Combat Apathy and Ignorance!

Tonight a fellow student reminded me that my hope can prove a bit foolish given how many people really DON'T care and WON'T believe that this government could do wrong despite any proof to suggest otherwise, including history.

Actually, I'm not wrong. He is wrong and to a small fraction of an inch, he is right. He is right that corporate America could give a crap less about people. He is wrong though, in who he has apparently chosen to blame for that point of view and who most Americans choose to blame for the downsizing, outsourcing, and lack of a better world: "illegal immigrants" and would be terrorists.

Here, I would like to offer a counterbalance to this worldview that I find so vile.
Derrick Jensen, in "The Culture of Make Believe" writes:
"Even if we presume that wealth does not cause a concomitant and much broader poverty, rags-to-riches tales ignore the fact that the primary means by which people become wealthy in our culture is through inheritance, with the secondary means being government subsidies. One could argue that both of these lag far behind theft as forms of enrichment: theft of land from indigenous peoples, theft of habitat from nonhumans, theft of habitat for future humans, and so on. But the point, as it relates to this study, is that the tale strongly suggests that if you don't strike it rich, if your American Dream turns into a nightmare of overtime, delayed (at least) gratification, and quiet desperation (assuming no hunger, degradation, and early death), it's your own damn fault. You're too lazy, too stupid, or you just didn't follow the rules quite carefully enough. Or, maybe, you weren't the right color" (384).

Further, Jensen quotes Howard Zinn:
"[Civil disobedience] is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience.
...Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation, stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem" (385).

Our problem isn't that the information is lacking but that people are unwilling to hear it, to see it, to think about it and to react in the ways that prove their humanity by validating the humanity of others rather than denying and violating it. That's THE problem.