Apathy is a myth (Erik) by X.

Apathy and alienation are two different ways to explain why not all people are involved in pushing for social change, but alienation is the only accurate and practical way for any non-elitist who cares about social change. Apathy is a state of not being emotionally invested in something. Alienation is a state whereby outside influences prevent you from responding either emotionally or with action to your natural inclinations. Take for example someone who refuses to make eye contact with you as you hand out post cards that ask congressmen to intervene in the Darfur genocide. It is possible this person is apathetic, which would mean they have no emotional investment in things like mass murder, human suffering, or ethnic cleansing, but I think we know that’s not true. Want proof? Torture someone in front of them and see if they don’t care about other’s suffering.

The fact is the reason people don’t sign those post cards, don’t get involved in organizations, or follow politics isn’t that they don’t care, it’s that for one reason or another they don’t actually believe those things alleviate human suffering, or else they believe that there is no way to work to alleviate suffering without giving up oneself. And if someone has 3 kids and a 40 hour work week that is a very reasonable belief.

Apathy implies that we as organizers are doing everything right, but the people are at fault. Alienation implies that the people are fine, and some of our tactics/strategies are at fault. If you believe in apathy you think average people are cold, callous, and selfish beings, and social change will only happen when you and a few other elite “moral super heroes” manage to overcome the flaws of the masses. If you believe in alienation you believe that circumstances in your life have allowed you to both A.) have the time and energy to invest in caring about problems outside your own immediate well being and B.) have allowed you to raise your consciousness to empathize with the suffering of others, and that if other people aren’t there yet, it’s because organizers haven’t yet created the circumstances that would allow them to break out of their alienation.

In addition to being less elitist the biggest advantage of alienation over apathy is you can fight it. You can work to remove the reasons that people feel they can’t create change. You can be a better organizer, but you can’t build better people.