Most often, ironically, the people who ask about indifference are the ones who suffer from it. An emptiness has formed in the soul, which is why the problem of indifference is now so relevant. At the same time, it is not so often that one comes across arguments in defense of indifference; such people are likely to be immediately called callous. Why do people become indifferent? Should it always be characterized solely from a negative point of view, or are some external factors influencing it? Psychologists quite often put indifference and apathy on the same level; this is a state when a person has simply lost interest in what previously gave him positive emotions.
The active position towards life has been shaken, the feeling of falling in love has passed, and now the man has become completely indifferent to the woman. Some important thread that connected them has been lost; the person no longer evokes the storm of emotions that was between them before. And it becomes completely unimportant with whom a representative of the stronger sex communicates, whether he is busy or free, with whom he tries to spend his leisure time.
Why do people show indifference to each other?
There are situations when indifference becomes a consequence of certain psychological characteristics. A person who is phlegmatic in his temperament type does not experience emotions that are usually characteristic of sanguine and choleric people. Sometimes it is worth considering indifference as a manifestation of selfishness, sometimes even self-centeredness. Some people were raised this way by their parents, while some people simply lack any ethical feelings. Resentment can make you look differently at a person who has disappointed you in some way. And after such an unpleasant situation, the heart simply closes and ceases to experience joy, and any positive feelings, indifference sets in. Psychologists say that absence is much easier to bear, unlike emotional pain, and this is a fact.
Indifference in modern society
According to studies, it turned out that residents of megacities are more likely to show indifference than residents of small cities. You can talk for a long time and highlight a number of key elements, ranging from: problems in your personal life and ending with eternal employment and lack of money. But no one can change a world in which people die every day. Every person, if possible, should do good deeds - buy fruit from an old woman who sells in the passage, or find a dozen excuses and hide behind the fast pace of life, forgetting about the main thing.
As one Buddhist wisdom says: nothing is permanent in this world. All people are equal, they come into this world and leave in the same way. Anyone who earns millions today and enjoys life, tomorrow may hear a terrible diagnosis from a doctor and money will not help him cope with his illness. And the one who had nothing will find happiness next to a person who will sincerely love him and want to hug the whole world. Indifference can be just a defensive reaction and you just need to agree that there is no way out of the situation just like that and “burying your head in the sand” like an ostrich. Sooner or later you will have to grow up and understand that you cannot look at the world in such a childish way. Good deeds should accumulate and it is very important to do them as much as possible, showing good attitude towards people.
How to get rid of it?
You should release all the grievances that have accumulated inside you and set a goal for yourself - to overcome indifference to the person who caused such emotions in you. It is always difficult to control your emotions and monitor the flow of attention. But even if you were treated badly, this is still not a reason to withdraw into yourself. It is very important to be able to react in time and respond with good, sincere words or deeds. You should never lose faith in people, because not everyone around you is the same, there are sincere and kind people who will definitely not offend you.
Such persons are primitive, infantile, they do not have a specific goal in life, so their existence can be characterized as a lack of a function called reflection. By the way, reflection is the so-called appeal to your experience and inner world, the ability to comprehend your actions, the ability to understand what exactly and why you experience these particular feelings.
Psychologist Lyudmila Petranovskaya often compares the ethical sense in children with different talents. Thanks to her daily work with children, she advises helping to develop creative potential. The same can be said about the ability to sympathize, which should be cultivated consciously so that the heart does not harden and completely become indifferent. What should you do to shelter a stray cat or dog? You can help the sick and give to the poor on the street.
If you begin to notice that your favorite job no longer inspires, is increasingly depressing and only causes indifference, you should definitely take a break from boring everyday life and routine. It's never too late to consider other employment options and choose the most suitable hobby for yourself, which will allow you to come to your senses and plunge into an atmosphere of new emotions and sensations. Remember that everything depends only on you and everything is in your hands. Therefore, do not be so indifferent and look at the world with maximum positivity, openness and friendliness.
Indifference is an indifferent attitude towards the problems, troubles and sorrows of another
person.
At first, indifference arises towards complete strangers. Then he moves on to a circle of superficial acquaintances, then takes over the person’s friends, and eventually imperceptibly crushes his relationships with friends and family. Often, indifference initially arises as indifference to the suffering of an animal, gradually spreading to people. It’s like moral and psychological rust, which by itself, without purposeful efforts on the part of a person, increasingly captures and destroys him.
Indifference goes alongside selfishness and rationalism, self-confidence and narcissism. It is the first step towards cruelty and aggressiveness. Indifference can cover a person’s entire mental “field” with a thick carpet of “weeds” that destroys any positive feeling or thought, which can lead to complete moral and psychological degradation of the individual.
A person who is indifferent to everything except work is sucked into vanity, irritability, aggressiveness, anxiety, and a desire for self-realization appear. And nothing else? Is this how a person should be seen? To all questions not related to work, he has a prepared answer: “It’s all nonsense...”. This is just his little world into which he doesn’t let anyone in - it’s not nonsense. He has covered himself with a shell and thinks that he is protected. But there are people who love him, who are not indifferent to his fate, although he does not believe it. How to convince him, how to make him believe in feelings? What needs to be done for his defense to collapse? After all, it is said: “Knock on the door and it will open to you,” or: “The stronger the pressure, the closer the goal.”
What if you leave such a person alone? Let him live his limited life, let him close himself in his own little world. He feels good there, as he claims. Maybe he's just waiting for everyone to leave him alone? But most likely this is not the case. After all, there are reasons that forced him to create his own closed world. Someone or something is not letting him in from there. Does not allow you to live an interesting life, with different feelings and emotions. Having understood the reasons, you can bring this person out of the state - “nobody needs me and I don’t need anyone or anything.” I do not advise anything and cannot know the recipe for the disease “indifference to everything.” But with your active attention and behavior, your CARE, you can achieve a lot. The main thing is to believe that you can change this world of indifference and the indifferent people living in it. And also - NEVER lose hope and faith in victory... It is necessary to remember that the world is as bad or good as we perceive it as bad or good.
Don't be afraid of enemies - in the worst case they can kill you. Don't be afraid of your friends - in the worst case, they can betray you. Fear the indifferent - they do not kill or betray, but only with their tacit consent does betrayal and murder exist on earth.
Indifference and indifference are the worst vices of today's life. Lately we have been faced with this so often that for us such behavior of people, unfortunately, has become the norm. Almost every day you can see people's indifference. Have you ever thought about where it comes from?
Reasons for indifference
Often, indifference is a way of protecting a person, an attempt to close himself off from cruel reality. For example, if a person has often been humiliated or hurt by offensive phrases, he will try to avoid and will not make contact with others. That is why a person will unconsciously try to show an indifferent appearance so as not to be touched.
But over time, the following tendency may develop: a person will have a problem with human indifference, because indifference will become his internal state, not only in relation to himself, but also towards others.
It is not hatred that kills us, but human indifference.
Why does indifference kill?Indifference kills every living thing in a person; it is callousness of heart and lack of sincerity. At the same time, a person is not responsible for such behavior, and this is perhaps the worst thing.
Indifference is dangerous because it can gradually develop even into a mental illness. The reasons for indifferent behavior may be long-term use of psychotropic drugs, mental illness, drug and alcohol use. Also, a feeling of indifference can occur after severe stress or shock - for example, the loss of a loved one. In adolescents, cruelty and indifference can develop due to lack of parental attention, lack of love, or due to family violence.
In psychology, the term used is obsessive human behavior. Such people cannot understand their emotions, and they are indifferent to the feelings and experiences of other people. They do not know what pity and compassion are. Alexithymia can be either a congenital diagnosis or a consequence of psychological trauma. Scientists say that indifference cannot be cured.
There are a great many examples of indifference. From a conversation with a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, Innokenty Ivanovich Kuklin: “I once walked through the center of Irkutsk. Suddenly I suddenly felt bad, and I fell right in the middle of the street.. Everyone avoided me for a long time, throwing phrases “here’s my grandfather, he got drunk in the middle of the day...”. But I fought for these people. Terrible time."
We can talk endlessly about indifference, and this hurts us especially strongly when questions concern our loved ones. Then the pain becomes incredibly acute.
Indifference leads to the destruction of personality and interferes with a person’s harmonious existence. This is why it is so important to raise your children and your younger brothers and sisters correctly. It is necessary to teach children responsiveness and kindness from childhood so that they can empathize and support others.
It is always important to remember that sometimes the life of another person may depend on your behavior, and it does not matter who you are - a doctor, a driver, or just a person passing by.
Indifference (Indifferent) as a personality quality is the loss of the ability to love something or someone.
Indifferent love is a stupid incompatible phrase, as absurd as the combination of mortal murder or good Evil. An indifferent person is one who has lost the ability to love, a person with a burnt-out heart. Sergei Yesenin described this state: “And nothing will disturb the soul, And nothing will make it tremble, - He who has loved cannot love, He who has burned out cannot be set on fire.”
When love for something or someone lives in a person, it overflows and pours out on others, it cannot be measured and hidden. The damage and destructiveness of indifference lies in the absence of love. A callous person with a hardened heart can tenderly love himself, his wife and children, without showing his feelings and without showing emotions. There is no equal sign between indifference and callousness; these are far from synonymous. In most families, men, to one degree or another, show callousness towards loved ones, but accusing them of lack of love means a cruel insult. They were not taught in childhood, and they do not know how to show love, tenderness and affection. If indifference to one's wives and children coincided with callousness, we would have universal celibacy.
Somehow Love meets on its way Falling in Love. - Hello, love! How I admire you, you are the strongest feeling! - exclaims Love. “Yes, I’m stronger than you,” Lyubov agrees. - But do you know what my strength is? — she asks thoughtfully. “Because people cannot be happy without you, you connect hearts,” Love answers confidently. “No, this is not my strength; what makes me strong is my ability to forgive,” Lyubov disagrees. - What can you forgive if you are already hurt by Betrayal? - Love is perplexed. “Yes, I suffer greatly from Betrayal,” says Lyubov, “but I can forgive Betrayal, since a person commits this act not out of malice, but out of ignorance.” - But you won’t be able to forgive Treason! - exclaims Love. “Yes, it’s difficult to forgive Betrayal,” states Lyubov. - But I can also forgive Treason, because the person who cheated has the opportunity to choose the best, comparing people through trial and error.
- Could you really forgive a lie? - asks Love. “Silly, lying is only human weakness; it causes less harm than all other feelings.” Often people lie out of reluctance to hurt or out of awareness of their own hopelessness, and this is not so bad. - So, it’s normal for people to hide the truth and lie to each other? - Love is perplexed. “Of course, people can tell lies, but not when they truly love,” answers Lyubov. Therefore, lying has nothing to do with me; when people love, they don’t lie. - What else can you forgive? — Love is interested. - I can forgive Anger, because it is short-lived and passes over time, Harshness, since it is caused by Sadness, and a person is upset not for his own reason. I can forgive Resentment, she is the older sister of Chagrin, I can also forgive Disappointment, since Suffering often comes after it, answers Love.
- Oh, Love, I wish I had your strength! - Love exclaims admiringly. “But I’m not like that, I fade away at the first test.” How I envy you! - You're wrong, my girl! — Love disagrees. “There is a feeling that even I cannot forgive.” Indeed, I can forgive a lot, but this terrible feeling can cause me severe pain, and there is no medicine in the world to cure it. This feeling poisons me and hurts me more than Betrayal and Treason, it hurts me worse than Evil, Lies and Resentment. This feeling is called Indifference, it is the most terrible of all existing feelings. Disgust, Hatred and Contempt are also negative feelings, but they express an attitude towards a person. They are nothing compared to Indifference. An indifferent person does not care about the feelings of others and what is happening in their lives. It is indifference that is stronger than me; it destroys Love.
B. Yasensky in “The Conspiracy of the Indifferent” wrote: “Do not be afraid of enemies - in the worst case, they can kill. Don't be afraid of your friends - at worst, they can betray you. Fear the indifferent - they do not kill or betray, but it is with their silent consent that betrayals and murders are committed on earth.” An indifferent, that is, an indifferent person is nothing, dreaming, amorphous, passive or, as it is said in the book of Revelations 3:15-16, “lukewarm”: “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot; Oh, that you were cold or hot! But because you are warm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.” A “hot” or “cold” person is expressed in some way, has his own face, position, opinion. A “warm” person, that is, an indifferent person, is not capable of an active spiritual life.
Often, the root of indifference is buried in distant childhood. For a child, expressing emotions is a vital need. If you reject it, it will not disappear anywhere, because it serves as a manifestation of the essence of the little person. The need will remain unfulfilled inside and will persistently seek other indirect forms of manifestation. Unfortunately, when realized, the needs of the psyche take on a distorted form, as happens with indifference. The child was rudely forbidden to show his emotions. He developed emotional fear. But you cannot escape from nature; the manifestation of feelings and emotions is an important human need. To fulfill the need, he puts on a mask of indifference.
The subconscious firmly preserves children's dislike, lack of warmth and affection, lack of proper attention and care from parents. Statistics say that most indifferent people in childhood were deprived of maternal love and care. In later life, there is an ordinary “transfer” of relationships towards oneself in childhood to one’s spouse, children and other people. Indifference comes back to parents like a boomerang.
Adolescents have a certain form of indifference that is mistaken for maturity. Boys are instilled with the belief that a real man should not be emotional, tough and extremely restrained, otherwise he will be considered a “weak man.” Therefore, young men try on a mask of indifference. In addition to a difficult childhood deprived of love, the mask of indifference gradually develops mental laziness in a person, preventing him from responding to other people’s worries and providing effective help in difficult times. Mental laziness eats away at the soul, forcing you to truly play the role of an indifferent person - not to interfere, not to pay attention, to take care of your nerves and strength. Gradually, the principles of indifference ripen in the mind: “My hut is on the edge, I don’t know anything”, “My shirt is closer to my body”, “After us there’s a flood”, “Our business is a side”, “Even if the grass doesn’t grow.” Over time, indifference becomes a serious mental illness, the further development of which means complete indifference to everything in the world, even to oneself. Just as rust eats iron, indifference, without conscious effort on the part of a person, gradually enslaves and destroys his soul. A person irrevocably withdraws into himself, while poisoning the lives of family members. Everyone avoids him. Indifference kills all feelings; in terms of the power of its harmful effects, it significantly exceeds betrayal, resentment and lies.
I had to see with my own eyes the growth of indifference in the example of the son of one of my acquaintances. The family was dysfunctional: the mother hated the father, and she took out her hatred and disappointment with life on the children. The mother's harshness and callousness were selective - the son was sick, so everything went to the girl. To cultivate indifference, you need to have a certain “pedagogical skill.” The first thing Makarenko did as a woman was to wean her son from taking care of someone. Everyone in the house walked on tiptoe so as not to disturb the patient. Selfishness and terrible utter laziness began to grow in the boy. He was no longer sick, but his habit of lying on the couch all day and being completely uninterested in anything remained. By the time he reached adulthood, he stood two meters tall, a fathom at the shoulders, and could kill a bull with his head. If we impartially describe his manifested qualities: they are laziness, gross selfishness, deceit, hypocrisy, cynicism, irresponsibility and ignorance. The toxic cocktail of personality traits was already alarming with its persistent lack of interest in most areas of life. But what was most troubling was not the ability to love someone or something. Having married for convenience, ten years later he abandoned his family, leaving two children. He never thought about them again. Alimony did not pay a single ruble. He returned to his parents and has been lying on the couch for fifteen years. No feelings, no love, complete paralysis of the soul - indifference.
Indifference takes a person into the looking glass of life. When he ceases to be interested in his own life, this is the logical end of the cultivation of indifference. But this is by no means indifference. There is a yawning chasm of fundamental differences between indifference and indifference. Indifference is: 1. selective lack of interest in someone or something at a given moment; 2. setting the mind to eliminate the excessive importance of someone or something. A person may be indifferent to himself, for example, after a strong shock. The nervous system “presses on the brakes” in order to restore wasted energy. In other cases, a person has a certain interest in something or someone. Only the corpse is not interested. So, a wife may be indifferent to football, but love figure skating. She can be indifferent to aquarium fish and, at the same time, adore her dog. In other words, indifference, unlike indifference, gets along quite well with selective love and interest in someone or something.
Indifference does not attach special importance to someone or something, does not highlight any objects of the external world with a bold line on the scale of importance. It makes no difference to her where to sing - in the Kremlin Palace or in front of ordinary peasants, where to perform - at the Olympic Games or at the championship of the Harvest society. Regardless of faces, that is, indifferently, she will everywhere express her point of view in the same way.
Indifference, unlike sterile and detached indifference, does not deny love and interest. Indifference paralyzes the soul. Indifference operates with the category not of the soul, but of the mind. For example, a person is partial to nicotine, but his mind forbids him to reach for a pack of cigarettes. If the mind is strong, the person will push the soul aside and will be indifferent to smoking.
Often, the reason for indifference lies in a person’s desire to protect himself from the negative emotions that befall him. Thus, in the niche of indifference it is convenient to protect yourself from the grumpiness of your boss or wife. When a stream of reproaches pours out on him every day, he, wanting to “survive,” often unconsciously plays the role of indifference. The only trouble is that over time this role becomes his natural internal incurable state.
In A.P. Chekhov’s story “Tosca,” human indifference is brilliantly depicted. Cab driver Iona Potapov's only son died. To overcome melancholy and an acute feeling of loneliness, he wants to tell someone about his misfortune, but no one wants to listen to him, no one cares about him. “He gets dressed and goes to the stable where his horse is. He thinks about oats, hay, the weather... He can’t think about his son when he’s alone... You can talk to someone about him, but it’s unbearably creepy to think about him and draw his image for yourself... - Are you chewing? - Jonah asks his horse, seeing its sparkling eyes. - Well, chew, chew... If we didn’t go to the oats, we’ll eat hay... Yes... I’m getting old now... My son should be driving, not me... He was a real cab driver... If only he could live... Jonah is silent for a while and continues: - So, brother filly... Kuzma Ionych is gone... He ordered him to live long... He took it and died in vain... Now, let's say, you have a foal, and you are this foal's own mother... And suddenly, let's say, this same foal ordered him to live long... Isn't it a pity? The little horse chews, listens and breathes into the hands of its owner... Jonah gets carried away and tells her everything..."
Peter Kovalev 2013
At least once in a lifetime, indifference overcomes every person. This state represents an indifferent attitude towards the world around us, people, current events and one’s own destiny. In medical terminology, indifference is known as apathy. This word comes from the Greek language, translated it means “detachment.” According to statistics, the highest percentage of cases of apathy is recorded in countries with high income levels. According to WHO, France ranks first - 21%, the United States is second - 19%, and the Netherlands is in third place - 17.9%. Modern medicine views apathy as a pathological condition that requires diagnosis and treatment.
Why is indifference dangerous?
A short-term state of apathy can be natural. As a rule, after vigorous activity, calm and indifference sets in. This temporary state can easily be eliminated by communicating with loved ones, watching a comedy, or getting a good night's sleep. But sometimes apathy can drag on for a long time. If the blues do not go away within 3 weeks, this should be a significant cause for concern. Few people know the dangers of indifference. It can signal serious problems in the body. In addition, such blues can develop into prolonged depression.
It is worth saying that there are extreme examples of indifference. This is a state in which a person shows indifference to everything that surrounds him and to himself. At a particularly advanced stage, he refuses to eat food, take care of his appearance and his own hygiene. This condition poses a direct threat to human health and life. In extreme cases, indifference, which is also synonymous with blues and depression, leads to the fact that a person completely loses his taste for life and decides to commit suicide. Therefore, it is very important to record such changes in behavior in a timely manner and seek help from a specialist.
