This is mildly late because today I was very productive...but recently I have been faced with an overwhelming apathy. I basically spend most of the day wanting to lie in bed and watch TV. I love my TV and it feels as though everything around me is overwhelming, exhausting and useless.
The "why bother"s are what really destroy the world.
Strangely enough, apathy makes you think. Our generation has been accused of many things from irrelevant and immature reading tastes to a discouraging and fateful lack of interest in everything from the environment to injustice to politics. But its not entirely our fault.
First of all (and this is in direct response to an article in the Outlook section of the Washington Post) Twilight and Harry Potter do not define our generation. Twilight, in spite of its teen fangirl spirit and its devestating escapism, asks some good questions. Harry Potter gives us some good answers. That being said - we read. Just because occasionally there is a mass consensus about good escapist literature does not mean we aren't buying other things. (End rant)
Second of all, we are faced with a new quality of crises. Governments that lie to us, obscure the facts, who don't disclose numbers or results, who seem to care more about egos and being right than the lives they put at stake just to make a point are the norm. Economic and environmental crises are so vast they seem out of our grasp, obscured in smog and parts per million and a economic market that I am still convinced is made up of Monopoly Money.
Its hard to get worked up when you feel that nothing you do will make a difference. When faced with an overwhelming amount of work, it is easier to disappear into fiction that requires nothing from you - it is passive and easy and entertaining. The world it shows you has questions and problems, yes, but they have resolutions. The good guys win in an hour. Apathy lets peace and darkness fill the space around you. It seeps inside and lulls you into complacency calm. "Do it tomorrow," it says. "These things will keep."
But outside the world is ending.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
i don't think i showed this to you yet: http://www.sparksflyup.com/2009/04/twilight-and-young-adult-books.php
ReplyDeletefurther proof of john green being my hero.
I think that, in terms of apathy being the greatest epidemic of our generation, there are two arguments. On a day to day basis, you look around and see those who don't care. Who are so jaded by the state of the world these days, as a result of growing up with things like 9/11 and governments who lie to us, that they simply don't care anymore.
ReplyDeleteBut there's the other side. The side that went out and campaigned and debated and voted. And maybe that's because we've never had a candidate who was so phenomenal at rousing the troops. But this election showed our generation to be anything but apathetic. At least, a sizable portion of us.
Take THAT baby boomers.
It's not our generation, it's every generation. There are crises all the time, it's all a big wave that keeps repeating itself. I suppose if the wave describes the state of chaos in the world, and the top of the wave is the climax of chaos, then we are kinda in the middle riding up the wave. We are riding up the wave since we are coming out of easier times, which causes an increase in apathy. Our carelessness is what will cause problems that eventually will lead to another climax of chaos. Actually our carelessness will only cause it to be amplified. It's not something that can be avoided [apathetic statement]. This is looking at a small timeframe, assuming peaks of a wave are events like world wars, plagues, economic depressions.
ReplyDelete