On Apathy

When I was twelve years old, I wanted to be a journalist. More precisely, I wanted to write for National Geographic. A child of the early nineties, I was raised in that golden intersection of eras in which print journalism was still profitable. Every month I would wait anxiously for the arrival of those glossy, vibrant pages and the accompanying articles that would allow me, for a few hours, to dive into a world far removed from my comfortable suburban life.
Years later, like most high school seniors, I had the world figured out. I fervently searched for the best universities that allowed a double major in anthropology and journalism. Looking back, what I was really searching for is a fresh start. My little hometown had begun to feel at best stale, at worst stifling.
That year, having missed out on a spot in some other elective that at the time felt like everything but now escapes me, I was placed by my guidance counselor into an Environmental Science class. Mind you, I had spent my high school career surrounded by fellow AP students — immersed in the sort of safe intellectual bubble that masterfully facilitates high-level discussion without ever discussing anything important. Environmental Science, however, was a different scene entirely. The few people in that room who hadn’t (like me) been placed there unwillingly had chosen the class on its reputation for being an easy A.
Senior year progressed as it always does: slowly. I spent 50 minutes of each weekday listening to Mr. Elderidge drone on about biodiversity and ecological communities. It wasn’t that I didn’t care — I was roughly as much of an eco-warrior as anyone else in my generation — I just knew there were better ways I could be spending my time than listening to an uninspiring teacher lecture at a classroom full of uninspired stoners.
But it was there, on some uninspired Tuesday, that my life would forever take a turn. I wouldn’t recognize it until months, maybe years later. The topic was pollution, or perhaps extinction, or maybe it was scarcity. In any case, the main theme of the lecture was that humans had messed up. Yeah, Mr. Elderidge, I thought, we all get it. We’re parasites. Now can this be over? I’ve got calculus homework.
That’s when he said the words that would stay with me forever: “I gotta say, you guys, my generation has really screwed things up. I hope for your sake someone comes along and fixes it.”
Immediately my blood started to boil. How could an educated person, with a background in environmental sciences, be so apathetic? How could he stand here, in front of a room full of young adults getting ready to blindly enter the world, and so blatantly deflect responsibility from those who caused to problem to those affected by it? How could he just sit around, knowing what he knows, and take no action beyond hoping that someone could fix it?
Almost instantaneously, my boiling blood ran cold. For isn’t that exactly what I was doing? Was I not just choosing a comfortable direction in my life while lobbing the issue of our survival to some faceless chump down the line? What business did I have criticizing this high school science teacher when I was in as much of a position — if not more of one — to change something?
Panic set in soon after. This wasn’t in the script that I had so meticulously penned for my next eight to ten years. I made every effort to push it aside, but over the next few weeks found myself returning time after time to internet roundups of the best environmental jobs. It went through many iterations — first lawyer, then scientist, then writer and back to lawyer — before I was finally able to admit to myself what I had known for a while. I was not going to be a journalist.
It would be many more months before I came across the quote that would so eloquently sum up the whole experience. “The greatest threat to our planet,” contended Robert Swan, “is the belief that someone else will save it.” Greenhouse gases are not the danger; water pollution is not the danger; coal plants with their towering smoke stacks are not the danger. The danger is apathy, and it’s an enemy far deeper and far wider than any polluted river.
Nobody means to be apathetic. It’s a human response to a tragedy-of-the-commons situation; why should the individual inconvenience themselves when they can safely assume that someone else already has? It’s not unlike the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese, the 28-year-old who was brutally attacked over the course of a half hour, her screams within earshot of dozens on neighbors, none of whom called the police or made any attempt to help. And why should they? They all knew there were others around. Surely someone would already have called for help. After all, what kind of person stands idly by in the face of tragedy?
As it turns out, all kinds of people. When we know that others are aware of the problem, it is easy to be lulled into a comfortable apathy. What we don’t know — or what we do know, but we turn our faces from as though it is a monster in the mirror — can’t affect us. Except when it does.
All of these revelations were a lot for an 18-year-old me to handle. I was understandably overwhelmed by the options that were suddenly laid out before me. Law? Lucrative, but slow progress. Science? Rewarding, but financially unsure. Writing? Important, but would I really be solving problems?
Environmental engineering is a bit of a niche field, not yet completely separated from its parent industry, civil engineering. It is still largely confined to the academic realm, and even among academics is often regarded as fringe, hippie engineering. I settled on it only because I was drawn to math and science, and because it would give me a couple of years to decide what I “really” wanted to do. Environmental engineering has been the best accidental passion I’ve ever had. It’s messy, it’s frustrating, and at times, it just stinks (and not just from the sewage treatment research). And I love it. I love it with every fiber of my being, because engineering is, at its core, problem solving. And problem solvers are what the world needs.
Apathy is kind, it’s comforting. It’s the trash that we know we should take out, but instead look away from. It’s the bills we know have to be paid, but we slide into a desk drawer anyway. It provides solace, a temporary relief from permanent problems. We protect our minds with a strategic indifference that allows us to go about our days without the crushing weight of climate change on our backs. But left untreated, apathy becomes not a coping mechanism but a chronic malady. And when perpetuated by society, by politicians, and by science teachers, it threatens to become a plague.
Perhaps now you want the good news, the inspiration, the call to action. I can’t give it to you. I can’t give it to you because I don’t know you, and I don’t know what you care about. Maybe it’s the environment, maybe it’s homelessness, maybe it’s orphans in Africa. Maybe it’s the violin, or watercolors, or having lots of cats. None is more or less valid than any of the others. So while I can’t give you a call to action, I can tell you this: the biggest threat to anything is the belief that someone else will do it. At the end of apathy lies conviction. And with conviction, you have what it takes to be the someone else.
