Apathy is the modern killer and how to start breaking out of it
There are many symptoms of the dysfunctions of society in everyday life: stress, dissociation, emotional repression, isolation, unhappy marriages, addictions, bullshit jobs, ecological destruction, but I think one that is rarely emphasized is apathy. It is such a widespread phenomenon that entire industries are built around it. For instance, if you actually examine other people, or even yourself when they are engaged in so-called 'entertainment', what you witness is far closer to apathy than genuine involvement in whatever they're watching. 1
For there is a distinction to be made between watching a specific show because you are interested in it, and just ... turning TV and watching whatever is there, because whatever. So it is not digital media per se that I want to write about here - no doubt that it plays a significant role in creating apathetic spectators - but more so the general passive relationship towards media that I see around me. Okay, to be more intellectually honest, I'm mostly talking about my subjective experience and perceiving (probably projecting) other people feeling the same.
My experience of passively watching TV or scrolling on the phone is one of basically nothingness. You get the occasional moment of lucidity where you remember that you are in fact a human being looking at screen and experiencing life, but those moments are drowned out by the ebbs and flows of numbness.
You might be able to scroll, use the remote or type things on the keyboard, but all of those actions seem to be performed by someone, or even something else. It's like being a spectator to your own life, except that you barely feel or see anything.
You feel quite awful in your body, if you manage to feel it: maybe a bit bloated from the meal you negligently devoured, an overall sense of exhaustion even though you don't remember doing anything to exert yourself, and your legs don't feel like stable pillars of vitality and movement, but rather things you just drag along.
And all in all, you just have this sense in the back of your mind and being that there must be more to life. That this isn't what it amounts to right?
Why do people do this anyway? I mean, no one consciously decides to engage in an apathetic activity, for consciousness is precisely what separates this from genuine engagement with what you're watching. Here are some of the answers that immediately come to my mind:
The commonality between these answers is that passive consumption is a sort of local attractor: in the short term it's easy and it seems to be pleasurable, but the more you engage in it the more you find yourself unable to do anything else. This view might give too much credit to passivity though, because honestly watching TV or scrolling through the internet becomes boring super quickly; even though it keeps people stuck with endless novelty, there is a sense in which all of that is very empty.
Which is why I'm going to focus on the first reason for now: people don't know what to do. This might seem utterly stupid on the surface but it is actually a major form of control. Let's take an example. A lot of people used to draw when they were children, and then they simply stop. Ever asked yourself why?
My answer is the following: this phenomenon is part of a general trend in society which I would call the death of play. Playing and curiosity are considered to be childish things, and as one grows up, one is supposed to become more 'serious' - i.e. obedient to the system - and let go of things that aren't obviously useful - i.e. productive for the system.
Why do children draw? Because they want to, because it's fun to play around. Now I'm not saying that life should only consist of fun and play, but what I want to point out is that you'd be hard pressed to find adults who do something just because they want to. Everything is always assimilated into a system of 'reasons', and I put that word in scare quotes because those so-called reasons are seldom personally derived.
You have people running around chasing money, status, safety, happiness, but they never question why they want those things, what they are, and whether the avenues within society that are supposed to give them those things really do. Their entire foundation for doing something is basically following whatever society has deemed to be 'the path' through life. And if drawing stops being a thing that is promoted in school, then clearly it means it has no value, right?
This whole digression about playing and justification is to make the following point: a major reason why people don't know what to do outside of passive consumption is that they stop focusing on experiences themselves, and instead constantly try to find reasons - which are pretty much always imposed by someone else - to their activities. Thus they carve out everything that isn't justified by their society's belief system, which might include slightly strange (for normies) but genuinely fulfilling activities like camping in the woods, painting outside, dancing in your room, or more radical lifestyle changes like couchsurfing or digital nomadism.
Of course there is no good reason as to why one would binge watch TV, except maybe this sense of being 'in it', whether it is with TV shows or the news. Thus I would say it is done because as previously mentioned, it never requires any effort from the spectator's end - unlike reading for instance, a medium which requires far more active participation - and is a good distraction from everything else. And this escape from doing basically anything is precisely why TV and the internet are so apathetic: who wouldn't be miserable if deep down they knew they are just running away from their own lives?
I can understand why people engage in escapism - I mean I am not exempt of it at all - for there is a lot of ways in which the modern world gets in the ways of a better life: the meaningless jobs that suck the life and soul out of you, the commute that eats at your time and budget, the breakdown of local communities and families, the real estate market being used as speculation by the most wealthy, and overall a lifestyle that is far removed from nature and personal agency.
That being said, I do blame those who take their apathy and wear it like a badge of honor. "Bro I stayed up til 4 AM watching Netflix". And not just a personal identity, but one that bonds with others forming communities with a background ironic laughter at how pathetic their lives are: "Yeah, I guess I don't have friends lol". The term 'crabs in a bucket' is often thrown around on the internet, but I find it particularly suited for those groups where wallowing in misery is the main form of connecting. The members might initially feel heard and accepted, but as soon as they decide to do anything to move their life in a positive direction, they find people who are not just unsupportive or indifferent, but can even be rather hostile. 2
Aside from the obsession with justification and the escape from doing in general, we could add that modern people are inflicted by a form of self-obsession. Simply put, they're always monitoring themselves according to what they believe other people think of them. To be controlled by what others think of you is one thing, to be controlled by your belief of that same thing is to live in a prison of your mind, which gets continually reaffirmed by your actions, or lack thereof. "No, I can't just start painting bro, what if I'm bad at it? I'm not an artistic person anyway, and it will never lead to anything regardless."
This fear of being bad at something is inherently tied to a story about oneself. I'm not saying it's easy to let go of it, especially because it might be more than just a story of the mind - doing poorly in school is a real threat to survival, which can morph into performance-related trauma - but it is important to point out because it shows just how many things we shut down simply because we need to keep up this story about ourselves.
Adults, especially unconscious ones, are especially guilty of this, and in my opinion that is the main reason why they tend to be so much worse at learning new things, such as a language, a new skill, or making new relationships. They treat every roadblock like it says something personal about them - the fact that school does this to us over 12, 15, 20 years is probably why - and thus find those very threatening to their inner story.
School indoctrinates us to think in terms of 'mistakes', but I would say this word should be reserved for serious screw-ups like making your own or someone else's life worse, not for playing the piano and getting a few notes wrong. The difference between a real mistake and those school-mistakes is that the former restrict possibilities, like someone else being in a wheelchair because of your reckless driving, whereas the latter is simply a gap between your expectations - a part of your inner story - and reality.
No experienced musician would expect someone else to be great at the piano within their first month, but the beginner might have all of these fantasies about their skill, which will be met with 'mistakes', i.e. reality. You can decide to take that personally or not, that's your choice.
These are my 3 reasons as to why people engage so much in passive consumption. No doubt that I've gone on many tangents, but I find it far more important to examine why people don't engage in genuinely novel behavior rather than give the usual analysis about how TV or the internet are addicting. Not saying that they aren't, but I don't think they are that appealing to people who have a genuinely compelling vision of what they could do with their time.
And often the best way to start is by not taking oneself too seriously - the inner story is built from seriousness - and by running small experiments: what if I try running to the grocery store? what if I chat with someone in the train? what if I spend a weekend without screens and read books instead? what if I call someone close to me and tell them how grateful that they are in my life? what if I try waking up early for 2 weeks? what if I take cold showers a few times a week?
What if I decide to subscribe to inkolore's substack? Okay I'm joking on this one because I don't have a subscribe button.
1 A great observation made in the series Exiting Modernity
2 I don't think this hostility is really found in communities formed around media, but many such cases are found in group identities formed around feelings of inferiority, like incels, neets, etc.
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Apathy Entertainment Normalcy Consumerism Body
2023-11-03