Indifference

China
August 14, 2010 3:03am CST
Among so many human emotions, happiness,sadness, jealousy,hate, anger,and so forth,some are just so distinctively 'evil', like hatred, rage, hostility. But to me, there's a noramally less-attended human emotion that is more horribly evil,though people may not normally feel the intensity of it, and that's indifference! It might be not quite explicit to come to that conslusion. But just picture that one day your parents no long nag you,raise voice at your wrongdoings, or your partner never ask anything abt you.What does it feel like? We all know that trust is bonding the whole society together. whereever we go, whatever we eat, we know there're trusted people to stick to their position to maintain this link. But coming down to a lower level from a society to a small community like friends circle or family or just lovers. what makes us bonded together? Caring! The opposite towards love is not hate! it's indifference! when you hate, you still care. Indifferent, literally it means no longer care things outside.That seems to be too casual, isn't it? So I googled some psychologist' research I found two defitions that are acceptable to me. 1, it's also called impassivity or perfunctorieness, it's a state of suppression of emotions such as concern, excitement, motivation and passion, an indifferent person has an absence of interest or concern to emotional,social, or phisical life. 2, US novelist John Dos Passons wrote that ''Apathy is one of the characteristic responses of any living organism when it is subjected to stimuli too intense or too complicated to cope with. For the above two claims, i have doubts for both. 1, it may not neccessarily be the suppression of the human emotions. For example, there're so many people dying each day, but we are indifferent to those deaths! Exacly we are lack of interest or concern, but where comes the suppression of anything? 2, John's pespective tends to explain more about what is numbness, very close to the level of mental health malfunction. Both America and China have experienced the time when it's young generations are lack of awareness, concern towards social issues, like voting. Here, John seemed to forget dig more into the word 'stimuli'. Is it neccessarily the thing the person being indifferent to? What I feel is that numbness falls into the mental problem category while indifference is just one of the human emotions. Whenever thinking of this subject, my mind would first go to Shanghai, a modernized metropolis 'Hk' in mainland China. I was there for nearly a week, but the feeling of indifference from around was intense enough to impress me. What drives people there to stay indifferent to others? Pressue for survival! When a person is cornered to strive for his own survival, he no longer cares, he no longer spares more to share with others! This helps me to understand more abt friendship. After my friends graduated from university, we were contacting with each other less and less, and we were caring for each other less and less. It's hard to imagine any one is too busy to even spare half an hour to make a call to each other, but we just don't like to waste that 30 minutes! But if we reverse the scinario to the point where all of us are free, and even bit of feeling empty.Will we still be that indifferent to things happening to our friends? or suddenly becoming desperate to contact all the others? Besides all the above scinarios I mentioned, there are many more cases of us being indifferent in our daily lifes, and till now I still can't draw a more scientific conclusion on why we become indifferent, but from today, I hope one of us can have a reflection and start to care more about the ones we have cared before or whom we have received caring from.
2 people like this
5 responses
@suspenseful (40193)
• Canada
14 Aug 10
Apathy is when you just give up or things are so bad that nothing that you can do can help. A lesser form of it is fatalism. Indifference is something else. You just do not care and often it comes from someone subjecting a group to torture. For instance, the guards at the Nazi concentration camps saw Mengale using Jewish children for experiments, in the Soviet Union, the villagers saw the Nazis kill their friends and neighbors who were Jewish and just stood around watching, although some were really not indifferent but cared but could do nothing without risking themselves and possibly the villages around them getting blown up. As for lack of caring, it is not just that, but that one gets a different perspective on things. For instance, when once one felt that women are no good and now one is happily married, his attitude changes, while that of his friend remains the same. Also some may not like people telling them what to do and so they distance themselves from that former friend. If one had friends and they all had to same or similar philosophies, then they could keep in touch with each other, but even then addresses and letters get missing and then there is a choice. You could phone your friend who lives in a different time zone, but he might be at work and his boss will not let him take personal calls, or he is now married and has his in-laws and other friends. And they may have moved, you may have moved, and either he or you have to go through boxes to find the address book. It is not that they do not care, it is just that things just happened.
@suspenseful (40193)
• Canada
18 Aug 10
That is for sure, but the trouble here in the West, we know about the evil history of Europe, but from what we hear of the East is all so romantic and what evil has done there is largely unknown. Every country has a past, and either it is dredged up again and again or else kept quiet.
• China
17 Aug 10
If we go back to the history of each country, we would know how much dark we human been have been before.
1 person likes this
@bing28 (3795)
• Philippines
17 Aug 10
Thanks for having a very informative and educational post. That's a broad interpretation of indifference. When I feel that a person is avoiding me despite of doing things that would please him or her, i consider him/her to be indefferent.
@bing28 (3795)
• Philippines
17 Aug 10
correction, indifferent
• China
17 Aug 10
thanks for your encouraging words, I'm flatterd!
@dorannmwin (36392)
• United States
17 Aug 10
There are a lot of very valid points in what you had to say here. However, I think that there are a lot of times that it is better to have indifference toward an issue than to have hatred toward it. The reason that I feel this way is because I have found that it takes a lot of effort to hate someone or something, while to not care one way or the other about it takes little or no effort at all. So, I choose to not care at all about those things that could really bother me.
• China
17 Aug 10
Hi,dorannmwin,thx for your words. putting down hatred or anger requeries strong capacity of endurance of pain.
@saphrina (31552)
• South Africa
14 Aug 10
Sometimes it is easier to be indifferent, sweetie. It keeps you either sane, out of trouble or protected of getting hurt. It is not a nice feeling, but so is hate and all the other emotions we have and use. You just have to know how to get yourself out of that emotion, before you really become evil. TATA.
• China
15 Aug 10
Hi Saphrina, it's good that every time I post a new topic, you would be here. I relate to your point that it's easier to be indifferent. Substansively speaking,indifference is a form of evasion of caring.Even hate takes space in your heart and mind, but indifference does not.
@saphrina (31552)
• South Africa
15 Aug 10
Just keeping you busy, sweetie.
@tomitomi (5429)
• Singapore
15 Aug 10
Being indifferent is to me refusing to bother about something or not being bothered by something. How could someone be indifferent when another member of the family needs his/her help badly. That's real terrible.
• China
15 Aug 10
Hi,tomitomi,thanks for your resonse,that's why I said indifferent outevils other human negative emotions.
@tomitomi (5429)
• Singapore
15 Aug 10
Agree!