The power of focused apathy

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Mon, 07/08/2019 - 12:21pm

The idea behind focused apathy is that there are certain things in life which do not merit our attention and which are there to keep us from seeing other things which we might benefit from seeing. Focused apathy, then, is the power to avoid caring about those things. There is, after all, a reason why people's eyes are both on the same side of the head, and not on opposite sides of the head, like what you see with a lot of birds. This is why focus is so important to humans: it's a power we have.

Focused apathy is to be distinguished from unfocused apathy in that unfocused apathy doesn't use the power of apathy to pick out what truly merits our unconcern. Unfocused apathy would be, for instance, not caring about politics in general, without bothering to find out what politics is or why we might benefit from caring about it. Focused apathy, on the other hand, correctly identifies distraction.

Here are some suggested targets of focused apathy (& this list is by no means complete):

1) Democratic Party Presidential candidates not named Sanders, Gabbard, Warren, Yang, Gravel, or Williamson. It's best to think of Democratic Party Presidential candidates as people you might meet at parties to have conversations with them. They will appear at first glance to be nice people, but then when when you see them at work they are busy being players in a cutthroat world in which you will invariably be a victim. The abovementioned candidates, on the other hand, are worth a conversation or two, suggesting in their rhetoric that the public deserves something for its hard-earned tax money. So have that conversation -- but keep away from the idea that a better major-party President is going to sweep down like an angel from Heaven to solve any of your problems. Start from the proposition that we have the power to solve our own problems -- start from the assumption that what we need is what the philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis called "autonomy," the power to give ourselves our own laws.

2) Drinking alcoholic beverages to get drunk. Alcohol does indeed have a place in human life -- it's an antidote to caffeine, a depressant, and a diuretic. It helps people socialize to some extent. But the American obsession with alcohol is misplaced, since there are usually more enjoyable things to do than to drink excessively, unless it's all you've got and you are stuck in the world of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road." Cannabis, on the other hand, has health benefits, is fun, and is something that should be legal everywhere. Bill Hicks, as usual, has amused everyone with his thoughts on this matter:

3) Most sports. It's fun now and then to watch people twisting themselves into knots so they can do something, but the American obsession with sports competition is profoundly worth our focused apathy. Professional sports teams promote the importance of the victory of Corporation A over Corporation B in spectacles of competition. This phenomenon might be of some interest for all of the mass euphoria it occasionally brings people except in professional sports all the corporations are in collusion. NCAA sports is hardly any better. Many sports fans would get a lot of health benefits from playing the sports they watch, and if they do it badly the solution is a simple one: remove competition from the sports. Why watch people being healthy when you can do it yourself?

4) Celebrity gossip. By definition a celebrity is someone who was made famous through the mass-media bestowal of fame and attention. What they do as celebrities (and what is said about what they do) is almost always a product of that fame and attention. The reasoning with celebrity gossip is the same as with the Presidential candidates -- they deserve our focused apathy because it's a matter of some hidden actor's manipulation of our opinions, our time, and our money. Celebrity gossip distracts from the primary task of what we can do to improve the world.

I'm sure you can think of more example targets of focused apathy. Perhaps the idea of focused apathy can itself achieve focus through the notion of wonderment. Wonderment is the sign of a healthy attitude, but our sense of wonderment at the world can be manipulated. Scattering our wonderment at the world here and there is perhaps better than having it manipulated.

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Comments

Submitted by Anja Geitz on Mon, 07/08/2019 - 12:48pm

I would like to add gossiping in general as worthy

Of our focused apathy. Along with TV morning talk shows, and anything that is labelled "This is a low calorie food". No need for that. Eat like the French. Real food, just less of it.

There. I've said it.

—

There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Mon, 07/08/2019 - 7:47pm

You have!

@Anja Geitz May you be happier for not caring about stuff that doesn't matter!

—

The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.

Submitted by snoopydawg on Mon, 07/08/2019 - 9:44pm

I'm adding cable news to the list of shows that deserve

@Anja Geitz

our apathy. Back when CNN first started it was a way to get important information about important issues. But just take Rachel Maddow's show since Trump became president. How much time has she spent talking about something other than Russia Gate, Russia Russia Russia, Trump and Russia Gate? Another example is Bill O'Reily, Keith Olbermann and Alex Jones...

When was the last time any of the news talked about our wars? I think someone talked about Yemen last year for a minute, but what about the other countries we're in? Okay..Dan Rather thought that Trump finally started acting like a president when he bombed Syria...

Submitted by Pluto's Republic on Mon, 07/08/2019 - 5:57pm

Well, here's a thought:

There are all kinds of radicals fomenting strategies and solutions for survival in modern societies. Radicalism has degrees, however, and can be defined by measuring how far back one needs to go to apply the Remedy of the Radical. By that measure, you are pretty radical in my book.

Sanders is a radical because he wants to go back to the 1930s and plug in health care and education where it was mistakenly left out of the the New Deal. This was largely caused by Roosevelt’s death. To Elenor’s credit, she went on to codify human rights for the rest of the world at the UN. Which is why the US will eventually pull out of the UN.

I’m a radical because I want to go back to the late 1700s, because I Ibelieve the Constitution should be completely rewritten. America desperately needs a modern constitution for the 21st century. The dead parchments we currently try to mind-read were written by old-timey, short-sighted, short-lived, class-absorbed plutocrats and capitalists who were engaged in asset-stripping the lands of people who couldn’t stop them. The US constitution ultimately leads to a very bad place, very shitty place for human beings. As is obvious.

But you are the most radical of all. You want to go back to ancient times and rebuild the instincts and nature of modern human beings so that they process environmental, cultural, and social data as if they are analyzing a complex system. No more distorting and perverting incoming data as a means of entertainment and escape. No more diverting data down the memory hole so one can live ambitiously in comfortable denial and ignore inconvenient conflicts of interest and evidence of growing destruction. And no more deflecting the responsibility for neglect downwardly upon the ignorant masses who must attempt to survive in the terrible outcome that neglect has wrought.

The time is coming when we must pick our poison. Sander’s remedy is a palliative that buys time for potential human evolution. Mine is a prophylactic of a less defective operating system that will hold back the predators from eating us alive, until the masses are adequately educated so they can learn how to think. Yours is intense psychotherapy, but you have left no map of how to get there — unless it is chemically induced. Perhaps that is what the legalization of marijuana is really all about.

Submitted by dfarrah on Mon, 07/08/2019 - 7:22pm

Good grief.

@Pluto's Republic The constitution was radical in its time.

And you apparently refuse to see how it has flexed over time.

There are much bigger and wider lenses than yours.

There are all kinds of radicals fomenting strategies and solutions for survival in modern societies. Radicalism has degrees, however, and can be defined by measuring how far back one needs to go to apply the Remedy of the Radical. By that measure, you are pretty radical in my book.

Sanders is a radical because he wants to go back to the 1930s and plug in health care and education where it was mistakenly left out of the the New Deal. This was largely caused by Roosevelt’s death. To Elenor’s credit, she went on to codify human rights for the rest of the world at the UN. Which is why the US will eventually pull out of the UN.

I’m a radical because I want to go back to the late 1700s, because I Ibelieve the Constitution should be completely rewritten. America desperately needs a modern constitution for the 21st century. The dead parchments we currently try to mind-read were written by old-timey, short-sighted, short-lived, class-absorbed plutocrats and capitalists who were engaged in asset-stripping the lands of people who couldn’t stop them. The US constitution ultimately leads to a very bad place, very shitty place for human beings. As is obvious.

But you are the most radical of all. You want to go back to ancient times and rebuild the instincts and nature of modern human beings so that they process environmental, cultural, and social data as if they are analyzing a complex system. No more distorting and perverting incoming data as a means of entertainment and escape. No more diverting data down the memory hole so one can live ambitiously in comfortable denial and ignore inconvenient conflicts of interest and evidence of growing destruction. And no more deflecting the responsibility for neglect downwardly upon the ignorant masses who must attempt to survive in the terrible outcome that neglect has wrought.

The time is coming when we must pick our poison. Sander’s remedy is a palliative that buys time for potential human evolution. Mine is a prophylactic of a less defective operating system that will hold back the predators from eating us alive, until the masses are adequately educated so they can learn how to think. Yours is intense psychotherapy, but you have left no map of how to get there — unless it is chemically induced. Perhaps that is what the legalization of marijuana is really all about.

—

dfarrah

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Mon, 07/08/2019 - 7:51pm

Here you may wish to check out Cornelius Castoriadis

@Pluto's Republic who suggests that the idea of giving ourselves our own laws was something the elite Athenians had in mind.

https://www.amazon.com/World-Fragments-Psychoanalysis-Imagination-Aesthe...

There are all kinds of radicals fomenting strategies and solutions for survival in modern societies. Radicalism has degrees, however, and can be defined by measuring how far back one needs to go to apply the Remedy of the Radical. By that measure, you are pretty radical in my book.

Sanders is a radical because he wants to go back to the 1930s and plug in health care and education where it was mistakenly left out of the the New Deal. This was largely caused by Roosevelt’s death. To Elenor’s credit, she went on to codify human rights for the rest of the world at the UN. Which is why the US will eventually pull out of the UN.

I’m a radical because I want to go back to the late 1700s, because I Ibelieve the Constitution should be completely rewritten. America desperately needs a modern constitution for the 21st century. The dead parchments we currently try to mind-read were written by old-timey, short-sighted, short-lived, class-absorbed plutocrats and capitalists who were engaged in asset-stripping the lands of people who couldn’t stop them. The US constitution ultimately leads to a very bad place, very shitty place for human beings. As is obvious.

But you are the most radical of all. You want to go back to ancient times and rebuild the instincts and nature of modern human beings so that they process environmental, cultural, and social data as if they are analyzing a complex system. No more distorting and perverting incoming data as a means of entertainment and escape. No more diverting data down the memory hole so one can live ambitiously in comfortable denial and ignore inconvenient conflicts of interest and evidence of growing destruction. And no more deflecting the responsibility for neglect downwardly upon the ignorant masses who must attempt to survive in the terrible outcome that neglect has wrought.

The time is coming when we must pick our poison. Sander’s remedy is a palliative that buys time for potential human evolution. Mine is a prophylactic of a less defective operating system that will hold back the predators from eating us alive, until the masses are adequately educated so they can learn how to think. Yours is intense psychotherapy, but you have left no map of how to get there — unless it is chemically induced. Perhaps that is what the legalization of marijuana is really all about.

—

The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.

Submitted by snoopydawg on Mon, 07/08/2019 - 9:53pm

Amen, Pluto

@Pluto's Republic

America desperately needs a modern constitution for the 21st century. The dead parchments we currently try to mind-read were written by old-timey, short-sighted, short-lived, class-absorbed plutocrats and capitalists who were engaged in asset-stripping the lands of people who couldn’t stop them.

This was written to make sure that the male elite were protected and had all of the power. Women and Blacks could not hold property or vote. Sure they can now, but ...

The Bill of Rights are basically worthless now. The only amendment that is still functional is the second. Just read today that the FBI, DHS and other agencies are looking at state's DMV records to put people's drivers licenses in their databases. No knock warrants are given out like they are candy instead of being used for only the most urgent circumstances. SWAT is used to arrest people who are late on their credit card bills. Sorry no link just something I read awhile back.

Citizens United showed how the Supreme Court is still protecting the rich. Good point.

Interesting essay topic, Cass..I'll have to think on my idea.

There are all kinds of radicals fomenting strategies and solutions for survival in modern societies. Radicalism has degrees, however, and can be defined by measuring how far back one needs to go to apply the Remedy of the Radical. By that measure, you are pretty radical in my book.

Sanders is a radical because he wants to go back to the 1930s and plug in health care and education where it was mistakenly left out of the the New Deal. This was largely caused by Roosevelt’s death. To Elenor’s credit, she went on to codify human rights for the rest of the world at the UN. Which is why the US will eventually pull out of the UN.

I’m a radical because I want to go back to the late 1700s, because I Ibelieve the Constitution should be completely rewritten. America desperately needs a modern constitution for the 21st century. The dead parchments we currently try to mind-read were written by old-timey, short-sighted, short-lived, class-absorbed plutocrats and capitalists who were engaged in asset-stripping the lands of people who couldn’t stop them. The US constitution ultimately leads to a very bad place, very shitty place for human beings. As is obvious.

But you are the most radical of all. You want to go back to ancient times and rebuild the instincts and nature of modern human beings so that they process environmental, cultural, and social data as if they are analyzing a complex system. No more distorting and perverting incoming data as a means of entertainment and escape. No more diverting data down the memory hole so one can live ambitiously in comfortable denial and ignore inconvenient conflicts of interest and evidence of growing destruction. And no more deflecting the responsibility for neglect downwardly upon the ignorant masses who must attempt to survive in the terrible outcome that neglect has wrought.

The time is coming when we must pick our poison. Sander’s remedy is a palliative that buys time for potential human evolution. Mine is a prophylactic of a less defective operating system that will hold back the predators from eating us alive, until the masses are adequately educated so they can learn how to think. Yours is intense psychotherapy, but you have left no map of how to get there — unless it is chemically induced. Perhaps that is what the legalization of marijuana is really all about.

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Wed, 07/10/2019 - 10:27am

This is a good comment --

@Pluto's Republic but I am into "distorting and perverting incoming data as a means of entertainment and escape." I'm not a Platonist, I believe in fiction and poetry and all that. My preference, however, is for people who know what they're doing, planet Earth as something more than the Land of the Blind.

And as for not knowing how to get from here to there, I don't believe I'm alone in this quality...

There are all kinds of radicals fomenting strategies and solutions for survival in modern societies. Radicalism has degrees, however, and can be defined by measuring how far back one needs to go to apply the Remedy of the Radical. By that measure, you are pretty radical in my book.

Sanders is a radical because he wants to go back to the 1930s and plug in health care and education where it was mistakenly left out of the the New Deal. This was largely caused by Roosevelt’s death. To Elenor’s credit, she went on to codify human rights for the rest of the world at the UN. Which is why the US will eventually pull out of the UN.

I’m a radical because I want to go back to the late 1700s, because I Ibelieve the Constitution should be completely rewritten. America desperately needs a modern constitution for the 21st century. The dead parchments we currently try to mind-read were written by old-timey, short-sighted, short-lived, class-absorbed plutocrats and capitalists who were engaged in asset-stripping the lands of people who couldn’t stop them. The US constitution ultimately leads to a very bad place, very shitty place for human beings. As is obvious.

But you are the most radical of all. You want to go back to ancient times and rebuild the instincts and nature of modern human beings so that they process environmental, cultural, and social data as if they are analyzing a complex system. No more distorting and perverting incoming data as a means of entertainment and escape. No more diverting data down the memory hole so one can live ambitiously in comfortable denial and ignore inconvenient conflicts of interest and evidence of growing destruction. And no more deflecting the responsibility for neglect downwardly upon the ignorant masses who must attempt to survive in the terrible outcome that neglect has wrought.

The time is coming when we must pick our poison. Sander’s remedy is a palliative that buys time for potential human evolution. Mine is a prophylactic of a less defective operating system that will hold back the predators from eating us alive, until the masses are adequately educated so they can learn how to think. Yours is intense psychotherapy, but you have left no map of how to get there — unless it is chemically induced. Perhaps that is what the legalization of marijuana is really all about.

—

The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.

Submitted by dfarrah on Mon, 07/08/2019 - 7:24pm

What is the reason we have eyes facing the front?

"There is, after all, a reason why people's eyes are both on the same side of the head, and not on opposite sides of the head, like what you see with a lot of birds. This is why focus is so important to humans: it's a power we have."

Do you think birds can't focus because of their eye placement?

—

dfarrah

Submitted by QMS on Mon, 07/08/2019 - 7:31pm

predators have a different focus

@dfarrah
Than the majority of the the prey, if you haven't noticed.
Catch 'em blind-sided.
Too obvious?

—

question everything

Submitted by dfarrah on Mon, 07/08/2019 - 8:03pm

Sorry, I read (past tense) alot

@QMS of Stephen J Gould, a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist.

I don't recall any connection between eye placement and focus. Not that it doesn't exist.....

—

dfarrah

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Mon, 07/08/2019 - 8:03pm

Animals with eyes on opposite sides of the head

@dfarrah can see everything, including behind their backs. Two eyes on the same side of the head, on the other hand, allows humans (and owls, for that matter) greater depth perception. We focus more deeply.

—

The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.

Submitted by Deja on Wed, 07/10/2019 - 12:49pm

I "see" what you did there ;) /nt

@Cassiodorus

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Wed, 07/10/2019 - 3:26pm

So what would it be like --

@Deja to have eyes on the opposite sides of your head?

—

The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.