The unconscionable

Apathy(n): (1)lack of feeling or emotion; (2) lack of interest or concern; from the Ancient Greek apatheia impassibility, insensibility, freedom from emotion; apathes not suffering or having suffered, without experience of suffering; apatheō to be free from suffering.

A popular bumper sticker around these parts reads "If you're not angry, you're not paying attention." It captures this underlying belief that moral outrage is a necessary condition and a logical consequence of basic social awareness and that, given the news and the reality of the world, only the comatosed or deliberately ignorant would be anything but vacillating between despair and rage. Indeed, the world gives us plenty to despair about and plenty of stories that should enrage us. But all too often, one man's moral outrage is met by another man's apathy.

Back in 2005, the Belgian arm of UNICEF aired a commercial in which a happy, little village of peace-loving-three-apple-high Smurfs was carpet bombed. It starts off smurfily enough, with happy, hopping bunnies, a Smurf band playing as the village of Smurfs danced around. Only to cut to a sky full of bombs and a shot of Smurfette laying dead next to blue body buried under rubble and crying baby Smurf. The ad was intended to help raise money to address the needs of child soldiers. Needless to say, it generated both contributions and controversy. Viewers were horrified (save Smurf-haters, still getting over the smurfiness of the 1980s), and some pundits were smugly pleased with the response. The irony of public outrage to the needless Smurf-focused violence wasn't lost on them.

UNICEF specifically chose the Smurfs because "traditional images of suffering in Third World war zones had lost their power to move television viewers". For some reason, real blood-covered 6-year olds crying next to the corps of their dead mother just don't have the same kick as they used to. So send in the Smurfs to remind us of our moral outrage, to reawaken our humanity. Thus, the smug among us (rightfully) pointed out that compassion is easy to find for little blue characters but so hard to muster for real victims.

But apathy isn't necessarily soulessness. No one, not even victims themselves, can live in perpetual sorrow or fury. Continually identifying with or as the victim is difficult. For we observers, it lead us to adopt suffering that isn't ours and to invite another's fear into our lives. Emotionally, psychologically, maybe even spiritually, we need to protect ourselves from extreme pain, even if it means distancing ourselves from victims and wearing a cloak of ambivalence and apathy. In order to function in a world that won't let us forget how brutal it can be, we must distance ourselves from victimhood (even our own) and not identify too much or too often with victims, as empathy for the victim entails experiencing some aspect of the trauma yourself.

Judith Herman (1992) reminds us that studying trauma "means bearing witness to horrible events. When the traumatic events are of human design, those who bear witness are caught in the conflict between the victim and the perpetrator....The bystander is forced to take sides. It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden or the pain." (p 8)

It is emotionally and physically taxing to be a victim, even by proxy. Thus, we distance ourselves from pain. This need for distance may explain why female jurist can be more likely to blame rape victims or why some PTSD victims can't remember the trauma. We want the victims to be "them" or the event to never have occurred.

So are we lost? Are we doomed to be desensitized to pain in order to function? Herman (1992) continues, writing, "In the absence of strong political movements for human rights, the active process of bearing witness inevitably gives way to the active process of forgetting. Repression, dissociation and denial are phenomena of a social as well as individual consciousness." Only through vigilance can we keep the victims and horrors in sight. Only with willful effort can we continuously extend our compassion and empathy. Without it, we suffer a sort of emotional entropy, a sort of Second Law of Emotionaldynamics.

This effort comes at a cost, and eventually we all must rest. Enter in apathy. Rest is meant to reinvigorate us, to prepare us for another day, but sleep is so tempting and complacency so soothing. We must allow ourselves occasional moments of apathy, and pray that someone (perhaps a Smurf) will come to wake us up.