Apathy.
It used to be my arch-nemesis. That meant (though I'd not really thought it through) that I was action. That, in spite of my best intentions, was not always true...but for a decade there, it was the order of the day.
Does anybody really even care?
So, I read roughly 300 journal entries a week, when everyone's up to speed, and I read dozens of blogs and facebook posts...if I were to bundle them all up and strain out the governing concerns I encounter, I'm surprised to find it's largely economic and societal angst. Much of it relates to the future, at a very personal level (will I get the job? will Timmy still love me if I get fat?). A good portion has to do with plans, or a review of entertainments and amusements recently experienced. Some is family-oriented reflection.
Very little of it is congealed around the dynamic of social change. That is to say, in this webbed and interconnected powerhouse of networking ideas, where we can launch flash mobs and invite hoards to bars, very little of the potential of these tools ever comes to good. Sure, in some repressed countries social networking has led to revolutions. Sure, we could watch streaming CNN and hound our congress (if we cared, again). We have opportunity and potential, but we spend our words and time sharing pictures of puppies and babies and talking about our love lives.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. I think this is about the 500th post to this blog, and very little of it is dedicated to anything too profound.
I do have strange encounters with Those Who Should Care Most about the world: parents. These people ought to be up on news, up on the future, up on child rearing. They ought to be into Wow Wow Wubbzy and the Wonder Pets. They should be dedicated to educating their children (or at least reinforcing education).
I will have an encounter in which I get all bug-eyed talking about, say, nutrition, and how we're doomed, damned if we do, damned if we don't....how fighting marketing and HFCS, prepackaging and calories, is a losing battle. I rage against the machine for a while, then the parent shrugs and says, "Well, we came out okay." or "Yeah, but whaddya do?" Then they return to sports or their other regularly scheduled programming.
Parents should care.
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2 comments:
Deja,
I hear you, man. In fact, these past couple of weeks I've been thinking about these things, too, though from a different angle; it may or may not turn into a post. For now, I'll just say that it is supremely and sadly ironic that our people have never been so interconnected, so media-saturated, and yet simultaneously so disengaged from the world. I am (still) incomprehending of the fact that there are 24-hour cable channels that show pretty much only reality shows but no news.
I like videos of babies laughing as much as the next guy/gal; if only I could do more to impress upon my students that we should also care about the future of that baby whom we'll never know.
Indeed! What's to be done, though? How can one raise the level of conscience? It's like trying to raise sea level.
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