[undated]
Emptiness does not remain neutral.
It erodes.
When nothing feels meaningful, meaning itself becomes optional. Not rejected — simply unnecessary. People imagine indifference as coldness, but it is warmer than that. It is lukewarm. Tepid. Comfortable.
At first, they still know right from wrong. They just stop reacting to it. Reaction requires effort. Effort implies belief. Belief has already dissolved.
They see cruelty and feel nothing sharp enough to interrupt their day. They notice injustice the way they notice weather — briefly, without expectation of influence. They say that’s unfortunate and move on. The phrase costs nothing.
Moral language remains, but it floats free of consequence.
They continue to say words like care, values, principles. These words function socially, not internally. They are signals, not commitments. Saying them maintains belonging. Acting on them would require disturbance.
Disturbance is avoided at all costs.
When sorrow first hollowed them out, they feared becoming cruel. That fear fades. Cruelty requires intention. Indifference does not. Indifference is cleaner. No decisions. No risk of being wrong.
They stop asking what should be done. They ask only what will happen. Ethics collapses into prediction.
If harm is likely, it is accepted.
If injustice persists, it is normalized.
If suffering spreads, it becomes background.
They do not justify this. Justification would imply conflict. They simply adjust expectations downward until nothing violates them anymore.
Children learn this early. They watch adults explain away everything. Excuse everything. Rationalize everything. They learn that outrage is performative and short-lived. That nothing really stops.
They grow into observers rather than participants.
At this stage, even guilt disappears. Guilt requires attachment to an idea of self that could have acted differently. That self has already been thinned out. What remains is function.
They follow rules when convenient. Break them when unobserved. Not out of rebellion — rebellion requires belief — but because compliance has no intrinsic value.
They do not feel wicked. Wickedness implies drama. They feel ordinary.
This is how entire populations become harmless-looking accomplices. Not through belief in evil, but through exhaustion with caring. Evil no longer needs advocates. It needs only a sufficient number of people who will not interfere.
Interference is effort. Effort is unpleasant. Pleasantness becomes the last surviving value.
They say I didn’t cause it.
They say I can’t change it.
They say it’s complicated.
These phrases are not lies. They are shelter.
I notice the absence most clearly when nothing surprises me anymore. Atrocities arrive without shock. Betrayals feel predictable. Death registers as an administrative update.
This is not despair. Despair still protests. This is equilibrium.
In indifference, the world runs smoothly. Systems function. Violence is processed. Suffering is absorbed. Everything continues.
They call this stability.
I write this not as warning, not as accusation. Warnings assume someone is still listening. Accusations assume someone still cares.
This is documentation.
A record of what remains when sorrow is ignored long enough to finish its work.
Nothing burns here.
Nothing heals.
Nothing matters enough to stop.
And that is the most efficient condition of all.
Devotion Without Witness 