What Apathy Is

Apathy, because it's something I feel as an affliction, is something I've thought about a fair bit.
The (Merriam-Webster) dictionary definition:
1: lack of feeling or emotion : impassiveness
2: lack of interest or concern : indifference

That doesn't really encompass it for me. Apathy is what lets malevolent dictators stay in power. It's what keeps thousands of people on the dole. It allows us to pollute and degrade the Earth. It keeps wage-slaves like myself from living full and fulfilling lives. And on, and on, and on. 

The people living under the dictator don't care enough to overthrow or assassinate him (I don't know of any female dictators? Mothers don't count). The dole bludgers have no aspirations. We consume today without regard for tomorrow. We work, voodoo zombie-like, all week, awakening briefly in the weekend to leave this reality with dance and substances and the escapist alternatives of fiction, whether it be on the screen or the page. All this because of apathy. 

The solution - obviously! - is to not be apathetic. But apathy is a symptom, not only an illness in itself. Children aren't afflicted with apathy, not until they grow up a bit.  They learn to be apathetic, because it's safe. Apathy is the result of the feeling of insignificance.  Insignificance hurts.  Children, realizing, often not even consciously, their own insignificance in our modern, overpopulated, shiny-veneered civilization, join the apathetic legions to avoid the soul-crushing despair that their own insignificance forces them to feel. It's a vicious cycle too: once you're apathetic, you're much less likely to achieve anything great, thereby never becoming significant. Doomed to forever perform under-potential, in every way, until something, or someone, rescues you from your apathy by making you feel significant.