Winter is all but upon us, with only the promise that it will get colder and greyer before springtime’s rescue arrives. The economic climate offers little encouragement either. The green shoots of recovery seem distant and abstract amongst rumours of all too concrete cuts, job losses and strikes. Yet amongst the uncertainty we content ourselves nonetheless. We will enjoy our colleagues while they remain. The party season looms over the horizon and we will embrace it with unusual verve. The autumn TV schedules even look half decent. We must make the most of what we have. We must be stoical. And the first step to be stoical is to be apathetic.
The Stoics were great champions of apathy. That seems counterintuitive to our modern conception of the word. We think of apathy as giving up, or worse still, giving in. Apathy is the opposite of effort and engagement. We think if we meet our challenges with apathy we have failed to be stoical, not succeeded. We should try harder. Despite everything we must try to make a difference.
The Stoics, though, saw apathy not as the enemy of making a difference, but as a necessary first step. When they spoke of apatheia they were did indeed mean an “absence of feeling”. But they did not see this as an ennervating loss of energy, the floppy resigned apathy of the modern world. Instead they saw it as a way of freeing ourselves from the emotions and passions that might otherwise hold us back.
To be happy, or least Stoically happy, we must first make sure things do not get us down. We must not let a cold November day make us too grumpy to enjoy the evening’s fireworks; nor let the impending round of present-shopping, card-writing, and seasonal arrangements overwhelm us so we never begin. Our secret weapon should be apathy. To stop caring about these limiting emotions so we may embrace useful action. It is an apathy that can bring peace of mind and even tranquillity. An indifference, that paradoxically, let’s us make a difference.
The stoic challenge is not to be a slave to our emotions. The Greek Stoic Epictetus, who was born in 1st Century Hieropolis a literal slave but freed himself from both bondage and suffering with the self-discipline of Stoicism, pithily summarised this world view when he wrote “Man is troubled not by events but by the meaning he gives them.”
Nick Southgate will be leading our class on 'How To Be Cool' next Wednesday 17 November at The School of Life. For more information, click here.
Knowing something about apathy myself I've waited quite a while to comment on this post, but now I just can't be bothered...
Posted by: Drew Byrne | November 16, 2010 at 02:27 PM