The Inner Monologue

By The Author

We live in a culture that treats caring as a moral duty. We are told to care about our jobs, our reputations, our relationships, our politics, our social media feeds. Self-help gurus urge us to “lean in.” Motivational speakers tell us to “find our passion.” Corporations urge us to “bring our whole selves to work.” To care, we are told, is to be alive.

But perhaps the opposite is true. Perhaps the healthiest choice in a world of constant stimulation and endless demand is to care less—or not at all.

This may sound harsh. After all, we’re trained to see apathy as a moral failure, a retreat from responsibility. Yet apathy, properly understood, is not despair or laziness. It is detachment. It is the choice to stop letting every outcome, every slight, every comparison dominate our state of mind. And in a society plagued by stress, burnout, and ego-driven competition, apathy may be the most radical form of mental health we have left.

Selfishness Is a Heavy Burden

At one end of the human spectrum lies selfishness. The selfish person—or worse, the narcissist—seems carefree on the surface, but in truth is perpetually on guard. Selfishness is exhausting. It demands constant validation, constant defense, constant measuring of whether the world is giving enough attention.

It is a brittle way to live. A selfish person’s happiness depends on external approval, and the world is stingy with approval. What looks like confidence is really fragility. And fragility is stressful.

Indifference Isn’t Freedom

Some believe they escape selfishness by becoming indifferent, callous, or even alienated. Yet these middle states are still tethered to the world they claim to reject. Callousness sneers. Alienation broods. Disaffection sulks. These are not free states of mind but reactive ones. They still bind us to the very forces we claim to have shrugged off.

Indifference is just selfishness with a scowl.

Apathy as Mental Liberation

True apathy is something else entirely. It is not that nothing matters; it is that nothing has to matter enough to unbalance us. The Stoics called this apatheia—freedom from being ruled by passions. In apathy, success and failure are met with the same calm. Praise and insult glance off with equal force.

Apathy is not withdrawal from life, but a healthier way of living it. Stress feeds on attachment to results. When results no longer rule us, stress starves.

Why Apathy Is the Healthier Baseline

There is a practical advantage to apathy as well. From a state of detachment, one can always dip temporarily into selfishness, ambition, or even outrage when survival or strategy requires it. Apathy is not paralysis—it is flexibility.

From selfishness, by contrast, the climb to apathy is nearly impossible. The ego rarely surrenders its grip. But from apathy, selfishness can be picked up as a tool, used, and set down again without damage. Apathy is the higher ground.

A Culture Addicted to Caring

So much of our modern malaise comes from caring too much. We care about likes on a post, promotions at work, comparisons with neighbors. We care about how we appear, how we rank, how we measure up. The result is constant anxiety, disappointment, and resentment.

We are told that to care is to be human. But if caring means endless stress, then perhaps the truly human choice—the compassionate choice toward ourselves—is to care less.

The Courage to Stop

Choosing apathy does not mean abandoning all responsibility. It means refusing to let every responsibility own us. It means reclaiming our inner calm from a world that profits off keeping us anxious.

Selfishness is stress. Callousness is resentment. Alienation is pain. Apathy is freedom.

And in a society that demands we always care, perhaps the bravest act of all is not to.