This is my first encounter with Dr. David Amerland's writing and I like his article dealing with Apathy. I often feel impotent in the face of over-whelming problems but when I fall down I always pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again.
Look Back in Anger
“Do not go gentle into the night…” begins Dylan Thomas’ epic poem (https://goo.gl/mi2KHF) a statement of rage against too short a time on the planet, too little to do with as much as we may wish. A villanelle (https://goo.gl/VjAEBa), the poem takes Thomas’ pain at the loss of his father and adds to it his railing at our frailty which he reiterates in his Death Shall Have No Dominion (http://goo.gl/NsB2Z).
Cited, both in Interstellar (https://goo.gl/YOywGV) and the latest Dr Who (“The Magician’s Apprentice) - https://goo.gl/Kbvgqs, it is a battlecry against, not so much death or the passing of life, even, but apathy (http://goo.gl/LL9eCL).
Of all the negative emotions we can possibly experience, apathy has to be the most insidious, leeching from us (https://goo.gl/KWm7Mt) not just a sense that we care, but also any reason to. Apathy can, of course, come about as a result of a pathology but it can also be a state of mind induced by a sense of overwhelming impotence.
A sense that “The world is too big for us” (http://goo.gl/UkWRUs), Too complex. Too entrenched. Locked deep into its inertia (https://goo.gl/tzhq5f) for so long that it will take more energy and effort than any of us can muster to make it change.
When a young Clark Kent says “the world’s too big mum” (https://goo.gl/SKxJUv) at the very awakening of his powers, he articulates the self-evident fact that even a Superman cannot be enough to save the world from itself, or us. “Then make it small” says his mum, back.
It’s good advice. How do we do that, exactly? How do we do it, who have no Krypton-induced superpowers?
We can’t suggest a solution if we don’t completely understand the problem. And part of the problem is the intentional exclusion we project in almost every part of life as Dave Meslin points out in his TED Talk: https://goo.gl/Ez2dfi. Even when lip-service is paid to “engagement” and “transparency” actions speak otherwise.
Governments act in ways which then require greater, not less secrecy (https://goo.gl/9WkJvL). The “alien tech” claim of the video notwithstanding the fact remains that many governments work in ways that create a ‘system’ that not even those who want to do something about it from the inside (https://goo.gl/5yUgcQ) are capable of doing so. As John Glennon says the real problem is “smart, hard-working, public-spirited people acting in good faith who are responding to systemic incentives”, without really questioning the system they work for.
One casualty of systemic obfuscation is engagement at an early stage: http://goo.gl/tH61X1. When we are creating a generation that feels unable to act, we responsible for creating disengagement at a time when we have more tools for engagement than ever before:http://goo.gl/mgGZY9. Becoming involved does not have to be about storming castle walls and constantly championing causes:http://goo.gl/iWNsMN.
As a recent Pew Research poll suggested it can be about engagement in small ways: http://goo.gl/zOPIrz. A driving of awareness, a raising of the global IQ through questions and questioning that do not simply accept that we are passive vessels, incapable of doing anything beyond being force-fed by ‘authority’ the information it deems we are capable of safely absorbing.
In the 50s a post-war generation questioned and found wanting the regime of its time, leading to the “Angry Young Men” (https://goo.gl/v6rejg) label that in itself became the means through which their actions could, conveniently, be pigeonholed, sanitized and marginalized, their efforts sang about by Billy Joel:https://goo.gl/lCxz7v, their passion used to sell songs and books and theatrical plays.
Each of us, here, is a child of the post-industrial society (https://goo.gl/kWRbWw). We’re brought together now not as a generation sharing a birthtime but a group of individuals sharing attitudes and ideas, seeking answers to questions, asking why do things not change fast enough?
Even when made small, the world is pretty big. None of us can hope to change it fast, acting alone. But working together, adding incremental insights, interests and passion to the project that must now be labelled “Global Change”, we can find ways to actually bring about positive change to a world that is designed to resist it.
In doing so, we will play a small but important part in shaping its future, add further meaning to our lives and become deeper involved in the world that contains us. All we need to do is get a little angry, get a little impassioned, become a little more questioning and do it together.
I hope you’ve had the foresight to prepare with coffee pot within reach and trays of croissants, donuts, cookies and chocolate cake. Weekends certainly call for that if nothing else. Have an awesome Sunday, wherever you are.
“Do not go gentle into the night…” begins Dylan Thomas’ epic poem (https://goo.gl/mi2KHF) a statement of rage against too short a time on the planet, too little to do with as much as we may wish. A villanelle (https://goo.gl/VjAEBa), the poem takes Thomas’ pain at the loss of his father and adds to it his railing at our frailty which he reiterates in his Death Shall Have No Dominion (http://goo.gl/NsB2Z).
Cited, both in Interstellar (https://goo.gl/YOywGV) and the latest Dr Who (“The Magician’s Apprentice) - https://goo.gl/Kbvgqs, it is a battlecry against, not so much death or the passing of life, even, but apathy (http://goo.gl/LL9eCL).
Of all the negative emotions we can possibly experience, apathy has to be the most insidious, leeching from us (https://goo.gl/KWm7Mt) not just a sense that we care, but also any reason to. Apathy can, of course, come about as a result of a pathology but it can also be a state of mind induced by a sense of overwhelming impotence.
A sense that “The world is too big for us” (http://goo.gl/UkWRUs), Too complex. Too entrenched. Locked deep into its inertia (https://goo.gl/tzhq5f) for so long that it will take more energy and effort than any of us can muster to make it change.
When a young Clark Kent says “the world’s too big mum” (https://goo.gl/SKxJUv) at the very awakening of his powers, he articulates the self-evident fact that even a Superman cannot be enough to save the world from itself, or us. “Then make it small” says his mum, back.
It’s good advice. How do we do that, exactly? How do we do it, who have no Krypton-induced superpowers?
We can’t suggest a solution if we don’t completely understand the problem. And part of the problem is the intentional exclusion we project in almost every part of life as Dave Meslin points out in his TED Talk: https://goo.gl/Ez2dfi. Even when lip-service is paid to “engagement” and “transparency” actions speak otherwise.
Governments act in ways which then require greater, not less secrecy (https://goo.gl/9WkJvL). The “alien tech” claim of the video notwithstanding the fact remains that many governments work in ways that create a ‘system’ that not even those who want to do something about it from the inside (https://goo.gl/5yUgcQ) are capable of doing so. As John Glennon says the real problem is “smart, hard-working, public-spirited people acting in good faith who are responding to systemic incentives”, without really questioning the system they work for.
One casualty of systemic obfuscation is engagement at an early stage: http://goo.gl/tH61X1. When we are creating a generation that feels unable to act, we responsible for creating disengagement at a time when we have more tools for engagement than ever before:http://goo.gl/mgGZY9. Becoming involved does not have to be about storming castle walls and constantly championing causes:http://goo.gl/iWNsMN.
As a recent Pew Research poll suggested it can be about engagement in small ways: http://goo.gl/zOPIrz. A driving of awareness, a raising of the global IQ through questions and questioning that do not simply accept that we are passive vessels, incapable of doing anything beyond being force-fed by ‘authority’ the information it deems we are capable of safely absorbing.
In the 50s a post-war generation questioned and found wanting the regime of its time, leading to the “Angry Young Men” (https://goo.gl/v6rejg) label that in itself became the means through which their actions could, conveniently, be pigeonholed, sanitized and marginalized, their efforts sang about by Billy Joel:https://goo.gl/lCxz7v, their passion used to sell songs and books and theatrical plays.
Each of us, here, is a child of the post-industrial society (https://goo.gl/kWRbWw). We’re brought together now not as a generation sharing a birthtime but a group of individuals sharing attitudes and ideas, seeking answers to questions, asking why do things not change fast enough?
Even when made small, the world is pretty big. None of us can hope to change it fast, acting alone. But working together, adding incremental insights, interests and passion to the project that must now be labelled “Global Change”, we can find ways to actually bring about positive change to a world that is designed to resist it.
In doing so, we will play a small but important part in shaping its future, add further meaning to our lives and become deeper involved in the world that contains us. All we need to do is get a little angry, get a little impassioned, become a little more questioning and do it together.
I hope you’ve had the foresight to prepare with coffee pot within reach and trays of croissants, donuts, cookies and chocolate cake. Weekends certainly call for that if nothing else. Have an awesome Sunday, wherever you are.
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