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For other uses, see Apathy (disambiguation).
Apathy is the lack of emotion, motivation, or enthusiasm. Apathy is a psychological term for a state of indifference — where an individual is unresponsive or "indifferent" to aspects of emotional, social, or physical life. Clinical apathy is considered to be at an elevated level, while a moderate level might be considered depression, and an extreme level could be diagnosed as a dissociative disorder. The physical aspect of apathy associated with physical deterioration, muscle loss, and lack of energy is called lethargy — which has many pathological causes as well.
Apathy can be object-specific — toward a person, activity or environment. It is a common reaction to stress where it manifests as "learned helplessness" and is commonly associated with depression. It can also reflect a non-pathological lack of interest in things one does not consider important.
Certain drugs are known to cause symptoms associated with or leading to apathy. Apathy is also very similar to laziness, and may be an extreme form of it.
[edit] History
In early Christianity, the Christians adopted the term apathy, to express a contempt of all earthly concerns, a state of mortification, as the gospel prescribes. Thus, the word has been used since then among more devout writers. Clemens Alexandrinus, in particular, brought the term exceedingly in vogue, thinking hereby to draw the philosophers to Christianity, who aspired after such a sublime pitch of virtue. [1]
The concept of apathy became more sympathetically accepted in popular culture during the First World War, in which the appalling conditions of the Western Front led to apathy and shellshock amongst millions of soldiers.
[edit] Apathy in common and religious terms
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As a clinical diagnosis, "apathy" does not indicate laziness — but in common use the correlation is rather direct. In religious doctrine, slothfulness is considered to be a sin which leads to further disassociation with life and prescience — in this context, to be substantially disassociated is to be "in hell" which is to say 'in a state where the spirit or soul is destroyed or otherwise in a state of destruction.'
The concept of disassociation is controversial — in the practice of Eastern religions, like Hinduism and Buddhism, for example, an advanced meditative state has aspects of extreme detachment — though the religion and ritual of meditation is believed to provide proper grounding such as to properly recover from the detachment and to benefit from its experience. Hence some critics view ascetics or saints as striving for a level of "apathy", which theologians prefer to call disassociation or detachment.
[edit] References
- ^ This article incorporates content from the 1728 Cyclopaedia, a publication in the public domain. [1]
[edit] See also