The false virtue of indifference

Politics is boring and unimportant, our culture tells us. We're supposed to think of it as a virtue to "rise above politics." But what if that's precisely what they want us to believe?

Have you ever tried to give people an update on what’s going on in Washington, D.C. beneath the oozing surface of the swamp, and the response you get is disdain for anything political? Or maybe you are not very political yourself, and you wonder why or how anyone could care about such mundane things.

That’s because politics, in our culture, is thought of as a grab bag of extremes. We can reach in and pull out any number of great excuses to look away from the train wreck that is America.

Too many extremists?

There are too many extremists, we’re told by some—we need more centrists. Or maybe there are too many centrists, and not enough ideologues. Politics is hopeless, or too confusing, or too corrupt, or too boring, or too unspiritual, or too depressing.

But these thoughts betray an attitude that indifference to politics is a virtue; that not caring is somehow a higher ideal than caring. Yet indifference is a synonym for apathy. So is apathy a virtue or a vice?