Empathy, Not Apathy

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• Reader Comments (8)

  Page 1 of 1 pages

  very thought-provoking. In fact, its inspired me to write a piece that I’ll try to circulate if I do get around to it. its on the “mea culpa” meme that I’m starting to see emerge from older activists. as a younger person who isnt waiting around for things to get better, I appreciate where you land, but I do have some questions and thoughts on some of the other substance in your piece.
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  “You want the news to be as brief and fast as Twitter; you would like classes to move along in some more amusing format like animé. You avoid doing research if it involves books; the text you read is on your cell. “
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  I have to say that I agree with the line of thinking that sees technology as a tool of a function, rather than as the function itself. In terms of your piece, I do think you’re right to say that there is a danger in technology if it does in fact seperate people from reality and what’s going on, but in my opinion that isnt quite what’s happening.

  imho, technology is connecting people to what they want to be connected to. Not surprisingly, its not to mass/radical change organizations or causes, and that’s because we generally don’t have them, and the ones we do have tend to be very local or disconnected from online venues (in terms of organizing through that medium). This to me raises questions about the state of the movement and not about the state of young America. But that’s a different topic I won’t get into it as I’ll never shut up…(but PS, we do need a new or updated ideology already… gotta lose the fear of being radical and pissing ppl off, capitalism changed, why havent we?)

  I have to say what’s wrong with news as quick and fast as twitter? I use it all the time, and I like to think that I get my point across. Granted its not to state a major thesis or idea, but no one asked me for that in the first place. I’m ranting now, but damn haven’t we all been to a place or seen something on TV where someone just went on too long? Sometimes 125 symbols can better capture what’s going on than an elloquent explanation. To me the perfect example of this is the current financial crisis. Everyone knows that sh** went terribly wrong, and I see all these folks writing 4-5 page articles on the crisis, what went wrong, and what they suggest ppl should do.

  Why couldnt someone have said. “Folks, you just got jacked, its like monopoly but we’re the losers, and if you wanna take the board back you need to roll with me” (ok that was more than 125 characters)

  
  I also think that anime draws ppl in because its one of the few outlets where there actually is a purity of ideas and thought. Week after week I find myself gulping down a few episodes of Naruto Shippuden, Lost Canvass, or some other manga/anime because I sometimes need to recharge some emotional batteries. In the real world, I dont see leaders of organizations articulating their “ultimate belief”, and being willing to fight/die for it. Nope, all compromises, all the time. I find more inspiration to continue from a cartoon than real ppl, and I doubt I’m the only one. That’s not to say that there arent amazing and inspiring ppl out there, but they arent the leaders of these large orgs out there (as your article mentions). I’ve actually talked to rank-n-filers, who are young, about an anime piece or mash-up that contrasted what our believes are to anime, and have gotten some of the biggest smiles/reactions when I’ve said that… it made me think maybe there was something to it.
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  anyway, I really appreciated your writing, and I have to say its not the older generation’s fault. its really all of our faults, we’re letting it happen. I’m with you in that we need to be given the
  ball and let us run with it, but to tell you the truth the keys to the gym wouldnt be bad either….

  Posted by carlosinhp on Nov 30, 2009 at 8:07 PM

  “I observe your lives. You are smart and can do things via computer I can only dream of. But few of you read a newspaper or even online news sites. However, you are constantly texting and twittering—opening e-mail seems too dated. You want the news to be as brief and fast as Twitter; you would like classes to move along in some more amusing format like animé. You avoid doing research if it involves books; the text you read is on your cell.

  Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t think that blogging or texting will get hundreds of thousands of people out in the street. If Martin Luther King, Jr. had blogged “I have a dream” on Facebook, how many would have twittered back, “Yeah, dude, I had a dream last night, too.”

  Life online has turned you away from the world around you. This virtual life is more real to you than planet Earth. As Taylor McHugh, one of my activist students put it, “Students feel apathy, not empathy.”

  I find many of your comments about students’ use of technology dubious.

  1. Online news outlets might very well prove superior in a number of ways to the newspapers you want students to read. Remember when bloggers and internet virility kept alive the story of Trent Lott’s racist comments when mainstream media was letting the issue pass?

  2. It doesn’t follow that because something is short it is necessarily shallow or superficial. The sonnet is short and deep. Twitter can be too. Students are flooded with information, and they are adapting like we are adapting.

  3. Texting has enabled mass resistance and organization e.g.,  Rheingold’s work on Smart Mobs.

  4. Your contention that “life online has turned you away from the world around you” is grounded in a false opposition between life online and life in the “world.” Life online is part of the world.

  5. For a leftist radical, you hold remarkably harmonious views toward new technologies as Mark Bauerlein, who is currently the deadest white male on the planet. That in and of itself is scary.

  Posted by Matt Williams on Dec 2, 2009 at 7:06 PM

  There is no outrage anymore, simply a deep ache for the ever growing weight of the world.

  This is what occurs to me, a college student, as I read this article.  I have mentioned the Coup in Honduras to many of my peers, and all of them had no idea what I was talking about. The fact is that being informed about the world seems to have become some sort of useless and painful experience. (I have been called masochistic for reading the news each morning.)  Multiple intelligent, compassionate people have confessed that they simply can’t read the news everyday, as it makes them too depressed.  Folks with big hearts, with eating disorders, addictions, those who are sexually harassed, overworked, under-loved, who find themselves in a world where all that suffering doesn’t begin to measure up to pain of the world.

  I don’t push the importance of being politically informed on my acquaintances, because I don’t blame them for never being taught how to make that type of knowledge empowering.  Instead we have been taught to turn this knowledge inward, to shop, to drink, to smoke, to cut, to snort, to gag, to steal, and most importantly, to hate ourselves, the failures. 

  You want to know why there isn’t a mass student movement? Because poverty, war, corruption, neoliberalism, capitalism, hunger, prison, torture, slavery,  global warming, and racism has left some of your dutiful students a little overwhelmed. Some may attempt to join an organization: Cal-Pirg, Amnesty International, Socialist Organizer– but even these folks walk around with the crippling knowledge that their involvement is not enough.

  We ALL must look deep into the heart of our culture, and our society, if we do indeed wish to see the disease that is eating away at our integrity.  And then we all may practice together how to change.

  Posted by Claire Williams on Dec 2, 2009 at 7:21 PM

  Claire,

  I completely understand what you mean. the lack of will by organizations (and not necessarily referring to the ones you listed) on the left to acknowledge the role of neoliberalism and the uglyness of what we’re really up against (hint: its more than one particular political party or one particular issue) is truly frustrating.

  I encourage you to come to the next US Social Forum in June. Its a space where 100’s of organizations are starting to collaborate on building that better world from within the U.S. www.ussf2010.org

  the first one in atlanta was amazing (over 13k ppl),and out of it new configurations and networks are emerging that I believe can add up to something greater, but we need to continue building it. I’ve not necessarily given up hope on change maybe coming from current strategies of larger and well funded organizations, but I definitely feel we need to be organizing our politics to scale if we want to present a real challenge that can potentially inspire those who have lost hope.

  keep building….and see you in Detroit?!

  Posted by carlosinhp on Dec 2, 2009 at 7:29 PM

  Check out what’s happening at the University of California right now. Students are protesting, just for a fair-priced education. Most people are willing to go out and protest, they’re just not willing to sacrifice themselves to do it. Sad, perhaps, but true. You’re right when you compare the difference between cost in education now and back in the 60s. You asked where your generation failed ours. There’s your answer: School prices go up and up to the point where it’s become as big of a scam as self help seminars. Ask all those people at California’s state capital how much they paid to go to the University of California. Then ask why they’re not willing to reinvest into the system. (Maybe because they know it created jackasses like them.)

  Posted by kilgoretrout9835 on Dec 7, 2009 at 10:40 PM

  I am British and we have a very similar state of affairs in universities here - or at least, did in the late nineties when I went to university. The Iraq war stimulated a bit more activity but still not much.

  I got interested in politics at university and wanted to be involved in things. But there was nothing going on to get involved in. This made me very frustrated, even angry with my fellow students.

  On leaving university I mixed in more activisty circles (still do to some extent) and it was only then that I began to wonder if the ‘apathetic’ students weren’t right. Because I went on demonstrations, and they were easily ignored. I did direct actions, and they achieved nothing. I joined political organisations, and found them to be irrelevant subcultures. 

  Overall, the impression I got (and still get) is a bunch of leftist organisations trying to follow a template of protest and ‘radicalism’ established in the 60s that - and here is the key point - failed. It didn’t stop more wars. It incited a reaction against feminism that has almost destroyed it. It propagated identity politics of a very divisive kind. It encouraged an authoritarian-tinged ‘liberal’ ethic that is happy to use power to enforce equality. All it mostly achieved in the end was to give the participants a feeling of freedom and empowerment that was, I can’t help thinking, largely false.

  Gradually it dawned on me that perhaps it was my fellow students who had been right. There was no point in protesting. It achieved nothing (the PR machines of govts are now adept at out-spinning the protesters) and no one was sure what alternative we wanted anyway, so why pretend we are marching together towards some brighter future?

  I am a radical, and I’m glad people don’t go on demonstrations any more. I am also glad that people use Twitter. Maybe Twitter is where real radicalism lies - who knows? I do know that we need to find new ways of doing things, not recycle the ‘radical’ forms of previous decades that have not, if we are honest, been entirely successful.

  Posted by Jake S on Dec 8, 2009 at 12:49 PM

  I read your article carefully, and felt it as an invitation to think. Thank you for that.

  I find it less important that I don’t share your views on technology (I see it as the state of the world, Internet being the space in which the human consciousness develops, and has chances for new ways of connecting - even if it is not achieved yet, the chances are here.)

  Your sentences and insights about teaching do touch me :

  “... to see ourselves as mentors and partners rather than leaders. This is how I now approach education, but shifting my attitude meant that I had to relinquish much of my power in the classroom. And that in turn has forced the students to take charge of some of the teaching, to abandon their comfortable passivity. “ 

  Relinquishing our power empowers others. Gives them space to go in their own rhythms. And that is the sprout of new, much needed ways. So, as I see it, what you did 40 years ago, you are doing now as well, on another field, and in other ways.
  Thank you for inspiration.

  
  p.s.
  I live and work in Zagreb, Croatia, Europe. I am thirty six. I work as therapist (my call) and as business trainer (my earnings). English is my second language. I’ve never been to US.

  Posted by smich on Dec 13, 2009 at 1:51 PM

  “Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t think that blogging or texting will get hundreds of thousands of people out in the the street. The Internet has turned you away from the world.”

  Luddite much?

  A whole MOVEMENT in Iran was built entirely based on blogging and texting!

  And Iran is a police state where only 30% of the population have internet access!

  Look, the computer and all of these awesome web 2.0 applications are amazing tools for activists - even old guys like me (I’m 41) - so instead of longing for the days of mimeographed leaflets and streetcorner speaking, get used to the new world.

  I have - I’m a middle aged labor activist and I have a blog, a myspace, a facebook and a twitter account!

  This is the new world - welcome aboard!

  Posted by Gregory A. Butler on Dec 17, 2009 at 7:29 AM

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Also by Karla Jay

• Empathy, Not Apathy
  An open letter to my students.