An Attack on Indifference

The internet has got to be the greatest invention of our generation. It offers an unlimited range of information to the average person. PHD quality material is available to anyone who cares to access it. Project Gutenberg(gutenberg.org) is a prime example of this.

Yet intellectual poverty continues to persist in this country on a widespread level, despite this expansive wealth of knowledge, causing rag-tag intellectuals like myself to ponder this issue with anger and indignation.

Is it due to the media's unrelenting barrage, with its showy commercials and cheap stimulations? Do the government and its cohorts actively expend time, money, and energy in suppressing a person's higher impulses? Perhaps, perhaps not.

It is much more likely that an unconscious bureaucratic process is taking place: one that is necessary if the governing institution is to maintain its control(and ultimately its life); a process that is rudely compartmentalized, and thus difficult to upset.

Or perhaps the ruck of men are simply crass and fickle creatures, who willfully persist in an apathetic state until death claims their undeveloped identities. This last is all too easy to embrace with a scholar's arrogance; a favored opinion infesting the intelligentsia, a fatalistic aristocrat's brassy romanticism, and the outlook which every social revolution in history has attempted to combat, but has fallen short of.

I write this because it's been clanking around my foggy brain, clamoring for expression, because progress is perpetually on the horizon, but goes unrealized. Isn't anyone angry? Or are we too distracted by Dexter and reality TV to voice our opinions? It is easy to become distracted. It's only human, and thus forgivable. Unpleasant realities are difficult to digest but must be faced soon, or moderation will simply die out, and socially conscious individuals will be forced to turn militant--a dangerous prospect.

A prominent opinion these days is that voting is useless, that politicians are corrupt, that the system is broken and, as a result, that change is ephemeral. But that is no justification for political indifference. Rather, it is a call to arms, an indication that the traditional channels of change aren't up to snuff and need to be replaced by more meaningful action.

Calamity is in the air, and we have to right to avoid asphyxiation.

-Brian Looney