Sunday, July 6, 2014

Apathy Will Be The Death Of Us All

    Some things are hard for me to put into words. Emotions and insanities are easy, they flow from me unimpeded at times, and at times I think the only thing that prevents me from spewing forth truths so raw and bare that they might see me landed in a ward under lock and key is the love and respect I have for my children and their well-being. Even in my deepest morass I still manage to put my children's safety above all else. It is not emotions or my state of mind that I have wanted to splay out in black and white, not this time. Lately what has preyed heavily on my mind is the emotions and state of the world. The insanities that have become so commonplace in the world we live in. That is the crux, that is what I have tried to come to grips with; just how commonplace insanity has become in our little corner of the Universe. I make no secret of the fact that I have been on a news blackout for the better part of a year and a half, every since the horrible shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. An event that left me emotionally reeling with the thought, "They were just babies," ricocheting around inside my skull, getting louder and more chaotic until the cacophony ringing in my brain nearly brought me to my knees. It brought me to tears, that is a fact. So I went on a news blackout. I was a news junkie, poring over crime reports, business news, world events, until I was near to overflow. Sandy Hook broke the levy. I made myself turn away. True, it is impossible to block out the comings and goings of the world, information leaked in like cold air around an old, double hung window. I absorbed just enough to keep my finger on the pulse of the world, barely.
    What is this backstory leading up to? Simple. The world is going to shit. it is in upheaval. True, it is always in some state of unrest, but like the proverbial snowball rolling down hill, it is picking up speed, and getting bigger, deadlier, and more out of control with each passing moment. Am I an alarmist? Yes. I want to beat the drums, light the signal fires in the watch towers, raise a hue and cry. Why? Why now? Why not now? All my life I have seen panic inducing world events. Over and over the world has watched with bated breath as one horrific scenario after another builds to what is surely the next world war, or environmental crisis, only to fizzle out and fade away with little or no lasting effect. But it seems as if each event is just a little larger than the last one. Now, what I see going on around the world seems so much more deadly and apocalyptic than anything in the past, and it covers the gamut of catastrophes on a number of stages. War in the Middle East, yes, there is always war in the Middle East, it seems to be a way of life, but events over the last few years have eclipsed the skirmishes of the past. The genocide in Africa is horrendous and yet barely makes the small print in the evening news. Current environmental disasters like GMOs, fracking, honey bee die-off, drought, dramatically severe weather around the globe, and the Fukushima nuclear disaster dumping radiation in an already over-taxed ocean make me look back at the environmental disasters of the past, like the Exxon Valdez oil spill with almost wistful nostalgia. In the Great US of A obesity, cancer, and auto-immune diseases are on the rise. Illiteracy is being helped along by easy access to the internet and its shameless abuse of gossip-rag headlines. Critical thinking and penmanship are going the way of the carrier pigeon; shot to death in vast droves. The rich are getting richer the poor are getting poorer. Oh, and by "rich" I don't mean millionaires with a little too much time and money on their hands, I mean gluttonous gazillionaires who are accumulating the world's wealth the way a hoarder accumulates piles of newspapers, and to the point where they are not only manipulating world governments, but in full control of the Powers That Be, and are not at all concerned that world knows it.
    Again, where am I going with this? Just this: Why is the world so apathetic about the shitstorm that is bearing down on us like a category 5 hurricane. Hell, we aren't even boarding up the windows. Why aren't we? What the hell is wrong with everyone? Why have we become so g'damned apathetic? I think we have become desensitized. First off, we have been getting slapped with news of gloom and doom as long as I can remember, and it has slowly escalated. Each disaster, each war, each end of the world event has managed to fade away, or get made into a pay per view movie. It is the Boy Crying Wolf, and it feels as if the entire world has now turned a deaf ear to the call to arms. Our world is under attack from virtually every angle, politics, religion, law, finance, greed, gluttony, apathy. We are constantly being fed a series of End of The World blockbuster hit movies and best selling novels that have an entire generation actually looking forward to the apocalypse as a viable alternative to the world we live in. Many are hoping and praying for an asteroid to hit, a plague to strike, aliens to land, or the current populist favorite; the Zombie Apocalypse. Now, instead of factions rising up against the travesties we are being assailed with, we have factions who are just hunkering down, stocking up supplies, and prepping to ride out the storm with the hope of being among a handful of survivors. When did we turn from activists to reactivists? The world has given up on the idea that we might be able to make changes, steer the world back on course, improve our chances, heal our planet. We are desensitized and apathetic. It is the worst tragedy of all. It is as if no one even cares anymore. In the end, I think that apathy will be the death of us all.