Apathy
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Apathy is the lack of emotion, motivation, or enthusiasm. Apathy is a psychological term for a state of indifference — where an individual is irresponsive or "indifferent" to aspects of emotional, social, or physical life. Clinical apathy is considered to be at an elevated level, while a moderate level might be considered depression, and an extreme level could be diagnosed as a disassociative disorder. The physical aspect of apathy associated with physical deterioration, muscle loss, and lack of energy is called lethargy —which has many pathological causes as well.
Apathy can be object-specific —toward a person, activity or enviornment. It is a common reaction to stress where it manifests as "learned helplessness" and is commonly associated with depression. It can also reflect a non-pathological lack of interest in things one does not consider important.
Certain drugs are known to cause symptoms associated with or leading to apathy.
Apathy in common and religious terms
Main article: Detachment
Contrary to common belief, clinical diagnosis of "apathy" does not indicate laziness —but in common use the correlation is rather direct. In religious doctrine, slothfulness is considered to be a sin which leads to further disassociation with life and prescience —in this context, to be substantially disassociated is to be "in hell" which is to say 'in a state where the spirit or soul is destroyed or otherwise in a state of destruction.'
The concept of disassociation is controversial — in the practice of many Eastern religions, for example, an advanced meditative state has aspects of extreme detachment — though the religion and ritual of meditation is believed to provide proper grounding such as to properly recover from the detachment and to benefit from its experience. Hence some critics view ascetics or saints as striving for a level of "apathy", which theologian prefer to call dissasociation or detachment.
Other
Apathy is also the subject of a cheer at Carnegie-Mellon University. The apathy cheer goes, "Apathy! Apathy! A-P-A-T-... never mind."