Your life begins to end the moment you start being silent about the things that matter.
— Martin Luther King, Jr., American civil rights leader
CONSUMER addictions blank out the sounds, smells and scandals that assail normal senses and consciousness. Survival of the ablest is the law of the concrete jungle — get a job, shelter, affordable transportation, and uninterrupted food supply. The future is controlled by other focused forces. Apathy is a safe shelter. Erasure is closure.
It is a sad fact that the greatest danger to our future is apathy.
Reinforced by hubris, hype and hypocrisy the public sector assumes leviathan proportions while accumulating more sting with the complicity of the rule by law. The laws that are supposed to stop crime are only aimed at the hapless who otherwise enjoy majority in numbers.
Apathy is the overrated protection of that rock you are hiding under, observed the American diver Laura Ryan.
Decided cases by some alien court of law hundred years ago decide the cases in hand today as if the old is identical and similar to provide a good fit. Principles of law are a luxury seldom invoked.
Judgements resembling a cut-and-paste catch-phrase by a Denning, Wilberforce, Acton, Reid or Holmes is eruditely added to offer a permanent haven in remedies fashioned by precedents.
Plato contented that the price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men infatuated with political witchcraft.
Laws destined to apply to all suddenly find themselves defining immunity based on the standing and status of the law-breaker who is usually the law-maker. Judges, lawyers and prosecutors crack their whips of high office into high gear to maintain their sacrosanct images. Looking to law for solutions is like pardoning a mass murderer who agrees to build a huge monument for all his victims.
Apathy is the slow poison coursing through the body politic that paves the way to tyranny, according Laurence Overmire, an American educator.
Endless agony assails the rakyat led by leaders born with silver chips on their shoulders who willingly accept apathy. Apathy is the acceptance of the unacceptable, observed the British theologian John Stott.
Those entrusted with stopping and punishing corruption rely on fact-conjurers, storytellers, evidence-fabricators, proof-manufacturers, image-consultants and spin doctors who make a great living shoring up legal briefs.
Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society, predicted Aristotle.
Pandemics, an unstoppable frog culture, scandals, trials, by-elections and floods come and go. Nobody is prepared. Cause and effect are not important except for the predictable impact. Nobody gives a damn anymore.
There is a strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate. It’s apathy. It’s not giving a damn, claimed Leo Buscaglia, an American author.
Meanwhile, common sense has taken off in a hurry to another galaxy.
Emiliano Salinas, a Mexican businessman, referred to fear as something better than apathy because fear make us do something. The working class which worries about not being able to put food on the family table practice this inevitable karmic truism.
Man’s apathy is the fertile ground that encourages evil spirits to tend to their seeds, observed another American theologian.
The government, understandably, is busy making laws to prevent future failure in socioeconomic and geopolitical stances. Definitive plans for broad spectrum consultation with nationwide stake-holders are on silent mode. Incompetents meanwhile carve profitable niches to stay afloat in business and politics no thanks to sugar daddies.
Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence, cautioned the Swiss philosopher Henri Frederic Amiel.
The apathy of the law was recently showcased when 28 Malaysian retired judges sued the government for failing to make pension adjustments as provided under the law. Must a lawsuit solve every inherent flaw in the law?
Apathy is a rational reaction to a system that no longer represents, hears or addresses the vast majority of people, observed the British comedian Russell Brand.
People take to free flow social media and not the usual media outlets to vent their honest to goodness sentiments. Otherwise, nothing gets said and done.
We go through life dividing our lives in eight-hour shifts. The first eight to earn a living. The next eight for recreation. The last eight for sleep. If one lives to be ninety, one would have slept for 30 years according to this weird arithmetic.
Apathy must be discarded like a bad habit most of us care, but not enough. Wakefulness does not equate to consciousness.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
