In Defense of Apathy; T. Hazlett

The cry for involvement is most frequently raised on the campus. Second-semester freshmen, in fran tic search for the passionate days of relevance and revolution of such recent memory, ask: Where is the involvement? Where is the commu nity action? Where are the people who really care? Mr. Hazlett is a partner is a los Angeles public relations firm and a freelance writer. Wake up people! Get in volved! Whip that Apathy! Make a better world! Organize your Community! Change your Nation! Reform the World! On the contrary! Maligned and persecuted, apa thy - in the social sense of the word-is possibly the noblest of civic virtues. The ability to mind your own business, to let others do their thing, and to concentrate your efforts on your own life, are the discerning characteristics of a well adjusted and competent human being. When contemporary critics look about, they are terrified to witness the 1976 college student living his life privately, concentrating on his course of study and more worried 495 496 THE FREEMAN August about the job that lies ahead than about the political shenanigans that so absorb the press. What is so apathetic - in a broader sense of the word-about caring for your own life and respecting the other fellow to run his? Is this the "apathy" that shocks and bedevils the "activists"

of our age? Indeed it is. For the prevailing sen timen ts of "enlightened Ameri cana" operate on entirely different premises than the rational predilec tions of honest and civilized men. Those premises build from the frightening cliche: "We are our brother's keeper." Getting "involved" does not simply entail involvement per se: What the vogue defini tion reflects specifically is involvement in the affairs of others-of the school, community, society. The hip activism is little more than an excuse for running the lives of others, hence the pathological attachment with politics. The concept of people being con tent to attend to their own self in terests has predictably little appeal to the "activist" mentality. Pri vate people, pursuing personal goals and enjoyments, offer a staunch defense against the per vasive moralizing of the meddling intruders. The approach of the lat ter is entirely paternalistic and operates under the assumption that since we are our brother's keeper, there must be somebody who cares enough'to do the keeping. Somehow, that entity is always th~. state, which makes it a difficult family relationship to break off.

Undoubtedly, Henry David Thoreau was on the rig h t path when he said: "If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house wi th the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life." Your life is your own, yours to succeed or to fail with, yours to live as you decide. Your obligation is to yourself: to the only person whose life does in fact depend on you. It will, in reality, be your actions that make your life what it is. Why feel guilty about making the best you can of your own efforts-and why not allow others the same chance? Let "Mind Your Own Business" be the political slogan of free men in a free land. Do not take lightly the social non involvement of today's college stu dents. They are busy-with their own business. If that business should be foreign to your own aspirations, appreciate the diversity among individuals and welcome the opportunity to express it. And above all else, keep a heal thy distance from the champion of mindless social involvement. In all probabil ity, there is ~ sound reason behind his decision to forget his own life and to attempt to rule everyone else's. ~ TIME to READ THERE IS an old story of the man who read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the intervals of waiting for his wife to dress for dinner.

From Management Briefs, published by Rogers, Slade & Hill, Manage ment Consultants of New York City, come these ten ways to use those otherwise-wasted quarter-hours. 1. Talk less (and watch less the TV programs unworthy of your maturity. Watch more, if you please, the good ones; fewer of the poor ones). 2. Carry a book in your bag (your brief case, your topcoat pocket). 3. Put a book under your pillow at night; if you can't sleep, read. 4. Wake up 15 minutes earlier every morning, and read. 5. Keep 4book handy to pick up (at home, when waiting for the dinner; at the o4ce for waits between engagements, or for long-distance 'phone calls tp come through). I I i 6. Have tt book ready when meeting unpunctual people (or waiting for meetings to get under way). 7 Take along your own book when going to the dentist or doctor (or an appointment with the man who may keep you waiting 15 to 45 minutes in his anteroom), Why read their old magazines?

8. Keep an unread book in your car in case of traffic jams or a wait for repairs (or a wait for your wife to do her shopping). 9. Never go on a journey in a public conveyance without a book. 10. Remember that a book in the hand is worth two in the bookcase (and a good current magazine in hand is worth three in the wastebasket).