A half-crushed bottle lying on the pavement. The morose worker waving away the voter registration volunteers. Dimished response to community activism. A passionate shrug among friends as they discuss current events.
What do these have in common? The answer is apathy.
It is a tolerable enemy in America these days, creeping along side us as we go about our daily lives. Outside my door is a city full of people whose opinions are just as passionate as my own.
Yet for some reason, this passion doesn’t transform itself into action. Perhaps it is because that our culture demands change happen immediately. Like fairy tales we believed as children, we cling to notions that simple slogans will solve our policy crises and weather whatever storms we may face.
We have been very wrong.
Our world is full of partisan politics. The lines are drawan in the sand on any given issue. However, the one thing that is the same is the fact that people are overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the problems.
Take health care of example. No one can honestly argue that our system is as good as it can be. There is a monstrous amount of bloated costs to go along with our harried system of medical beauracy that is strangled doctors as much as patients. Regardless of political affliation, the sheer number of uninsured Americans in this country is a travesty. One need look no further than a neighbor to find a story of a loved one who died not because medical care was unavaible, but because they could no longer afford it.
And so we stand at a crossroads where everyone points fingers at everyone else year after year while doing absolutely nothing to solve the problem. Our voting populace shrugs and says, “So what else is new?” And those that have managed to attain good health care at the moment, despite all the passionate talks, have not hargued local, state or federal jurisdictions into making effective policy changes.
I walk out everyday into a world where I hear conversations about the state of our country. And no matter how eloquent the points made or embittered the person saying them, it all ends with a shrug and matter that nothing can be done about it.
With apathy by our side, this is certainly true. It carried the unspoken mantra that everything has gone to rot anyway. So why care?
I’ll tell you why: because it is our responsibility as human beings. It is not enough to carve out a niche in society for yourself. Our people are isolated now because our communities have broken down and with them, the support systems that carried these thoughts into action.
It is all too easy to sit back enjoying our iPhones and forgetting about the issues that face all of us on any given day. It shouldn’t take a catastrophy to bring us together as a nation to agree that change is necessary. It should instead be a part of the goal of each of us to build on the foundations of our past to light our way into the future.
As it stands now, our future is blisteringly dark. When every news channel can be more concerned with the actions of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan than reporting on the ailing financial status of our citizens, our media has failed us. When we don’t hold our leaders accountable to fulfilling the promises they made to win our votes and our confidence, when we tell ourselves that we are not affected by the actions made in our name, then we have surely failed ourselves.
Because our nation wasn’t founded by people who didn’t think or were afraid of fighting for what they believed in. Perhaps you and I will disagree on the political scene. Perhaps not. But I think all of us would respect each other a lot more if we all gave it a try instead of tolerating the boredom that has seeped into every facet of our society.
And let’s face it: we are pretty bored. The Statisical Abstract of the United States for 2007 predicts that the average American will spend 3,518 hours plugged into some type of media, whether its form is a book, the internet, radio or television. That is nearly five months worth of time, yet the common complaint is “there isn’t enough time in the day.”
Techology makes folks isolated.
Posted by: Rhonda - inzino staff
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