This is an essay I wrote for college. Just so you’re not confused like my teacher was, the concept of general and elitist apathy is my own creation. I didn’t just forget to cite it.
The worst part about presidential elections is November 5th. “I hate Obama!†Dissenters cry, making up clever teeshirts and posters decrying the newly elected leader. “Oh, so you voted for McCain?†“No. I didn’t vote.†And yet they continue complaining, unaware of the overwhelming hypocrisy consuming their actions. This is the central problem with today’s individual- they no longer feel responsible for society’s woes, instead choosing to gripe in books and blogs without actually trying to change anything. Environmental problems are pressing, but societal apathy is what will eventually push us over the brink. First, we’ll look at the problems surrounding this apathy, then move into the causes, before finally breaching into some possible solutions.
There are two types of societal apathy evident today; general apathy and elitist apathy. General apathy refers to the failure of the average citizen to take responsibility for the world around them, and elitist apathy refers to citizens who recognize the problems with the world and think themselves above them. The existence of general apathy leads to the creation and existence of elitist apathy, but in a round about way.
First, general apathy. According to a Gallup Poll in April, 2010, there has been a significant decrease in support for the environmental movement in America. There has been a ten point drop in sympathy for the movement since 2000, and nothing indicates that the number will be rising anytime soon.We can only assume that this loss of support in the environmental movement is a result of the instant gratification phenomena. Edward A Dreyfus, Ph.D, weighs in on this topic. “Most Americans have a penchant for instant gratification. We want immediate results. We also have a tendency to think, “more is better.†I have gone to the gym to work out and watched very out of shape men go over to the weight machine for the first time and try to bench press their body weight! Finding they cannot lift this amount of weight, they give up and go off to some other machine.†As with losing weight, the environmental movement takes time, but people have a tendency of losing faith if results aren’t instant. As a result, we as a society are becoming apathetic, and this presents a big problem. Without motivation to change the way we live, nothing is going to get better. General apathy has always been around, but lately, it’s been growing.
This general apathy often leads into our second form of apathy, elitist apathy. Elitist apathy is what happens when someone breaks from the general apathy in disgust, then inadvertently becomes apathetic again, but in a significantly more self-righteous way.
Henry David Thoreau is a good example of someone with elitist apathy. “We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practiced this noble art; though, to tell the truth, at least if their own assertions are to be received, most of my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but they cannot. No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence which are the capital in this profession. It comes only by the grace of God.†(Thoreau, Walking)
This quotation from one of Thoreau’s most popular works exemplifies the elitist denomination. Thoreau believes that only he and occasionally a companion -“for I sometimes have a companionâ€- have come by the “grace of God†that allows them to absorb nature in such a personal way. This path of thinking has led him away from general apathy, thus explaining his adoption of this elitist frame of mind. But perhaps more stirring is the apathy he himself doesn’t recognize.
Thoreau goes on to discuss his deep pity for the shopkeepers and city dwellers who are confined inside for most of their days, and argues against the increasingly urbanized lifestyle many have adopted. He bemoans the loss of his cherished natural world, where he walks to escape the push and pull of modern society. However, Thoreau does nothing to change these woes, thus yielding not only to elitism, but also apathy. The difference between his apathy and general apathy, however, is that Thoreay justifies his inaction by claiming that the world is too far gone, and so apathy is the only way to evaluate the world correctly.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, another acclaimed writer, is another prime example of this elitist apathy. “New, we confess, and by no means happy, is our condition: if you want the aid of our labor, we ourselves stand in greater want of the labor. We are miserable with inaction. We perish of rest and rust: but we do not like your work.†(Emerson, The Transcendentalist) The operative line in this quotation is the last one “we perish of rest and rust; we do not like your work.†Essentially, Emerson is saying that he and others of his philosophical persuasion wish they could help society, but they don’t want to do what society needs done. Emerson is justifying his elitism by saying that society is too far gone for his services to do any good. Thus, in justifying his inaction by saying society is too far gone, he “transcends†the blame for any societal woes he may choose to write about in the future.
What we can see from these two popular transcendentalist writers is exactly the definition of elitist apathy: citizens who recognize the problems with the world and think themselves above them. Both Thoreau and Emerson point out key issues with the way that society has been expanding and evolving, and yet what do they do? Write a few lines and take a walk. Nothing is actually solved through these two men. In fact, their writings seem to encourage people to this elitist apathetic mindset; to write off the world’s problems as too far gone to solve. Instead of guiding the society they abhor towards a better end for the environment they claim to love so dearly, they mope in the silence of their private cabins.
What causes this lethargy when it comes to environmentalism, though? There are two potential answers to this question. One is purely the ignorance of the general populus, thus causing general apathy. Unfortunately, the second answer, the answer that explains elitist apathy, which takes into account selective ignorance, is much less pure.
How many citizens, if you were to take a poll, know that salmon farming for one year produces the amount of waste of 7,000 small towns (Bostwick, 2004)? How many citizens are aware that the “absorbency percentage†listed on canned and packed supermarket meats refers to the amount of fecal water is pumped into said meats in order to make it look larger (Foer, 2009)? If you wagered “very few citizensâ€, you’d be absolutely right.
General apathy is caused simply by ignorance; the general population doesn’t readily have the information available to convince them action is necessary. If we were to use Plato’s Allegory of the Cave metaphor, society at large represents the slaves with their backs against the fire, watching the shadow puppets dance against the cave wall. According this famous metaphor, “human beings live in a underground cave, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the cave; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets…At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision, -what will be his reply?â€
To explore the cause of elitist apathy, we’re going to continue with this same cave. If general apathy exists in the people stuck in the cave with their backs to the fire, elitist apathy is what one adopts when one emerges from the cave, looks back and forth from the society and nature that exist outside one’s former prison, and chooses to look only towards nature. The elitist apathetic knows society exists and that problems exist in it as well, but pretends that it doesn’t. In this sense, although transcendentalists like Thoreau and Emerson claim they are more “enlightened†and “aware†than the general population, they fail to recognize that their enlightened awareness only covers part of the picture. They are, in a way, selectively aware, which is arguably just as bad as completely unaware. Knowing there is a problem and still failing to attempt to find a solution is the very tenant of elitist apathy, and these so called “nature appreciators†are just as much to blame for our current environmental difficulties as anyone else.
However, all is not lost. There are still solutions to solve both of these apathies, and while they may be difficult to actually carry out, the concepts of the solutions themselves are relatively simple.
Education is the best solution to our general apathy problem. This is a multitiered problem that needs to be addressed on all levels to be fully solved. The first level is, obviously, our public school system.
A study by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in 2006 found that environmental education for grades K-12 in the US is severely lacking with regards to the way humans affect the earth. While learning about air and water and rocks and plants is very important, the effects humans have on the environment, and vice versa, cannot be ignored. “In some states, it’s as though you had landed in a space ship on a planet with no sentient beings or civilization.†the lead author of the study, Kim Kastens, remarked. “You study the air and water and rocks and plants and animals, but do not study any object or process caused by humans. In some other states, human-environment interactions are shoved into all sorts of nooks and crannies in the science standards, even when a basic science focus might be more appropriate.†Essentially, if public education standards are going to continue to be controlled on the national level, then they need to be clearer and more comprehensive- on all planes.
The youth of today are rapidly inheriting the environmental problems caused by the generation of yesterday, like the split from traditional husbandry farming and the increase of cars on the road. If we don’t teach them about these problems, how will they learn to recognize them, let alone fix them?
The second level of solving general apathy is arguably more difficult; educating people no longer in the public school system. Mass communication has become widespread to a point where people are just overwhelmed by the amount of information they have access to. Instead of just letting PETA and GreenPeace, organizations that come with the connotation of “crazyâ€, protest environmental disasters like factory farm pollution, the “trusted†news sources like FOX and CNN need to step up and cover the glaring issues with current environmental policies, and not just when a movie like Food Inc hits the theaters. People who are no longer enrolled in an educational institution rely on the media for information. Thus, the media is charged with informing the public, so by all means, inform!
Solving elitist apathy is slightly more complicated, but no less important. Here’s an eloquent description of an elitist apathetic’s view of the world, of “us†and “themâ€. “The materialist respects sensible masses, Society, Government, social art, and luxury, every establishment, every mass, whether majority of numbers, or extent of space, or amount of objects, every social action. The idealist has another measure, which is metaphysical, namely, the rank which things themselves take in his consciousness; not at all, the size or appearance. Mind is the only reality, of which men and all other natures are better or worse reflectors. Nature, literature, history, are only subjective phenomena.†(Emerson, The Transcendentalist)
In this quotation, the “materialist†represents individuals in society while the “idealist†represents transcendentalists, or our elitist apathetic friends. Emerson is arguing that the idealist respects products of natural creation and the mind. However, because of his selective enlightenment, he fails to recognize that products of the mind he so values can be applied to any number of things, especially the “Society, Government, social art, and luxury†he cites for the materialist.
The only way to break the cycle of elitist apathy is to open the eyes of this said group of people to the beauty that is human creation. Maybe some of it is ugly, and maybe some of it is destructive, but it’s not all bad. What about art installations on busy streets? What about the books that line all varieties of shops? All of these things are human creations, and all of them are beautiful. Apathetic elitists fail to see the forest for the trees, choose to only see the bad in humanity and society.
Emerson states at one point in his speech that “[The idealist] believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy.†However, later on he contradicts this idea. “Every materialist will be an idealist; but an idealist can never go backward to be a materialist.†How can an idealist have a perpetually open mind if he can never become a materialist, or even move towards a more materialistic state of mind? The only way to solve this problem of inaction due to perceived elitism is to show those exhibiting this behavior the beauty in human creation. We must force them to look at everything outside of the cave, and see everything from every perspective. And from there, we must encourage them to action. Only then can they be considered enlightened, and only then will we as a society move forward from our collective ball and chain of apathy.
The only way we would be able to respond effectively to an environmental crisis that threatened the persistence of our society would be to rid ourselves of apathy, both of the general and elitist persuasions. Apathy is caused by ignorance and selective awareness, and can only be solved through education, a responsible media, and a perpetually open mind. Most of all, however, we have to recognize that no one in a society is inherently better or worse than another, and that only together can we, as Thoreau likes to say, saunter onwards towards a brighter future.
