This begs the question of to what extent are people caring or not caring? Take the issue of school shootings. Writer Andy Hopkins, in his 2022 article for Ball State Daily News, “Calling Apathy to Action”, writes, “one of the biggest issues facing today’s world is the lack of people who care…when asked about an issue, many may have an opinion about the topic, but how many people are out there taking action? Would we rather sit back and watch “Thursday Night Football” or “Grey’s Anatomy” than spend our time trying to make the world more sustainable?”
Occurrences of school shootings, waging poverty, epic war sagas, and the revolution of artificial intelligence have impacted one’s ability to discern and understand perspectives from one’s own. The state of the world is in a deep state of hypnagogia right now as the involuntary experiences of politics, violence, and discrimination begin to appear.
Hypnagogia can be used as the perfect metaphor for understanding the transitional state between knowledge and ignorance and the transitional state between empathy and apathy.