Disinterested

I saw disinterested used as though it meant uninterested recently in a surprising place. As it supports an important distinction the tendency to confuse the two ought to be resisted. Let’s see what Eric Partridge has to say in Usage and Abusage

disinterested is incorrectly used for uninterested or not interested; its meaning is ‘impartial’; not studying one’s own advantage. I have seen it also used for apathetic (- a usage given by Webster’s)

I see it’s still there in my copy of Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (1979) the one with drawings but alas mostly without the naming of parts like the baby Larousse. The rest of the definition is correct.

It’s easy to be a pedant nowadays, the bar isn’t set very high so I normally restrain my expatiating tendency to within the privacy of my home where exits can be secured. Why then this storm in a cocoa cup, this nervous snapping of a ginger biscuit?

It’s in the Bhagavad Gita and it’s called nishkama karma, translated as desireless action. To act without attachment to the fruits of one’s action is so to subvert the normal basis of action that it can be called actionless action. It is not that we are uninterested in what we are doing, we are disinterested. Thereby our action is liberated from the tyranny of time. It is a portal to ‘Eternal Life’.