I realized just today that I’ve been using the wrong word to describe a quickly developing plague in our world. The word I’ve been using entirely out of context is COMPLACENCY.
It should have been APATHY all these long tortuous months.
Here are just a few synonyms: bloodlessness, callosity, callousness, coldness, coolness, halfheartedness, hard-heartedness, hardness, heartlessness, imperturbability, insensitivity, obduracy, blankness, deadness, emptiness, vacancy, aloofness, detachment, indifference, unconcern.
Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany since 2005, showing her disgust of Donald Trump. Even when people know that eminent world leaders are shocked at Trump’s persona, agenda, ego, etc., it’s not enough to jar them out of their APATHY. If Merkel disapproves then you have permission to do the same. And to act on it!
With the shock of the US Presidential election in 2016, the onset of this illness began in serious proportions. Despite the letdown, the fright, the feeling of duplicity, people adopted the ‘I don’t care’, ‘I can’t get involved’, “Give him a chance”, or other misguided mantles that let them off the hook, took away their responsibilities as citizens! These excuses force the rest of us to carry the load, do the leg-work, make things happen, and truthfully, bail all of them out. Thanks for nothing, you apathetic excuses for human beings.
There is a sense of head-shaking awareness dawning in the USA that is bringing a good number of these ostriches up into the air to work alongside the rest of us, to put in their two cents, determined to vote BLUE and rid the USA and the world of the scourge of Donald Trump. Still others hang back. My message to any of those is, get with the program. Do your part! At least promise to vote DEMOCRAT. There is no other option if you care about the future of the country.
Apathy recently caused the election of a Trump clone in my home province of Ontario in Canada. Apathy and misinformation again! Doug Ford has dug in his heels and already cancelled almost 30 programs that benefit people or the environment before Parliament even officially begins. He is meddling in Municipal election procedures, ie the number of City Councillors, with no input from anyone, from any experts, from the cities. The result? Where it should be riots, it’s apathy. What is WRONG with people? Where does this come from?
I think some people believe that politics in general leave us no hope. It’s all corrupt and nothing we do will stop that. That is APATHY speaking. What people need is HOPE, DETERMINATION, and above all COMMUNITY EFFORT! Don’t give in to the bullies. You have a voice. USE it! PLEASE!
Just because an elected official is there to lead, it doesn’t mean he/she can’t be questioned, challenged, unseated.
This disease of APATHY is obviously contagious. Or it would seem so given how frequently one meets it. That is rather like banging one’s head against the proverbial wall. There is no reasoning with APATHY. The minds of these people are made up. No, sorry, let me rephrase that. These people do not use the minds they were given to reason and think. They have shut the door to intelligent use of their brains.
This sad illness erupts at all levels, and in trying to gather names and interest for a Petition to City Hall, I am meeting it yet again. It’s hard to conceive how APATHY can be the choice for people when facing a Site Plan for the entire area surrounding our modest buildings. ‘There’s nothing we can do”. “It’s a done deal”. What unfounded rubbish.
We will lose our green space, increase the density to alarming proportions and still these apathetic lost souls will not add their names, join their neighbours for support, think of community. I call this treasonous.
Believe me, if those of us sweating in this sauna of a summer (2018) come out triumphant and bring about a reduction in the plan for the benefit of all, and if afterward anyone thanks me they won’t hear me say “You’re welcome!” if they never signed because of their terminal cases of APATHY.
Eleanor Lawrie, Author 