“The privileged ones either laugh or pity those without.
For some reason they believe themselves to be the opposite.”
“Opposite of what we believe, they too are lacking.
Just what exactly is their bliss made of?”
“Of all the men that I have loved, only one has raped me.
He doesn't know that though. He didn't even care for my love.”
“Love is the single thing that's binds us together.
Seeing myself in you and you in me, that's what love is.”
“Is the point of sending ‘thoughts and prayers’ to ease the pain?
I wish better laws were being sent instead, but they're not.”
“Not that I don't care about the environment, but recycling is really hard.
I really am a good person though! I don’t carry around any ill will or hate”
“Hate is learned. They hated my grandmother. They hated my mother. They hate me.
I would say I didn't learn that same hate but…”
"...but what about the starving children in Africa! I hear this on TV. And at school.
And even at home. I don’t even feel a hint of guilt anymore. Just indifference.”
Indifference. Whenever I hear about another school shooting. Or another assault.
Or see another black face on the news. Or look at another recycling bin. All I feel is indifference.
APATHOCENE by Cameron Warren
"The term that I have developed to explain what I believe to be the root of many of the current issues and crises, both ecological and social in nature, is Apathocene. The main part of this term stems from the word pathos, the technique or quality of something (a lived experience, piece of literature, or otherwise) to elicit some type of feeling. Usually the feelings evoked are sympathetic, and compassionate towards the thing in question. The crux of this entire process is empathy. The ability to empathize with and understand another’s feelings is vital to reaching an understanding with the individual themselves. That is where the prefix, a-, comes into play. While pathos is involved with and evokes the process of empathy, when combined with the prefix a- (a-pathos) it denotes the complete absence or lack there of empathy. The complete opposite of empathy, apathy is the lack of care and understanding for others, as well as the lack of a want to care or understand something. Apathy extends itself to a host of foreign ideas, objects, experiences, and unfortunately, sometimes people.
"To this effect, I tried to create a piece of work that could highlight all of these issues and the issues most salient in my own various forms of activism and identities. In doing so, a certain phrase popped into my head. 'The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.' This quote is from the novel, 'Night' by Elie Wiesel, who himself is a survivor of the Holocaust, and wrote the book based off of his own experiences. Using this phrase and the background of its origin, I began to build onto and expand my ideas on the Apathocene, focussing on being able to describe these themes on the individual level."