The other day a friend of mine asked me what ignorance and apathy meant.
I told him I don’t know and I don’t care. ;)
Boulders and the Sea. Hasselblad 500CM, Cinestill 400D, July 2024.
A lot of the world’s troubles can be traced back to a lack of understanding and caring. Either people don’t know any better or they don’t care to do any better. Learning and caring come naturally to some but are elusive to others.
There have certainly been times in my life when I should have known better or should have cared more but I didn’t. Some days I wake up and I am full of quiet hope, ready to meet the world and to do my best. Other days, I wake up and I can’t motivate myself to care deeply about anything and I make a series of decisions that are detrimental to my own and the world’s well-being.
Why is it so hard to stay consistently true to our higher goals?
Rock Garden. Hasselblad 500CM, Cinestill 400D, July 2024.
Some of us know better, but fail to care enough to do better. Without shifting responsibility for our own actions, perhaps one reason for this is because we live in an insane society. Who can remain sane when the whole world has gone mad?
Humanity is on a trajectory of self destruction; we are passengers on a bus hurtling towards a cliff and our driver has their foot on the gas. The timeline of this self destruction is quite long and spans many generations; perhaps that’s why the annihilation of life on Earth doesn’t appear as pressing a matter as the rise of interest rates on our mortgages.
We are all witnessing the great tragedy of diminishing biodiversity, catastrophic climate change, overpopulation, and a decimation of the natural systems that support our own existence. And despite having a solid understanding of what the issues are and what some of the potential solutions may look like, as a society, as a species, we are unable to act in a coordinated way to implement those solutions. No matter how many ‘summits’ are held amongst the world’s leaders, emissions continue to increase, land is still being cleared, the oceans are still being exploited.
As an individual that is part of society, no matter how noble or well intentioned our actions are, we are all riding the big old ship of human destiny that seems bound for a terrible maelstrom. Perhaps this is why I wake up some days and I simply don’t care any more. I know that no matter what my actions are, nature is going to be destroyed by myself and my fellow humans as members of an insane society that is founded on the unsustainable use of limited natural resources. Why bother getting out of bed when my existence proliferates the imbalance of the world?
Lemon Rock. Hasselblad 500CM, Cinestill 400D, July 2024.
But then something akin to spirit awakens in me and I refuse to give in to apathy. While there is life, there is hope, and while there is hope there is a possibility of altering the trajectory of the future. The prerequisite for change is the belief in its possibility. Even though there are some days when I want to give in and stop caring completely, a little spark always remains and it gives me enough to carry on, to keep caring.
I may live in an insane society, in a horrendously skewed, imperfect world, but I am alive and this is the only life that I know, (or remember). And like Neil Young, I believe ‘it is better to burn out than to fade away’. So I’m going to keep the fire alive, and leave ignorance and apathy to those who don’t know and to those who don’t care.
-A.S. 24/8/24, Lenah Valley.