Apathy: 14 Main Thoughts

Another translation of a text about apathy, stagnation:

1. Apathy is the absence of desires and emotions.
With apathy, the body has no energy for "deeds." Even if there is a need to move and "solve problems," there is no energy for this, specifically the energy of desires and emotions.

If a car runs out of gas but the need to move on does not disappear, the simplest and most accessible way since ancient times is to push it further with muscle power. After pushing the car for a couple of kilometers, a person usually gets tired, apathy occurs, and the desire to push as before eats him up. You need to find another way out.

2. Apathy is a painkiller for too strong feelings.
Strong and prolonged load on the muscles leads to overstrain and painful sensations. If a person himself is unable to refuse to continue such a load by an effort of will, the "apathy" safeguard is turned on.

3. Apathy is an opportunity to think about a problem without feeling.
After sitting powerlessly near the car, a person can get distracted and stretch tired muscles, thinking about how else to take care of himself. Where to find gasoline, get to a populated area, get some sleep, and call for help.

4. Apathy goes away on its own if you don’t interfere with it.
Medium fatigue goes away on its own if you remove the load. After which you can again freely use the methods that last time led to overstretch and pain. In extreme cases you can push the car if no other way out is found during this time.

5. Apathy is a natural reaction to a hopeless situation.
Apathy takes away unrealistic, harmful desires and demands from a person, and also shifts attention to the need to recover from the stress load. If there is no gasoline and 100 km of the way ahead, pushing the car the whole way is pointless ... and it would be better to understand this.

6. Apathy is the 3rd part of the process of adaptation to the inevitable.
Apathy naturally occurs after overexertion (pushing a car), i.e. manifestation of aggression. Aggression usually occurs after a short disagreement ("It can't be that I forgot to fill up the car with gas") with the fact that everything happened the way it did. But after apathy and restoration of internal mental strength ("to hell with the car, I'm more important than a piece of metal"), a period of restoring connections with the outside world begins, i.e. progress ("I'll look for a village and buy a can of gasoline there"). Together, all 4 parts create the process of experiencing grief or loss. This process can be observed most clearly for a long time in people who have experienced the death of loved ones.

7. Apathy is unfinished grief.
If you feel apathetic, something in your life has been lost (you were late for a meeting, or wasted time looking for gasoline). And now there is emptyness in that place.

8. Apathy is easier and faster to endure when it is safe and warm.
You can restore your strength and allow yourself to feel powerless when it is safe around you. When there are reliable people nearby who will deal with external problems for you and maintain a warm attitude towards you without demanding anything in return (thinking about going to the village for a can of gasoline is definitely easier if being late does not entail serious punishment).

9. Fighting apathy only increases apathy in general.
Spending your last strength on creating the illusion that you have a lot of strength is an activity doomed to failure in the long term, like trying to push a car when you are stuck high in the mountains.

10. Apathy can become chronic if it is too painful or scary to remember the event at all.
Sometimes events in life bring so much pain that it is impossible to cope with it, and there is no time for a full recovery either. Then the only way out may be “pushing this problem away for later or maybe forever.” Only after that, you may have the strength to get out of bed at least. If you apply this to an example with the car without gasoline, then at night in the mountains at minus 20°C it is better to be distracted by what will happen to the car if there is nothing to warm up with and a blizzard slowly turns it into a large snowdrift.

11. Chronic apathy leads to a feeling of painful emptiness.
Yes, unpleasant feelings arise when, six months later, in the summer, you find the keys to that car stuck in the mountains in your jacket pocket. And if the loss is not related to a thing, but to a person, then it is even more difficult. "Maybe I will remember it some other time ... but for now, I will habitually pretend that the car is just waiting for me in the garage and when I need it, I will be able to use it".

12. In between bouts of chronic apathy, "ghosts" of those feelings that caused apathy appear. "I urgently need a car... I have it in the garage... I run there... here are the keys, I open it... aaaaaaaaaaaaa!!! It's not here again. Again I'm late, all my plans are collapsing at the last moment, and everything is empty and meaningless. I don't want anything. I can't do anything."

13. Chronic apathy can be overcome by returning to the pain consciously and with the desire to help yourself.

“I can still do something. Throw away the keys, don’t renew the car insurance, sell the garage, and think about other ways to travel around the planet. Maybe the train would be more convenient? I wonder what’s left of my car in the mountains… maybe they threw it off a cliff… maybe the boys from the neighboring village set up a hub in it… maybe they broke it for spare parts. But there are more important things now.”

14. The process of getting out of chronic apathy can be multi-step.
"Oh, damn. In the glove compartment of that car, there was my favorite pen and the last photo with my close friend… I feel sorry for those."


From page "Psychology, manipulation, influence" by Alexander Steshin
Translation: Laurynas Sadzevicius

Short quote about writing... and how you can pick each and any character, a part, and their usual emotional range. Serves as a reflection.

And a melody about waste-land... just as that car in the middle of nowhere