teaching vs. apathy

Is it possible to teach someone to care about something, or can you only set aflame a passion that already lays dormant within them? Can you inspire a desire for change in someone who sees the topic as irrelevantly at best?

Sometimes, there are things that I believe mean the world... and I try and convey my passion and conviction about that topic to someone else... only to be greeted with blank eyes of boredom. At first, I thought it was my failure to communicate the significance of something... but now I am beginning to think that perhaps there are topics that the majority of the people I come in contact with simply do not care about at all.

In theory, this makes sense to me... I mean, surely there are topics that a person could tell me about that I wouldn't find fascinating... even thought right now I cant think of one, lol. See, it is just weird to me, this entire mindset of apathy. If a person approaches me and shows passion and enthusiasm about something, no matter how naturally mundane that subject may normally appear to me... because of their care for it, I will suddenly start to really care about that topic. It is weird, but true. In a conversation, there is little that does not interest me.

That is why, I suppose, I simply can not grasp how a person who was within 5 years of my own age could be apathetic towards the very real truth that their society was slowly brainwashing and (for lack of a better word) soul-washing them into depersonalized machines.... and yet, today it happened. Today, I tried talking to my class about the necessity to find truth when you are a product of a brainwashed society (including yourself)... and yet it seemed irrelevant at best to them.

I got them to agree that they were brainwashed... and yet, they seemed generally disinterested in how to "unbrainwash" their self... which just blows my mind.

But, such is life, right?
haha! :-)