Extra   tag: apathy   random order

A revolutionary woman can't have no reactionary man.

Assata Shakur

I bought a seven dollar pen because I always lose pens and I got sick of not caring.

Mitch Hedberg

That the poor are invisible is one of the most important things about them. They are not simply neglected and forgotten as in the old rhetoric of reform; what is much worse, they are not seen.

Michael Harrington

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?

Ray Bradbury

I feel like everyone is doing social media marketing - or something equally useless while the world around us is breaking down.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19438632

Show me a people unwilling to be vigilant about their liberty 24/7, and I'll show you a government happy to lord over them with absolute power.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5993461

My dear,

Have you noticed how those who move, move fast? And those who don’t, just stand still; motionless?

Yes, you can go ahead and rant to me about how an object in motion stays in motion, and how an object at rest stays at rest. But, I think there’s more to this than physics.

I think those in motion have seen something the others have not; their imprisonment.

While those who do not move, do not notice their chains.

Truly yours,
Rosa Luxemburg

Rosa Luxemburg

FROMM: Like for instance, that we are confronted with the possibility of a war of such destruction that the whole existence of our nation and of the whole world is at stake. And yet, people know it - people read it in the newspapers, people read that at the first attack, a hundred million Americans might be killed.And yet, they talk about it as if they were talking about something being wrong with the carburetor of their car, perhaps.

FROMM: Actually, they have paid more attention to the danger of a flu epidemic than to the danger of the atomic bomb, because...

WALLACE: Don't you think that's a little overstatement, Dr. Fromm?

FROMM: Well, I wish it were, because what I see is relatively few people who experience, who feel, the danger, which we are threatened with, and who feel the responsibility of doing something about it.

WALLACE: Or maybe, when you talk about the responsibility of doing something, maybe it simply is this: that we find it very difficult to make ourselves felt in this amorphous society in which we live. Each individual would want to do something but would find it difficult to make himself felt.

FROMM: Well, I think here you point out to one, really, of the basic defects of our system: that the individual citizen has very little possibility of having any influence - of making his opinion felt in the decision-making. And I think that, in itself, leads to a good deal of political lethargy and stupidity. It is true that one has to think first and then to act -but it's also true that if one has no possibility of acting, one's thinking kind of becomes empty and stupid.

Erich Fromm & Mike Wallace

"The Mike Wallace Interview", 25th of May 1958

First they came for the Tibetans, I did not speak up because I am not Tibetan.

Then they came for the Uighur, I did not speak up because I am not Uighur.

Then they came for Hong Kong, I did not speak up because I am not from Hong Kong.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ ... tans_and_uyghurs/f26czpj/

I used to work for Blizzard. The Chinese government requested that we modify the WoW client so that they could intercept all chat. As far as I know, no-one said anything, including me - and Blizzard, of course, was more than happy to comply, given the size of the market and the risk of being forbidden to do business there. There were plenty of other MMOGs happy to play ball and eat that cake.

I didn't say anything. It was happening to "them", Chinese nationals. Not only that, but "they" should know better than to say sensitive things online, because even if we didn't install the back door, I reasoned, it wouldn't be too hard to get that data through various other means.

I really regret not only my participation, but not making a big stink about it. No-one did. I strongly suspect that that same system is being being used domestically, now. Clearly it was the wrong thing to do. I've regretted my role in that implementation for several years. I shouldn't have participated, and I should have protested. Even if it didn't stop it, at least the company leadership might have felt the heat. But I was a coward and I didn't want to lose my job, didn't want to fight a legal battle, and, like I said, it was just China spying on it's people, which everyone knew they do anyway.

And who knows? The news probably would have been ignored, or, if it wasn't, I might have been branded as a coward and a disloyal employee, betraying the people who put food on my table. And I being under 30, overpaid, over-priviledged, etc. I can hear the Fox News commentators even now. That, to me, has been the most difficult thing about Snowden, is that here's someone who did the right thing, who revealed wrong-doing on the part of our government, and there are a lot of people who say he's the wrongdoer, who attack him as disloyal and worse. A back door in a game used by China? Who would even care about that? And if they did, I'd just be torn to shreds, unemployable and with heaven-knows-what kind of future.

The reaction to Manning and Snowden, particularly the lack of strong public support, sends a strong signal that people don't want to know. They don't want to upset the apple cart. They don't want to challenge the government, they don't want to question it, not even when it's clearly violating it's own most important rules - the rules that, presumably, we've been fighting to promote these last 200 years. It seems hopeless.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6154475

We don't hate; we're just indifferent. Same result, less effort.

Jay D. Dyson

At some point we all have to stop saying "well I'm a {baker, hacker, librarian, truck driver,...}, why should I worry about these problems?" and realize that this is world-altering stuff happening, and if you want your little corner of the world to survive, you have to mobilize to protect it, even if that means doing a little less of the things you normally do.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6120778

Small minds decay! Average minds delay! Great minds teach All-One today!

Emanuel Bronner

The middle-class public generally isn't against arrest and/or execution by the government for secret crimes. What they are against is the arrest of people that they relate to, and who share their values. The only principled stands that they can understand are standing for children, animals, personal possessions, and customer service.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6224308

Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

John Stuart Mill

Inaugural Address at University of St. Andrews (1867)

Maybe young students must ask their parents the answer to this question. They should ask the principals of schools and colleges, elderly neighbours, relatives, friends, and even the strangers on the road. Once we all start asking ourselves about our apathy, maybe a few hearts will be stirred.

Anil Gupta

"Rains have arrived. Why do we keep neglecting rain water harvesting?" (pdf)

Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love.

Julian Assange

Because we are lied to all the time, in ways so routine they are beneath conscious notice, even the most direct lies are losing their power to shock us.

Charles Eisenstein

"The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies"

FROMM: Like for instance, that we are confronted with the possibility of a war of such destruction that the whole existence of our nation and of the whole world is at stake. And yet, people know it - people read it in the newspapers, people read that at the first attack, a hundred million Americans might be killed.And yet, they talk about it as if they were talking about something being wrong with the carburetor of their car, perhaps.

FROMM: Actually, they have paid more attention to the danger of a flu epidemic than to the danger of the atomic bomb, because...

WALLACE: Don't you think that's a little overstatement, Dr. Fromm?

FROMM: Well, I wish it were, because what I see is relatively few people who experience, who feel, the danger, which we are threatened with, and who feel the responsibility of doing something about it.

WALLACE: Or maybe, when you talk about the responsibility of doing something, maybe it simply is this: that we find it very difficult to make ourselves felt in this amorphous society in which we live. Each individual would want to do something but would find it difficult to make himself felt.

FROMM: Well, I think here you point out to one, really, of the basic defects of our system: that the individual citizen has very little possibility of having any influence - of making his opinion felt in the decision-making. And I think that, in itself, leads to a good deal of political lethargy and stupidity. It is true that one has to think first and then to act -but it's also true that if one has no possibility of acting, one's thinking kind of becomes empty and stupid.

Erich Fromm & Mike Wallace

"The Mike Wallace Interview", 25th of May 1958