life help: Is there a cure for apathy? - Help.com

I hope there is a cure, because I am suffering it now and don’t know what to do about it…

I can’t see some of the post, including the one from ipain. All I can do is share my story, which no one may ever see. I have an 11 year old son….who does not care about anything. He is academically gifted, but refuses to do what he is told so he can earn certain things like time to play his video games. He says he loves them but will do nothing to earn them. We have tried everthing and just do not know what else to do. I will bookmark this page, and check back incase anyone reads this and has any help to offer.

Also, recognize that desire is in itself neither bad nor good. How one desires and what one desires is what is important. Apathy is a lack of desire. Many of our desires come from the absence of pain and the absence of pain, if we agree with Bertrand Russell’s “The Conquest of Happiness” (recommended), comes from who polar extremes: boredom and anxiety. I feel that apathy is worse than feeling pain for feeling anything is better than feeling nothing. So try to attain boredom (through zazen) or anxiety (through love, excitement, any of the more pleasant anxieties) first since it is easier to attain pain than it is to attain pleasure.

Some consider that pain is a positive. The only positive. That pleasure is just simply the absence of pain, thus making it a negative. Schopenhauer had such a negative viewpoint. If this is the case, which I hope it is not, only by feeling pain again could we hope to feel pleasure.