NTS: Appreciate friends
I have to keep reminding myself of how lucky I am to have my friends. I don’t know who I’d be without them. I’m also glad for all the opportunities I’ve had in the past 6 years. This past year alone has been one of huge personal change. I owe it to these things. Most of those concerned know who they are when I say: Thank you.
“United we sit”
Move over, Paris Hilton…make way for OJ Simpson! Look who is America’s new distraction from real issues! Let’s all watch CNN and see what happens to the celebrity who may have had a hand in some petty crime!
I’ve been wanting to talk about apathy for a while now. Why doesn’t anyone care about anything anymore? I think it’s partly because of false perception.
We have seen so much exaggeration from our chief exporters of information over time that we may have little faith in them anymore. The best example I can think of would be, well, politicians. We’re promised the world, always sometime near election time. Come midpoint through the term, you rarely hear of any positive change occurring. Don’t get me wrong, government on all levels are working their butts off, but it just seems like their glorious promises weren’t exactly justified. We don’t perceive any difference. Luckily though, we expect that.
I can understand why the bullying of post Soviet states and the control over their natural resources by Putin-led Russia is not on people’s daily thoughts. I can see why starving children in Africa (World Vision’s videos with flies around the poor child’s mouth), is not a concern enough to agree to adhere to the 0.7% Pledge. I can see why people become cynics. We see tragedy in all forms all day, every day – and are still very comfortable within our own little world.
I guess you can say that the only major problems to humanity are on my TV and PC monitor. Of course it’s in real time, with crisp high-definition digital technology. No wonder it’s not taken seriously. We undervalue real problems, and overvalue base things that simply entertain us more. Of course, things change when you’re the one who’s having trouble; perhaps experiencing an illness, and nobody truly understands what you’re experiencing. The worldly apathy I’m talking about contends with that same sense of “It’ll never happen to me”.
I feel as though we are spoiled enough to have the luxury of getting away with not giving a damn and still living a nice life. I’m afraid of seeing a repetition of history, where good people tend to get the screws put to them when they’re complacent.
Time Well Spent
I had a nice day today, I visited some of my family in Miramichi, played some cello, read and studied. It feels really good. I love writing blogs too, in a different way than discussing topics in person. It allows me some time to formulate something more eloquent and better representing the way I feel, all while reading and analyzing past comments to give the best response possible.
I give huge props to people who can do this on the fly, while speaking. I would love to be a better, wittier speaker. That’s right lawyers and politicians, I’m talking to you! =)
The Final Word
I’d like to throw in something Eddie Izzard said during one of his stand up shows:
I think, you know, we think if – if somebody kills someone, that’s murder, you go to prison. You kill 10 people, you go to Texas, they hit you with a brick, that’s what they do. Twenty people, you go to a hospital, they look through a small window at you forever. And over that, we can’t deal with it, you know? Someone’s killed 100,000 people. We’re almost going, “…Well done! You killed 100,000 people? Ahhh. You must get up very early in the morning.
Thanks for reading, friend. Cheers! =)
-Andrew
Comment for the first part: I always treasure my friends, coz I believe they are one the only things we CHOOSE in our life!
Posted by Behnam on March 24th, 2009.
Did you know that Apathy originated as a Stoic philosophy?
The stoics are pretty cool, but they get a bad rap as they were associated with the downfall of Rome and the empire in general. Still, apathy embodies much of how they tried to approach the problems of the world: emotionless, free from passions & thus able to make rational decisions.
Copied/Pasted from Encyclopedia Britannica:
apathy
philosophy
Main
in Stoic philosophy, condition of being totally free from the pathē, which roughly are the emotions and passions, notably pain, fear, desire, and pleasure. Although remote origins of the doctrine can probably be found in the Cynics (second half of the 4th century bc), it was Zeno of Citium (4th–3rd century bc) who explicitly taught that the pathē were to be extirpated entirely.
Attacks on the Stoics suggesting that they were insensitive to the human condition invoked rejoinders from the later Stoics, some of whom compromised by distinguishing between good and evil pathē. Early Stoics, however, rejected the pathē altogether, breaking with the Aristotelians, who sought a mean between them, and with the Epicureans, who proclaimed pleasure, rightly chosen, to be the only criterion by which to judge an action.
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