[From “Sympathy is Lethal”]

... while we turn to surrogate altruism due to a psychological need to think ourselves productive and helpful, we justify our unreasonable beliefs with humanistic notions. If every human is viewed as an individual, all men seem important, and all human suffering appears awful. ... As a consequence of such attitudes, all people are valued on the same level-—as humans-—and suddenly there exists a great moral imperative to protect all human life. ... This in turn results in an increase in population, which itself causes ... dehumanization. Man sees himself as a spec amongst billions of other specs—-he becomes himself a statistic! And, to avoid coping with the reality of his insignificance, he searches for more surrogates to grant some meaning to his hollow existence; and with the adoption of these surrogates, he furthers his dehumanizing humanism to justify his errors. While crying for the victims of hurricanes, man spirals endlessly as he accelerates toward his oblivion.

Yet one can find a solution to this predicament, an escape from the eternal descent: apathy. ... Why care when instead we can stop the cycle of heightening insignificance right in its tracks if an attitude of indifference finds itself adopted toward those things that exist outside of one's immediate affairs. Man's sphere of influence--by which I mean that which man directly influences and that which directly influences man-—is all that he should concern himself with. Man must cease his global thinking and take action to help improve, rather than just protect, those in his vicinity if he desires to do away with the semblance of life and instead—live! It is only with the discarding of global-mentality that man may no longer look at himself as an insignificant part of a mass, but as an integral member of his community. Thus, in a world saturated with compassion, apathy is rendered a virtue.