Apathy comes from a lack of caring. If there is no caring there is no emotion. Nothing matters. There is a sense in the modern world that we are powerless. Not just in aspects of our personal lives where lack of money and opportunity prevent us from achieving what we want to do, but that the sheer bulk of the terrible problems we face as a world community are insurmountable.

Incidents where someone is attacked and no one goes to help them demonstrate our fear of being hurt if we become involved. Perhaps this is something to do with the fact that our cities have become too large, we cannot know personally all the people in our area.

Knowing people makes you aware of them as individuals, they are real. Being hurt for a stranger is not worth it. It is also a symptom of the lack of interest and curiosity which we as a species normally have.

The lack of interest we have means it is easy for unscrupulous individuals to exploit the system’ for their personal advantage. We do not bother to keep ourselves informed about what our elected officials are really doing in our name. Nor do we maintain an up to date knowledge of the world around us.

This does not mean that everybody needs to have all the information, but if enough of us are well informed we can make family and friends aware. There seems to be something about the sheer volume of material to be read, heard and understood which is overwhelming, so it is easier to avoid starting to investigate.

There is a great deal of talk about democracy, meaning equality of opportunity and information for all, yet because of the complexity of our societies we cannot, for security reasons, be kept fully informed of all the minutae and if we were we would probably be in a state of panic.

After all that’s what we elect our politicians to do for us. To be our guardians and protectors. Then we don’t have to face the issues. On those occasions when one person, for instance Erin Brockovich, or a group like Greenpeace, really start to raise awareness, amazing things can happen.

Apathy also comes from a lack of self-esteem. The idea that someone else is better qualified to know or do, pervades. We often feel what we personally do will make little difference without bothering to think that many individual actions will make a great deal of difference. It is unfortunate that so many of us are apathetic, but perhaps it is simply a natural protection against being overwhelmed.