In what has become a running tradition, I attended Ash Wednesday (equally known this year as "Valentine's Day With A Twist" with Uisdean Ruadh - I had asked him if I, not being Catholic, could get "marked". His response was simply "Unlike Communion, Ash Wednesday is a come-one come-all event". Relieved of not re-fighting The 30 Years War, I duly walked up and received my cross of ashes.
During the course of the homily, which was (I suspect) a typical sort of presentation - what is Lent, why do we give things up, looking towards Easter, etc. - the priest made a comment that "The last stage of hate is indifference."
As I thought through it over the course of the next couple days, the truth of the statement struck me deeply.
We tend to think of indifference at that point as not hatred but simply a sort of normal outgrowth of the process. First we are bothered, then perhaps angered, then hateful. After hate? I never really thought of that before.
Using the word "hate" itself is a bit jarring, and perhaps something that (as I a Christian) I should not be approaching as familiarly as I do. But replace hate with "anger" or "offended" or "turned off" and it is simply a different word to address the underlying feeling.
As I continued to think on it, I realized how dangerous such an outcome was - not to those that have reached that point, but those who have created the situation.
"Not caring" could be used as a synonym in this case. When I become indifferent to something - an intellectual property, a business, a philosophy, a company, a state - I do not just no longer have strong feelings against the thing. I no longer have any feelings about the thing at all. Its success - or its failure - is no longer something which I pay attention to or care about the outcome.
The thought was remarkable because it explained how in the last three or four years I had changed in my opinions of so many things. It was not that I had somehow forgotten about them, I had simply reached my limit of bother/anger/frustration and simply stopped caring about it.
The danger, of course, is to those who continue support the thing in question.
In the back of their mind, there always remains the thought "Well, when push comes to shove, we can count on folks to rally around the intellectual property/business/philosophy/company/state because at their core, they will remember the value of the thing. They always come back." And then they will stand in shock when those people do not come to support the thing in question, and it simply fails.
The supporters of the thing will, of course, rail against those that let it fail. "Uncaring, selfish" will be the call. But their words will have no impact; the indifferent will simply have moved on to things that they actually care about and are engaged with.
The great danger in indifference, of course, is that it is usually only realized long after any remediation could take effect, leaving the true believers in shock as the things slowly slips beneath the water towards the bottom of history.
Fascinating thoughts, TB, although I had a hard time making sense of the priest's statement, "The last stage of hate is indifference." I can't figure out how he's defining "hate," of which there seem to be many definitions (as there are with "love.") It almost sounds like the stages of grief, but I can't see how grief and hate correlate. Grief runs its course, whereas hate can be fed and become an emotional habit. Your substituting "anger" gives the discussion much more meaning.
ReplyDeleteI can't help but dovetail your post with Eaton Rapids Joe's, "The battle for hearts and minds." It seems that for at least the past several years, there has been a concerted effort by politicians and the media to keep people emotionally worked up. Granted, some people seem to enjoy being worked up, but I could so relate to your statement about reaching one's limit. That was my experience as well. It didn't have anything to do with hate or indifference, which I see as not caring. I do care; I just got tired of the emotional turmoil. Abandoning that was a deliberate choice. A choice to strive for personal inner peace about things I can't control anyway.
Leigh, I suspect - since it was Lent - is was meant in opposition to love, especially love of each other and sacrificing for the less fortunate during Lent. To your point, it was the underlying idea that caught me, not necessarily the specific phraseology. Good to know I was able to expand it.
DeleteIf history has taught us anything, it has taught us that those in power or control benefit most by having people dependent on them. The fastest way to build that dependency is to create some reason that we need to rely on them. Emotionally working people up via a threat is the quickest way, just as it is often seen that starting a war is (really, was) the quickest way to generate a sense of unity and nationalism. Thanks to the nature of the global world, we can now be worked up 24 hours a day by threats to "the world".
As with you, I simply got tired of being worked up emotionally and, like you, simply gave things up. I sort of miss some of them, but as I have continued to observe them almost clinically it is apparent that in practically every case, the decline they sent themselves on has manifested. I have simply not had to go for the ride.
(Myself and Eaton Rapids Joe in the same comment. I have indeed arrived.)
Searching my brain for something I have hated for so long that I have migrated to indifference, the only thing that comes to mind is this presidential election cycle.
ReplyDeleteEd, I think that is fair - and the seed of this article, but not just the presidential election cycle but all current elections cycles. As I thought about the statement, I realized that there have been a fair amount of things I have gone indifferent to, largely because I could no longer deal with either my annoyance or disgust at the current state of affairs. As it turns out, most of those things that were on a downward trend managed to keep that downward trend. The difference is I can now watch them fail without any sense of sadness, only a slight sense of loss - like losing a relative we were vaguely aware of and had met once or twice but shared no real connection other than our great-grandparents were the same.
DeleteBeing a (relatively, among present company) younger nerd, I'm quite familiar with the sentiment, courtesy of the vandalization of many intellectual properties I once enjoyed.
ReplyDeleteHate often belies an underlying emotional attachment, especially when the subject is something once held in regard; a deep, almost desperate hope to see it return to the prominence it once held. You want to see it suffer, and hope that the painful mistakes are instructive enough that the ship rights itself. In a warped way, you still care. But once that threshold is crossed and you stop caring altogether, that's it.
In the words of bitter old woman from a game about space wizards, "Apathy is death".
Passing Peanut - Your relative youth is welcome; being among the seasoned citizens, we can be a bit "grumpy"...
DeleteYour comment is a good aspect of the whole thing. In point of fact you reach a point that you still care, even as the thing starts to writhe around in failure. And then, it is simply too much. Far easier to let go than to continue to hope uselessly for things to improve when they simply will not.
Thanks for stopping by!
I reached that point a few years ago with the ex. It was a never ending circuit, much like an old wooden roller coaster. The time for anger was over long ago, and indifference was the result. I think it was earned. I realize that reconciliation is a Christian principle, but that takes both parties. I could only forgive what had gone on before and then move forward with life. I think indifference may be a valuable thing. If we maintain strong emotions beyond their useful life, we wouldn't have the energy to live. I saw bitterness and anger eat my dad. I have no desire to repeat that.
ReplyDeleteSTxAR - Holding to the point of bitterness is a great point; that can be a real risk and sometimes - perhaps too often - we pass over that line without realizing it. Like you, I have met people consumed by bitterness and hate simply because they could not let it go. To your point, far better to realize what is done is done (and without two participating parties, cannot be undone) and to move on.
DeleteAnon - Got your comment, thanks for taking the time to do so. That said, the purpose of this blog is for discussion of the topics at hand, not non sequiturs or advertising for other blogs (to your comment "I have no idea exactly what this site is and I don't care; I visited it for the first time the day I made the comment. It is enough for me that it is a "site that allows my comments"".).
ReplyDeleteGenerally speaking, if you do not care enough about what the site is about, you do get the opportunity to speak on it.