Hopeless Apathy: the civilisation killer

[Punp]

We've all met that one guy. Everything sucks and isn't good enough. They won't do anything to fix it; and by golly if you suggest something they'll shoot it down - but they want you to know that everything is hopeless and the world is collapsing and you are fools to not recognise this.

It is similar to depression, but it is more than depression - it is the crushing of the vitality of a person, their will to exist or continue. The population shrugs when something bad happens as if it were inevitable. The dog gives up treading water. The rats stop breeding.

This is the effect of hopeless apathy, and I'm pretty certain it's a psyop that is being weaponised against us on the web.

---

I recall it being listed in a declassified CIA doc as a technique for online warfare. If anyone can link that I'd be thankful. It's a technique that Russia have used in the past on their own populace in order to stay in power.

This is just an initial research thread for collecting together evidence of this apathy and cynicism and the effect it has on the human psyche. Anecdotes and suggestions for ways to counter it are welcome.

 

[Polonius Prufrock]

Self-perpetuating despair. Not 'evidence' as requested, but maybe a fitting observation?

Bad situation -> "It won't get better." -> Inaction in the face of adversity -> Situation gets worse -> Despair deepens -> "It won't get better." -> Cycle continues until broken, spiralling downwards.

 

[aranha]

I'm well aware this feeling is not new, but the internet does not help either.
I personally like to think it is a mixture of both unhealthy expectations that are fed to us since the dawn of the internet and the extreme optimism that is perpetuated in the social media,
combine those with the natural broke expectations that comes along life (mostly naturally), and it gets way too easy to loose hope in life, will comes after.

 

[BarnSwallow]

It's a natural symptom of a dying empire. You saw the same thing in Soviet Russia, during Perestroika. Those who supported the Communist regime saw it as the death blow to their civilization. Those against the Communist regime quickly found that the transition would be painful for the common man. Demoralization became a shield to protect the national psyche against material pain. "Nothing ever happens", so better to abort Hope than to let it be crushed under the boot of reality.

Of course, this doesn't have to be all doom and gloom. When "nothing ever happens", it frees up a lot of your mental space to care about things that actually matter. Things like family, living environment, and peace of mind.

I suspect that's what the internet Doomers really crave when they spread their apathy. The 1st World desire for luxury is rapidly outpacing the capacity of civic organizations to fulfill demand. If you lower your expectations of luxury, smaller sources can raise it higher. But to voluntarily give up on attained luxury is hard to do. It necessitates demanding virtues like Temperance and Courage. Much easier to spread the Doomer vibes and drag everyone down with you like a sinking ship.

 

[DreamTomato]

A defeatist mentality/point of view can be quite hard to overcome/face. The major factor is that it's easy: it's way easier to give up and complain about it than to do something. That's why everytime a possible solution is offered it gets turned down "Why would I do that if everything is fucked anyway?"
Online spaces also make it harder to get the message through. What you're describing as a reasonable solution can seem just way too idealistic, "things can't be that simple" type of mentality. In reality you're giving healthy advice but the other person is so deep into their apathy that it doesn't reach.
While I don't think there's a panacea that works for everyone I do think that reaching to the person in some way or another is key. If they manage to find something in their day to day that touches them in a way that is meaningful and keep at it that mentality slowly but surely goes away. Kinda like when people stop using selfdeprecating jokes and their selfesteem gets better too.
Also, some isolation form current stuff might help too: bad shit has been happening everyday but now we have access to it 24/7. Like log off, go touch grass etc etc. It's been talked to death on the forums but the actual state of the internet, specifically social media, is a big amplificator for this type of feeling. I've had moments where I felt like this and what's helped me get out of it is focusing on stuff that's near me: A personal project, spending more time with other people, going outside more... something that keeps the mind busy while the addiction to the apathy goes away.

 

[nobo]

My old best IRL friend is like this. I don't know how many times I've questioned why I still try to talk to him because it's so bad, but he's an old friend and I'm not just going to back out on him because he's a bummer. But I frequently have to tell him.

At the same time, I relate with feeling like things suck. They often do suck and I hate being expected to act like things that are not working are actually working just because someone likes to have feel good delusions. The issue imo is that you should be building a defense against known shitty things to where they no longer get you down and prevent you from pivoting into some silver lining that is worth the effort.

 

[UltramarineWeather]

Don't confuse cause and symptom. What if everything does suck and there's absolutely nothing that can be done except going the virtuous hermit way? Because I assure you that's the case for anyone living in the "first world" and that you'd have to be decently bluepilled to not see or at least smell Rome burning.

It it was only a simple decadence like any other, that would be okay, but I fear this is more than that, this time.

Anyway, it's easy to shrug it off when you get to have a normalfag life, but I'll tell you this as a wizard who doesn't fit in this circus: don't even try to imagine yourself knowing what it's like in my/our boots. What's true is that wallowing in despair is pointless and for the weak, you gotta grab the depression by the balls and squeeze hard.

 

[punisheddead]

"Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment."

I like the name Hopeless Apathy even if this is pretty much just learned helplessness. The feds have a history of use of learned helplessness in interrogations but I couldn't find the doc punp mentions. I tried a bunch of keywords but nothing came up, I blame the search engines.

What you can do to combat learned helplessness is mainly just to focus on things you can control, like your life. You want to break out of the cycle of not being able to control anything. Yes I know cue the eye roll. You need to start working on them and you need keep tabs on any little progress you make because monkey brain, especially brain damaged monkey brain usually can't tell if you're progressing at all. Also actually DO it don't just think about it. Sometimes I think to myself that I'm exactly the same as I was a few years ago until I remembered that I kicked an alcohol addiction, have depression mostly in control, work out regularly, sleep at least semi decently and are trying again academically. I'm doing fine all things considered. Now once you get your shit mostly together if you still want to save the world then you focus on things you can influence, so you drop the save the world attitude and go help out your local community. Again start small, and work up to bigger stuff. And that's realistically all you can really do, if you go further you'll just land in bureaucracy land and end up doing nothing. This may or may not work for you but it doesn't hurt to try, you might end up a bit healthier if nothing else.

Things suck there's no pussyfooting about and there's a lot you can't change but you should focus on things you can change because yes you can change some things for the better. As for why things suck it's mostly economics, you can roll your eyes again, but it's true. We're just now feeling the effect of one of the biggest wealth transfers that happened during the covid era and when people get desperate they become more insane and radical, add to that the everyday psyops we're all subjected to (online and irl) and all the mental people walking around held together by pharmaceuticals and it's a miracle things are still as coherent as they are.

 

[angertard]

I recall it being listed in a declassified CIA doc as a technique for online warfare.

Is this the one where it lists a bunch of techniques like "create a false division of opinion" "pretend to agree with a side to sabotage them" and is about discussions online? I remember seeing it in multiple forms, sometimes attached to a title like "COINTEL PRO cheat sheet" or something.

 

[灰の男性]

The feds have a history of use of learned helplessness in interrogations but I couldn't find the doc punp mentions. I tried a bunch of keywords but nothing came up, I blame the search engines.

https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/legal-documents/206-2._Exhibit_A.pdf

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/12/11/the-chilling-psychological-principle-behind-the-cias-interrogation-methods/

https://docs.pogo.org/report/2013/TCP-Detainee-Task-Force-Report.pdf

(All interrogation, have yet to find anything related to cyberwarfare).

 

[RisingThumb]

We've all met that one guy. Everything sucks and isn't good enough. They won't do anything to fix it; and by golly if you suggest something they'll shoot it down - but they want you to know that everything is hopeless and the world is collapsing and you are fools to not recognise this.

This is the effect of hopeless apathy, and I'm pretty certain it's a psyop that is being weaponised against us on the web.

I'm of the opinion it's a lot like Imposter Syndrome. The doing something to fix it, or not doing something to fix it is irrelevant for imposter syndrome, as the people affected still feel like an imposter.

In much the same way, this hopeless apathy affects both people who do something to fix it, and those who don't. Those who don't are easier to criticise, and they will seem a lot more miserable because doing nothing is quite miserable. I also think it's easier to criticise as the mega wealthy, want to point towards a handful of people who manage to get out of being a wage slave. This way, they steer the conversation towards "pull yourself up by your bootstraps and work hard" rather than on economic reality. This hopelessness felt from economic reality is felt still by those who do something.

The average person is not in a place where they'll be owning things like a home, or having children, or having a loving wife/husband-- all these things are far off dreams to most people, and the most commonly cited reason is "the economy". This economic reality means fulfilling Maslow's Hierarchy of needs in an individual is difficult.

The loneliness epidemic highlights how people are not loved and have very little belonging, the constant risk to employment, property and wealth keeps people feeling unsafe and stressed, and hell, even with the physiological, the rise of both femcels and incels should be alarm bells ringing of a sexually frustrated population. By Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the younger generations have so many needs unmet especially compared to the older generation who have "pulled away the ladder" from the youth.

It's no wonder people feel hopeless! The hopeless part I absolutely believe is real and holds merit. As for the apathy part, it's possible to induce apathy in people. It has a name... Learned helplessness. I've noted it before, but a lot of modern stoicism that people preach is just learned helplessness and distancing yourself from your emotions. Teaching people to boil in their frustration.

Also it's unsurprising the people in power want to hold power by inducing learned helplessness in people. Less people protesting them and doing work against them, the more comfortable they are in power.

 

[Dead Star]

The end result of nihilism, resentment culture and hedonism.

We are living in the most technologically advanced era of mankind. All it takes is a little ambition and people can rise through. That would take effort though and to stop whining and blaming problems on 'systemic' issues and capitalism.

 

[cloudfair]

I think a big part of this is the content that gets pushed in online media. Humans are biologically wired to react more strongly to things that could be perceived as threats rather than positive things. For most of human history it was advantageous to detect a predator that could potentially kill you, rather than taking the time to stop and look at a pretty flower. Media companies are incentivized to maximize clicks/engagement and it makes sense that they would take advantage of this trait and push negative content or to paint things in a negative light to sell more ads. And then even the advertisements are like "Tired of being an ugly broke loser? Try this!". This study measured participants brain activity when shown negative vs positive stimuli to prove the negativity bias.

I also think a lot of the people like this are simply unhappy with their own life and look for confirmation that the world simply sucks and its not just them. Its much easier to sit in hopelessness and convince yourself nothing can change than to admit you might be able to improve your situation and actually do something about it.

 

[Babble Cowboy]

# A Case for Hopeless Apathy #

First of all, if you believe nothing ever will become better and your life is ultimately pointless, your best option is to kill yourself. Forsooth, why incur upon oneself a life of suffering that would end in a death either way, and at that, a death only coming after the extra suffering of disease and aging? Your quickest options is a shot; jumping out of a 10- or more-storey building is a close second; hanging yourself is slightly riskier, but good enough if you can ensure no one will find the fruits of your possibly botched self-execution in a couple hours. What prevents you from killing yourself? Fear of pain or whatever? That is unbased, as you will inevitably feel more pain with disease and aging and the 'natural' death. Drug yourself before going through with it, if that is of any help. Now go kill yourself. Literally, stop reading this and kill yourself right now. There is no reason to do otherwise.

.

.

.

Now, if you have decided to read on, that means you find some value in your life, be it the value of the life itself or your life being instrumental towards some goal or ideal you hold important. I will deal with both cases in the order I have listed them.

## 1. Inherent Life Value ##

So, you believe your life has inherent value that makes it *wrong* for you to kill yourself. In other words, you believe that having been against your will (remember, children, especially ones unborn, cannot give consent) put into a state of misery that is life **makes it your moral obligation** to prolong your stay in such a state? This is, quite frankly, absurd! Imagine if being captured by terrorists made it so that you ought to remain captive for as long as you can? And since life is indeed nothing but fruitless misery, your parents are no better than those terrorists. Would you not deem it the only moral choice to fight against such terrorism by ending your life?

A different argument would be as follows: your belief in the value of your life makes you perpetuate a state of misery, a bad state--in both the moral and the emotional senses. Thus, it is a belief that only serves to harm. Free yourself from this belief, and kill yourself worrilessly.

Now, if your motivating beliefs are different from 'Life has inherent value', go ahead and read on.

## 2. Life Instrumental towards Goal or Ideal ##

That means that besides what makes you apathetic and hopeless there is something that does not--something your contribution wheretowards you deem valuable. In that case, your hopeless apathy is a *resource conservation tactic*. Verily, consider the following: if not for the hopeless apathy, you would have *thought about* what you could do, you would have *actually tried* to do something--wasting time, effort and material resources on some inane pursuits orthogonal to what you truly value. Compare it, say, to redirecting known undesired requests to a 'black-hole' address so as to not waste compute nor band-width answering them.

The only wrong thing then is nagging about one's apathy. The only reason I can imagine to do so is to get free compassion without acting upon it in any way, id est, socially (emotionally) exploit those who hold one in good merit. Such people are unquestionably but filth, and I am currently developing a line of reasoning regarding why they should all kill themselves.

 

[Polonius Prufrock]

# A Case for Hopeless Apathy #

First of all, if you believe nothing ever will become better and your life is ultimately pointless, your best option is to kill yourself. Forsooth, why incur upon oneself a life of suffering that would end in a death either way, and at that, a death only coming after the extra suffering of disease and aging? Your quickest options is a shot; jumping out of a 10- or more-storey building is a close second; hanging yourself is slightly riskier, but good enough if you can ensure no one will find the fruits of your possibly botched self-execution in a couple hours. What prevents you from killing yourself? Fear of pain or whatever? That is unbased, as you will inevitably feel more pain with disease and aging and the 'natural' death. Drug yourself before going through with it, if that is of any help. Now go kill yourself. Literally, stop reading this and kill yourself right now. There is no reason to do otherwise.

.

.

.

Now, if you have decided to read on, that means you find some value in your life, be it the value of the life itself or your life being instrumental towards some goal or ideal you hold important. I will deal with both cases in the order I have listed them.

## 1. Inherent Life Value ##

So, you believe your life has inherent value that makes it *wrong* for you to kill yourself. In other words, you believe that having been against your will (remember, children, especially ones unborn, cannot give consent) put into a state of misery that is life **makes it your moral obligation** to prolong your stay in such a state? This is, quite frankly, absurd! Imagine if being captured by terrorists made it so that you ought to remain captive for as long as you can? And since life is indeed nothing but fruitless misery, your parents are no better than those terrorists. Would you not deem it the only moral choice to fight against such terrorism by ending your life?

A different argument would be as follows: your belief in the value of your life makes you perpetuate a state of misery, a bad state--in both the moral and the emotional senses. Thus, it is a belief that only serves to harm. Free yourself from this belief, and kill yourself worrilessly.

Now, if your motivating beliefs are different from 'Life has inherent value', go ahead and read on.

## 2. Life Instrumental towards Goal or Ideal ##

That means that besides what makes you apathetic and hopeless there is something that does not--something your contribution wheretowards you deem valuable. In that case, your hopeless apathy is a *resource conservation tactic*. Verily, consider the following: if not for the hopeless apathy, you would have *thought about* what you could do, you would have *actually tried* to do something--wasting time, effort and material resources on some inane pursuits orthogonal to what you truly value. Compare it, say, to redirecting known undesired requests to a 'black-hole' address so as to not waste compute nor band-width answering them.

The only wrong thing then is nagging about one's apathy. The only reason I can imagine to do so is to get free compassion without acting upon it in any way, id est, socially (emotionally) exploit those who hold one in good merit. Such people are unquestionably but filth, and I am currently developing a line of reasoning regarding why they should all kill themselves.

(Notice how the one making this case has not followed his own advice. If you are in such a state as you are considering suicide, find help, read a bible, look for Jesus, and generally ignore the above quoted post except as an hypothetical example not to be pursued.)

 

[Punp]

# A Case for Hopeless Apathy #

First of all, if you believe nothing ever will become better and your life is ultimately pointless, your best option is to kill yourself. Forsooth, why incur upon oneself a life of suffering that would end in a death either way, and at that, a death only coming after the extra suffering of disease and aging? Your quickest options is a shot; jumping out of a 10- or more-storey building is a close second; hanging yourself is slightly riskier, but good enough if you can ensure no one will find the fruits of your possibly botched self-execution in a couple hours. What prevents you from killing yourself? Fear of pain or whatever? That is unbased, as you will inevitably feel more pain with disease and aging and the 'natural' death. Drug yourself before going through with it, if that is of any help. Now go kill yourself. Literally, stop reading this and kill yourself right now. There is no reason to do otherwise.

.

.

.

Now, if you have decided to read on, that means you find some value in your life, be it the value of the life itself or your life being instrumental towards some goal or ideal you hold important. I will deal with both cases in the order I have listed them.

## 1. Inherent Life Value ##

So, you believe your life has inherent value that makes it *wrong* for you to kill yourself. In other words, you believe that having been against your will (remember, children, especially ones unborn, cannot give consent) put into a state of misery that is life **makes it your moral obligation** to prolong your stay in such a state? This is, quite frankly, absurd! Imagine if being captured by terrorists made it so that you ought to remain captive for as long as you can? And since life is indeed nothing but fruitless misery, your parents are no better than those terrorists. Would you not deem it the only moral choice to fight against such terrorism by ending your life?

A different argument would be as follows: your belief in the value of your life makes you perpetuate a state of misery, a bad state--in both the moral and the emotional senses. Thus, it is a belief that only serves to harm. Free yourself from this belief, and kill yourself worrilessly.

Now, if your motivating beliefs are different from 'Life has inherent value', go ahead and read on.

## 2. Life Instrumental towards Goal or Ideal ##

That means that besides what makes you apathetic and hopeless there is something that does not--something your contribution wheretowards you deem valuable. In that case, your hopeless apathy is a *resource conservation tactic*. Verily, consider the following: if not for the hopeless apathy, you would have *thought about* what you could do, you would have *actually tried* to do something--wasting time, effort and material resources on some inane pursuits orthogonal to what you truly value. Compare it, say, to redirecting known undesired requests to a 'black-hole' address so as to not waste compute nor band-width answering them.

The only wrong thing then is nagging about one's apathy. The only reason I can imagine to do so is to get free compassion without acting upon it in any way, id est, socially (emotionally) exploit those who hold one in good merit. Such people are unquestionably but filth, and I am currently developing a line of reasoning regarding why they should all kill themselves.

>Discord formatted text
>Completely disregarded or forgot the main point of the post
><20 react score
>Verily
>id est
>Account less than a month old

Nice try glowie suicide psyop, try again another time you fucking cuck. The thread is about the phenomenon of the psyop of Hopeless Apathy ( aka learned helplessness (thanks @punisheddead ) not depression.

Is this the one where it lists a bunch of techniques like "create a false division of opinion" "pretend to agree with a side to sabotage them" and is about discussions online? I remember seeing it in multiple forms, sometimes attached to a title like "COINTEL PRO cheat sheet" or something.

@angertard YES that's the doc I was thinking about. Maybe I've saved it and forgotten, but I can't for the life of me think where it would be.

I recently read that Learned Helplessness (or cynicism and apathy) is why Facism is a success in Russia. People are always expecting the worst and they just put up with it. Perhaps this is a false American perspective (the writer was American). Perhaps @Ross_Я can have some input here.

This study measured participants brain activity when shown negative vs positive stimuli to prove the negativity bias.

I also think a lot of the people like this are simply unhappy with their own life [...]

Thanks - this reminds me of the Facebook feed experiment with negative messaging vs positive ones. It really outed the sociopathy of the "scientists" at Facebook.

This thread is not about individuals who are susceptible to the psyop, it's about the psyop.

[snip] imposter syndrome / economic enforced reality

While these are valid reasons for causing hopelessness, they are also reasons to fight for a better life. I'm looking at hopelessness and the psychological warfare of sapping that attack response.

Don't confuse cause and symptom. What if everything does suck and there's absolutely nothing that can be done except going the virtuous hermit way? Because I assure you that's the case for anyone living in the "first world" and that you'd have to be decently bluepilled to not see or at least smell Rome burning.

It it was only a simple decadence like any other, that would be okay, but I fear this is more than that, this time.

Anyway, it's easy to shrug it off when you get to have a normalfag life, but I'll tell you this as a wizard who doesn't fit in this circus: don't even try to imagine yourself knowing what it's like in my/our boots. What's true is that wallowing in despair is pointless and for the weak, you gotta grab the depression by the balls and squeeze hard.

>everything does suck
>time to give up
>joined two weeks ago
Up against the wall, glowie.

A defeatist mentality/point of view can be quite hard to overcome/face. The major factor is that it's easy: it's way easier to give up and complain about it than to do something. That's why everytime a possible solution is offered it gets turned down "Why would I do that if everything is fucked anyway?"
Online spaces also make it harder to get the message through. What you're describing as a reasonable solution can seem just way too idealistic, "things can't be that simple" type of mentality. In reality you're giving healthy advice but the other person is so deep into their apathy that it doesn't reach.
While I don't think there's a panacea that works for everyone I do think that reaching to the person in some way or another is key. If they manage to find something in their day to day that touches them in a way that is meaningful and keep at it that mentality slowly but surely goes away. Kinda like when people stop using selfdeprecating jokes and their selfesteem gets better too.
Also, some isolation form current stuff might help too: bad shit has been happening everyday but now we have access to it 24/7. Like log off, go touch grass etc etc. It's been talked to death on the forums but the actual state of the internet, specifically social media, is a big amplificator for this type of feeling. I've had moments where I felt like this and what's helped me get out of it is focusing on stuff that's near me: A personal project, spending more time with other people, going outside more... something that keeps the mind busy while the addiction to the apathy goes away.

This is helpful counter-psyop, thanks.

It's a natural symptom of a dying empire. You saw the same thing in Soviet Russia, during Perestroika. Those who supported the Communist regime saw it as the death blow to their civilization. Those against the Communist regime quickly found that the transition would be painful for the common man. Demoralization became a shield to protect the national psyche against material pain. "Nothing ever happens", so better to abort Hope than to let it be crushed under the boot of reality.

Of course, this doesn't have to be all doom and gloom. When "nothing ever happens", it frees up a lot of your mental space to care about things that actually matter. Things like family, living environment, and peace of mind.

I suspect that's what the internet Doomers really crave when they spread their apathy. The 1st World desire for luxury is rapidly outpacing the capacity of civic organizations to fulfill demand. If you lower your expectations of luxury, smaller sources can raise it higher. But to voluntarily give up on attained luxury is hard to do. It necessitates demanding virtues like Temperance and Courage. Much easier to spread the Doomer vibes and drag everyone down with you like a sinking ship.

Very interesting to see it applied to Russia like this. Do you think this doomer mentality was orchestrated in order to seize power? Do you think that's what's happening in the West?

 

[BarnSwallow]

Very interesting to see it applied to Russia like this.

You can thank the Russia: TraumaZone documentary for that thought. I saw it once long ago and it really stuck with me. Been fascinated by the end of the USSR and modern Russian social culture since.

Do you think this doomer mentality was orchestrated in order to seize power? Do you think that's what's happening in the West?

I think the doomer mentality was watered and grown to be abused. It most certainly is being orchestrated in modern Russia, imo, but I'm talking out my ass there. I've never been there.

As for both Russia and the West, do I think it's actively orchestrated? No further than as a tool by big business to steal mindspace with algorithms. But a nation's civic institution is, in theory, supposed to nurture its constituents. If it fails to even attempt to ameliorate mental suffering, then one could argue that it's being passively orchestrated. A passive populace will neither rebel against big business nor against big government.

Situation Normal: All Fucked Up

Yet if one is going to give in, then at least refuse to roll over. I always hammer it home every time the topic comes up, but everyone should build and maintain parallel social structures in their community. Maintain family gardens, seed torrents online, work community programs, etc etc etc. Not only is action the enemy of doomer mentality, but it inspires others to take action too, and ensures when shit hits the fan you won't be completely alone and knee-deep in it.

 

[Richard Smith]

I have read this thread and wanted to write a response to it for a few moments. My thoughts may be a little disjointed so bear with me.

There is, most assuredly, a feeling of impending doom among westerners and particularly in Americans lately. People offline won't be as overt about it but online you only have to go as far as the front page of >reddit to see people either worked up into a frenzy against anything they disagree with or given over into a level of apathy that spirals into suicidal ideation. In particular, this spreading suicidal ideation is why >reddit is permanently blocked on all my devices at the domain level. A particular culprit is r/collapse, which has gone from people discussing prepping and climate science to basically looking for the worst case scenario in every headline and essentially moralizing about how superior they are for feeling bad all the time. People are even subtly encouraged to commit suicide with seemingly neutral language such as "I wouldn't fault you" or by posters saying their plan in ten years is to kill themselves. Essentially, people who have given up on everything and everyone.

Ironically, it was on >reddit where I saw an interesting way of protecting oneself from this psyop. A random socialist there put forward the following questions
1.Who is saying this to you
And
2.What do they have to gain by saying this

The answer of course differs. On an individual level some people say things like that as they get gratification from getting people to harm themselves or to sink to their own level. Still others might be engaged in a Death Game, to steal a term from Philip K Dicks VALIS. That is, as they spiral to their end, they set out to drag as many people to the grave as possible either consciously or unconsciously, as Gloria Knutson does in that book by trying to take Horselover Fat's sanity and his life ultimately.

On the society level, a cowed and beaten down populace is easier to keep in line since they cannot dream of anything different or better. It's not just material conditions being bad, but robbing people of even the ability to have a moments peace writhing their head. If you are at war with yourself you can't go to war with anyone else. My assumption is that, being unable to maintain the current course of the west, its leaders have decided to take lessons from autocracies in order to hold on to power. That is to say, they are to inept and intellectually bankrupt and morally craven to create and Shepard a society that loves them so they just use the monopoly on violence and (increasingly) information in order to hold on to the last.

That's my brief, unprepared take on it and I would like to hear from others as well.

 

[SolidStateSurvivor]

Perhaps we are frogs in a boiling pot, but we might as well enjoy it up until the last moment

 

[angertard]

That means that besides what makes you apathetic and hopeless there is something that does not--something your contribution wheretowards you deem valuable. In that case, your hopeless apathy is a *resource conservation tactic*. Verily, consider the following: if not for the hopeless apathy, you would have *thought about* what you could do, you would have *actually tried* to do something--wasting time, effort and material resources on some inane pursuits orthogonal to what you truly value. Compare it, say, to redirecting known undesired requests to a 'black-hole' address so as to not waste compute nor band-width answering them.

It does seem to be resource conservation for society or biology or an ancient ancestor or something, but on an individual level I think it is a really just bad habit. Stalling still ages you and your brain, still depletes your opportunities and probably still makes you jaded. Internet is cheap enough that there is barely any cost to exploring, and apathetic people still use the internet anyway they just use it for wallowing purposes. I've been apathetic a few times, and the flashes of "Oh, I can care a bit about this" were found only because I was reading about horrific crimes on wikipedia, watching lectures about game theory, reading smut on archiveofourown and burning my candle on web forums where people sometimes tried to do things. I think that browsing the internet with more exploratory intent is important.

The only wrong thing then is nagging about one's apathy. The only reason I can imagine to do so is to get free compassion without acting upon it in any way, id est, socially (emotionally) exploit those who hold one in good merit. Such people are unquestionably but filth, and I am currently developing a line of reasoning regarding why they should all kill themselves.

Write an outline and then read "Not all vampires drink blood" by Anton LaVey. I would be surprised if there were much more perspective to add.

The real question is why do people take a poor coping strategy and accept the framing of "I do this because all is lost." I do this sometimes, but I also realize it is just not true and catch these thoughts when I can. There are good things out there that I am certain I can achieve and experience. (even though a lot of those good things are good in ways that I can't know until I actually have them, like the personality of a friend) So why does it feel so easy to fall for thinking this way? People say "apathy/depression is easy" but it also just feels bad. It is more like a pressure towards internal consistency. "If you're not trying as hard as you could, if you can't cope with having made mistakes... then maybe it was always impossible, so it's okay to not try and fail to cope." There is the dynamic with this where anything can be something you genuinely need to confront "wow the economy sucks" "I might be severely traumatized or mentally ill" or it could just be another intractable barrier to keep you in the safe consistent low-energy state- even if it is true.

Speaking of which, here's an alleged foil: the kind of person who seemingly tries to get better, tries to thrive or work hard but somehow their tricks never get them where they need to go- but they've always got a new gimmick and this one will get them somewhere this time. Meditation, trauma release exercises, having sex with women, nootropic stack, having friends, therapy, washing your penis... so many universal self-emancipation trends have rolled on by, it isn't that hard to imagine someone completely stalled out while running as hard as they can. I don't know if this is a real type of person or if the internet invented them for cathartic purposes.