Apathy

Hello friends,

I've been wrestling with this for some time now. I feel like apathy is a growing issue in our world today.
Now I know it is not up to me to fix every issue that pops up from day to day, but I feel that as a Jedi I am responsible for what I can fix. Our creed states that we are to be instruments of peace, love, pardon, faith, hope, light, joy, consolation, and understanding - am I doing all that I can do to present this in my life?

I've noticed this last week on my facebook feed that most of my friends are participating in this 'comic book campaign'

I intend to fill Facebook with comic book heroes to interrupt the saturation of negative images and videos. If you give me a "Like" I will choose a character for you.

At first I thought, oh neat. But after thinking about this for a bit I became frustrated. Does filling your facebook feed, or life, with comic book images really do anything to change things? In my opinion this is just turning a blind eye to things that you might not want to see. Which, also in my opinion, is terrible.

Here is an image that I saw years ago but popped into my mind recently -- it took my a few days to track it down.


Now I certainly understand that not everyone here is Christian, but the sentiment can be understood.
I am often quick to say "Why do people let this happen" without doing anything to stop it myself.

I guess in posting this I am challenging myself, and anyone else who see this, to not let apathy gain any more ground.

the biggest apathy i had was towards myself

i was apathetic to the fact that most of my time was spent on things and relationships that werent really important, meaningful, or challenging in a healthy way

for those who have not gotten their own lives under deliberate control, i belive this is the first type of apathy to address

apathy towards ones own stagnation
apathy about who is really in charge of ones life

real "help" for most people is a matter of empowering oneself and others to make permanent changes to circumstance

rather than temporary alleviaion of a misery which is the result of circumstance

as for addressinng the evils of the world, yes, but what can you do if you have no social power yourself?

simply saying "i dont want apathy to gain any more ground" is great as a starting point

what are concrete things you may do with your behaior and time?

persnally i think it begins with getting my own life under control

OB1Shinobi wrote: persnally i think it begins with getting my own life under control

Indeed. I've certainly suffered from apathy while living my life as a philosopher and vagabond. This has been said by many so its easy to turn into a cliche, but the more I find out about myself, the more appreciation and hope I find in all things. Extending your focus beyond yourself leads to apathy quickly, because you quickly find that there's nothing you can do beyond yourself without starting with yourself. I know that's a confusing way to put it, but I'm not very good with words. Simply, "Be the change you want to see in this world" -Mahatma Ghandi. As soon as this quote clicks, apathy is gone.
My intention is not to lecture about this at all, because I, like everyone, am merely a student of life. I'm just sharing what has worked wonders for me in regards to my own level of apathy.

Izoshua wrote: Extending your focus beyond yourself leads to apathy quickly, because you quickly find that there's nothing you can do beyond yourself without starting with yourself.

Exactly.

OB1Shinobi wrote: what are concrete things you may do with your behaior and time?

As you both stated everything needs to start with me. I am going to continue to live out the type of life that I think is beneficial to myself and to others, and to help where I can. Hopefully good things will trickle out from there.

For whatever reason, your use of 'be' inferred to me your seeing it like 'do'... perhaps a way of looking at it is don't flop between do or do not do, but instead 'be' - becoming instruments of those things seems are more sympathetic manner to relate to them. I don't mean to be playing semantics, but to do might not be the most effective way to intepret use of these instruments (not that you did!), as it (to me) infers turning something off and then on.

By contrast accepting we 'are' the instruments it seems to be more easily understood as different natures of application of the instruments, which then allows an approach of extension and retraction depending on external circumstance and internal capacity and capabilities. So maybe the inner practise is the cultivation of those things upon ourselves, and the outer to others. Always ongoing, just in different forms. Then it can become part of your thinking, training, and by extension action (where applicable).

But I guess I'm missing the point a bit!? Depends how your measuring your effort, if its realistic to your own capabilities and capacities then pure apathy such as laziness (which is not due to low energy, lack of sleep etc) probably needs to be chiseled away slowly by distractions, until there is enough motivation in the actual task to energize you itself. Music works well to distract oneself from doing something they might otherwise tend to avoid, to make progress and then the lure of completing something is often enough to push through and finish something which would otherwise be a burden!! As the worse something seems to 'do' the better it is it finish it often!