wouldn't even know it because of our apathy. Responsible voting in an election may not translate into food for the table tomorrow but we often fail to see that it could very well affect how much we earn in the coming years.

Looking even deeper into the complicated causes of apathy, it can be observed that selfishness and short-sightedness assume that we have the capacity to think about the bigger picture. However, in our country, not everyone has that luxury. I agree that since our nation is predominantly poor, the bigger cause of apathy is that a larger part of our nation simply cannot think beyond what they have to eat for dinner. What happens is that the minority of those who can shape how society would benefit them and not the poor who are robbed of their opportunity to not be apathetic because of the stigma of poverty. Poverty is a problem that can be solved by government policies, political will and social change. Following the assumptions of selfishness and short-sightedness, the higher classes will not initiate these changes for the poor. The poor cannot push these themselves because their poverty has kept them focused on trying to survive day after day. A big number of our people are deprived of the education that would have allowed them to understand how politics and society work and how they can push for change. An even bigger number simply have to worry about more immediate matters such as food and rents over education. Political apathy and economic degeneration is a chicken-and-egg situation - one cannot clearly discern which came first. Does the economy worsen because people do not care? Or are people too poor already to care anyway?

Apathy, like any other human behavior, is too complex to be understood completely. But the bigger matter is not understanding its causes but acting on it. The fact of the matter is that most of the problems in our society today can be solved if people were actually not apathetic. Corruption can be mitigated with vigilance. Poverty can be fought by a combination of altruistic volunteerism in the short run and revolutionary social change in the long run. Our society and government are structured so that the people get what they deserve - if people are not responsible, society and government will not work for them.

The many events in the past and the things that are happening now has led me to believe that indeed the root of apathy is selfishness, short-sightedness and ignorance. Perhaps this is an incomplete picture but what is clear is that the only answer to this is to show the apathetic that by stopping indifference, we can actually make a difference in this selfish, short-sighted and ignorant world.