An Introduction: Taking a course at the University of Indifference.

What does it really mean to be indifferent? Can a person be concerned, yet simultaneously indifferent? Is it possible, especially if one subscribes to the more Orwellian context of the idea, to be indifferent to everything? Is it that far a stretch of your imagination to envision people, being deeply concerned and troubled by everything around them, yet so indifferent to it that they can turn that concern off as casually as a light-switch? Do you see a simultaneous rancor and resignation? Take a closer look. It's as pervasive and utterly unremarkable as any other thing we take for granted on a daily basis. We are all, casually indifferent.

We are indifferent to each other. A man sees another person commit a crime, yet says nothing. Tomorrow he'll speak to his co-workers during his lunch break about "The decline of society". A woman watching the morning news on her TV set sees a report about children dieing in rocket attacks, and for a moment she is horrified. But the horror is fleeting as the reality of her daily ritual sets in, and she ensures that her children are readying themselves for school. We can't allow ourselves any breaks. There are more pressing matters that need doing, our lives that need living, and a dreary monotony that needs perpetuating.

Webster’s Dictionary defines indifferent as: “Having no particular interest or concern; apathetic.”

Is that what we are? Do we have no concerns or interests, and are we generally apathetic to everything that goes on around us? No, I think we are all very much interested in everything, especially if it affects us directly. Let’s try another take on the definition of the word as: “Characterized by a lack of partiality; unbiased”. Are we at all unbiased or do we lack personal opinions about the matters we hold of importance? No, I think that all of us have opinions on most everything. Let’s try our final definition from Dictionary.com, which defines Indifferent as: “Not active or involved; neutral.” Well now, I think we may have stumbled onto our applicable meaning.

That is exactly what we are, you and I. We are indifferent. We are not active, nor are we involved, and thus we are indifferent to these things while at the same time we are all quite convincingly concerned. This is what the University of Indifference has taught us; this is our reality - we can do nothing to affect the world around us.

We have no real means to do so. We have been led to believe, incorrectly, that to affect the world around us we need but do our duty to perpetuate the probability that those that can address these problems do, and we can go about our daily lives like a dutiful and patriotic citizenry should.

We have bread to win, food to provide, roofs to keep over our heads, and frankly these notions of politics, government, and change gets in the way of our ritualistic and largely monotonous lives. We are the average remainder of an average cliché which is the sum of an above-average problem.

Bill Hicks said it best, and I'm paraphrasing slightly: "Go back to bed America, your government is in control. Go back to bed America, You are free - free to do as we tell you."

This University of Indifference has been created, perfected, and managed by us all. We all eventually graduate, and many of us hold advanced degrees in general apathetic studies. There are however, a handful of us that are beginning to balk at the curriculum. Some of us - a vast but silent majority of us - are chomping at the bit. We are chafing in an area that it isn't polite to speak about, and some of us are begining to get a bit irritated, to put it mildly.

Is this irritation anything more than an annoyance though? Can this irritation become a fiery boil that will not be satiated with a simple and cursory scratch? Our parents told us at an early age to not scratch things, because it would only make it itch worse. What would our parents say to us now? Is simply scratching the problem going to make it go away?

Pull up a chair, and start hitting the books, because we've been given exactly what we haven't asked for. The doors to the hallowed halls of The University of Indifference are always open, and we're always accepting new applications.