I consider apathy a virtue, and it irks me that others do not. Sometimes, I feel many of my peers hold emotion as an ideal for which to aspire. Many students make a serious effort to do absolutely nothing in the way of schoolwork. Most people I've met are about as socially active as the Democratic Party. The problem I see with all this is not the possible emergence of a lackadaisical society; I worry that all the Democrats-in-training around campus will continue to espouse activism and yet do nothing. They obviously need to better embrace their apathy.And, in all truth, to be apathetic is no crime. Catullus was apathetic. He was also brilliant. I would also feel empty if I were smart enough to write, "I hate and I love. Why would I do this, perhaps you ask? I do not know. But I feel that it happens and I am tortured." The great Roman poet basically sums up life in one elegiac couplet -- that the two major emotions which guide our lives are constantly in conflict and there is nothing we can do about it.

Catullus wrote the rest of his poems --save a few in which he tried to be extra-inventive with language -- about love, which is actually obsession, and hate, which is actually also obsession. But, everything he says can be laughed away until one reaches Carmen 85, aforementioned. Catullus discovered the absurdity of life before he died in 54 B.C., and the great existentialists revisited the concept two millennia later. From the first century before Christ to the 20th Century, people suffered to fight wars and make peace, build civilizations and destroy them, all for naught. The existentialists witnessed two millennia of bloodshed wrapped up in its best example: the 20th Century, and so they rewrote Catullus.

Albert Camus, among others, wrote of life's inherent meaninglessness. But, he also wrote of the unique meaning individuals are able to put into their own lives. It is very difficult to discover this unique meaning if one does not give apathy a chance. If a person is never apathetic about life, he will never have a chance to judge it. One must separate oneself from the everyday to understand it. Apathy allows people to become outside observers of humanity. Those who embrace apathy for their own sake are truly virtuous, for they are not lying to themselves about how much they care about various matters of ranging importance.

Of course, to care is no crime either. I would simply be skeptical of someone who had never felt apathy before he began to care. I am just as skeptical of anyone who is devoted to any one thing, having never tried another. Apathy is in fact the necessary foil to activism, which is meaningless without contrast. I think one of President Bush's major character flaws is that he felt many issues were meaningful even while binging on illicit drugs after he graduated from Yale. That is not healthy: Cocaine should definitely be taken with a side of apathy, Mr. Bush.

The point is we are all allowed to not care. We do not need to pretend we have empathy if we do not. No one should fault a university student -- or a recent graduate, as is the case with the U.S. president -- for doing drugs, slacking on homework and rejecting the ideals of his parents' generation; that's what we're supposed to be doing! Then, one day we will understand what it means to care, because we know what it feels like not to. Thirty sounds like a good age to be socially active.

Of course, we can be socially active now, as long as we all take the time to question sufficiently. One should never assume anything is inherently important. We must find our own meaning in everything for which we care or take action. It took Catullus chasing his unfaithful lover, Lesbia, all over the Roman countryside for him to realize the contradictory nature of life. Everyone who fails to question will continue to chase his own tail. College is a great time to be both active and apathetic. Believe it or not, they do go hand in hand.

-- Matthew Bettinger '05 submits a column to the Justice.