Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Gotta love that apathy

Uni has come again (though not to stay for more than 12 weeks) and kicked me in the ass. When I start writing in school - and I don't mean just a couple of sentences here and there; I mean WRITE - it seems to me that time for other kinds of writing disappears quickly. What I will, however, comment on right now (sadly related to uni) while I have a spare 20 minutes, is the apathy of my generation. In Writing the Zeitgeist, we talk about our time ghost; what makes now now, and not yesterday or tomorrow. And what has become absolutely clear to me in these past five weeks of tutorials, is that my generation is so overwhelmed by everything - cause let's face it: the Internet makes the world in its almost entirety available to our senses - that it has simply decided to not let anything get under its skin. We are the collective carefree, who will with the click of a button, move from the KONY 2012 video (no more than 6 minutes in, of course) to Charlie Bit My Finger. We will not care, so long as it doesn't affect us. Then we can care a world and a half. When Curtin Uni implemented Pay As You Go parking, the protests, flyers and opinion letters to the administration saw no end; students were talking, complaining, fighting. Over parking. "Don't make me pay 200 dollars more a year for parking!" I don't own a car. I do own a computer, however, and the absolute frustration and grief I am experiencing from the realisation of my generation's (that in my opinion should be active - we certainly have all the means for it) indifference, has made me think hard on what I use my Mac for. The BBC radio is now on whenever I spend more than five minutes on the bus; I try to watch news on YouTube. Why can't we use technology for something good? Why must it be used for further lack of interest; for a decreasing sense of empathy and humanity within us? I am saddened that 30 000 students will cry "Wolf!" over parking, but not over child soldiers. I am angry that my generation seems unwilling to be passionate about absolutely nothing existing outside its private universe. 200 dollars more a year? How about you tell me 5 of those dollars were spent on someone else than yourself before PAYG parking was implemented onto your poor wallets. Perhaps I'll listen then.