There’s a French philosopher who just published a book about the social problem of indifference. In philosophical circles, that’s a weighty idea — Indifference and Difference.
It’s more than an attitude, although that’s part of it. We’re becoming the same, the author says — disconnected from one another, indifferent to others, too self-absorbed. That’s the attitude. But we’re also becoming less tolerant of people who think differently. It makes sense: the more self-absorbed we become, the less room we have for difference — for thoughts, patterns, or routines beyond ourselves.
The book also argues that society has moved away from virtue. It’s an epidemic of what, in French, is mal — illness, harm, perhaps even evil.
I’ve noticed that too — for the last decade or so.
A few days ago, a caustic thought took root in my head after someone mentioned politics. Maybe it was about the No Kings protest. I thought, you know, I’ve become rather indifferent to how bad things have gotten. Burnt out. Fed up.
Sometimes, when I read something online about humanity “losing against A.I.,” I catch myself thinking: well, we humans made the mess. We’re not as great as we thought we were. We’ve poisoned our planet — our only home — to sustain the lifestyle we can’t give up. We slaughter what’s animal but not human so we can keep eating junk. We run the beast until it collapses and then destroy it for being weak. We still can’t stop killing each other over ancient conflicts that make no sense anymore.
The book — De l’indifférence à la différence by Mazarine M. Pingeot (Grasset, 2025) — also proposes that our indifference extends to time itself. We’ve grown indifferent to the future, to the consequences of our behavior, and to the lessons of the past. This temporal indifference traps us in the self-absorption of the present moment — whatever gratifies right now. Humanity has been here before. I think of the early years of the twentieth century and the Lost Generation: painters like Modigliani, writers like Hemingway, wandering through the wreckage of meaning. And yet, from despair, said Kierkegaard, comes beauty—or maybe it’s hope.
So what if A.I. takes over? Maybe it could do better.
Those are the kinds of thoughts that creep in — indifference to the human fate. Numbness toward life. Hardened against loss, pain, and evil. Less empathy. Less tolerance.
Maybe that’s what the philosopher means — this slow drift toward indifference and away from difference.
The quiet sickness of a world that no longer feels. France, though. Feeling still comes from the French. Wonders never cease.
—A.R.
Ashley Rovira is the author of The Signal Between Us: A Father/Daughter Discovery Story and its forthcoming second-chance sequel. As the founder at Heavy Crown Press, she writes about what moves her, about the signals that cross and the ones that break the silence and clear the static.