Topic 2: Apathy
Apathy's a weird topic for me because I care. I have opinions. I make impassioned speeches and start debates from offhand comments. I share shocked outrage with my feminist best friend when she comes across something offensive.
So I rant about it on my blog, then I go have pretendy online fun times (Read: RP).
So yea, I'm pretty...well, lazy. But to be honest, most of the things I really care about are things that this approach sort of works for.
Yes I don't go off and join groups and make impassioned speeches to more than three people at a time, or hand out leaflets or give money or join in marches... but for the things I really believe in, I don't have to in order to make a difference.
To spread the word about gay rights or women's rights or any of that sort of thing... I just have to start my debates and make my blog entries, I just start challenging the views around me and hope it spreads. It's not great, but it's something.
The problem is... the things that I'm so impassioned and opinionated about... that's usually where I hit the apathy barriers for everybody else. Most of my family, for example, will most likely give me a weird look if I were to start ranting about how Katy Perry's "I kissed a girl" is horribly offensive (and annoyingly catchy).
Yet the things everybody else actually cares about... global warming... the 'credit crunch'... elections and leadership...
that's pretty much where my apathy barriers come in.
I'll occasionally throw in a flash of irritated opinion, but these are issues where that's really the easy way out, a sentence or two to let people know where you stand and leave it at that, who cares.
I think a lot of people are like this with big issues that they might actually be able to do something about... they just don't. They air their views in the pub, round the dinner table, out loud to the telly when the news is on... but that's all.
It makes people feel important and active to have views on these things, but nobody actually bothers DOING anything. It's why applications like 'little green patch' and groups like 'omg we love the planet' (...probably not a real group) on facebook are so popular, because they allow people to pretend to care without actually having to.
I go one step further. I pretend to care just like everybody else. But I have my trick, my special get-out-of-jail-free card... I deliberately pick viewpoints that don't require further action.
Let's take two big examples to illustrate my point... global warming and the goverment.
Global Warming... I do things to help the planet if they're not too out of my way, like anyone, I don't leave the tap on while brushing my teeth, we use our recycling bin, I use public transport (ok that last one's just 'cos I can't drive)... but my viewpoint on global warming is possibly one of my most apathetic, but also very strongly held. It can be summed up thusly:
oh my god, we're coming out of a freakin' ice age.
Basically... yes global warming is happening, and ok we're probably speeding it up a bit, but a) we're not 'causing' it. and b) who freakin' cares anyway.
It's horribly dismissive of anybody who will be affected by global warming, but right now England ain't getting any hotter and I can't really bring myself to care. Callous, yes, but there you have it.
The government... now this is a fun one.
On Facebook I have listed my political views as a "lazy idealistic anarchist"
I happen to strongly agree with the phrase "No matter who you vote for, the government always gets in" - it means I get to whinge about the current government, whoever they are, without having to make any effort to change it, because I hold no illusions that anybody else would be any better.
What I really want is no government, hence the anarchy.
The idealism comes in because I'm pretty sure that my idea of how anarchy would happen is probably hideously innacurate.
The lazy part is where I can't be bothered to investigate how this anarchy actually would go, or what I could do to create it.
So that's just a small taster of how I think, of what I care about, and more topically, what I don't.
It can pretty much be summed up as... I care, as long as I don't have to do anything.
So the same as most people really.
So I rant about it on my blog, then I go have pretendy online fun times (Read: RP).
So yea, I'm pretty...well, lazy. But to be honest, most of the things I really care about are things that this approach sort of works for.
Yes I don't go off and join groups and make impassioned speeches to more than three people at a time, or hand out leaflets or give money or join in marches... but for the things I really believe in, I don't have to in order to make a difference.
To spread the word about gay rights or women's rights or any of that sort of thing... I just have to start my debates and make my blog entries, I just start challenging the views around me and hope it spreads. It's not great, but it's something.
The problem is... the things that I'm so impassioned and opinionated about... that's usually where I hit the apathy barriers for everybody else. Most of my family, for example, will most likely give me a weird look if I were to start ranting about how Katy Perry's "I kissed a girl" is horribly offensive (and annoyingly catchy).
Yet the things everybody else actually cares about... global warming... the 'credit crunch'... elections and leadership...
that's pretty much where my apathy barriers come in.
I'll occasionally throw in a flash of irritated opinion, but these are issues where that's really the easy way out, a sentence or two to let people know where you stand and leave it at that, who cares.
I think a lot of people are like this with big issues that they might actually be able to do something about... they just don't. They air their views in the pub, round the dinner table, out loud to the telly when the news is on... but that's all.
It makes people feel important and active to have views on these things, but nobody actually bothers DOING anything. It's why applications like 'little green patch' and groups like 'omg we love the planet' (...probably not a real group) on facebook are so popular, because they allow people to pretend to care without actually having to.
I go one step further. I pretend to care just like everybody else. But I have my trick, my special get-out-of-jail-free card... I deliberately pick viewpoints that don't require further action.
Let's take two big examples to illustrate my point... global warming and the goverment.
Global Warming... I do things to help the planet if they're not too out of my way, like anyone, I don't leave the tap on while brushing my teeth, we use our recycling bin, I use public transport (ok that last one's just 'cos I can't drive)... but my viewpoint on global warming is possibly one of my most apathetic, but also very strongly held. It can be summed up thusly:
oh my god, we're coming out of a freakin' ice age.
Basically... yes global warming is happening, and ok we're probably speeding it up a bit, but a) we're not 'causing' it. and b) who freakin' cares anyway.
It's horribly dismissive of anybody who will be affected by global warming, but right now England ain't getting any hotter and I can't really bring myself to care. Callous, yes, but there you have it.
The government... now this is a fun one.
On Facebook I have listed my political views as a "lazy idealistic anarchist"
I happen to strongly agree with the phrase "No matter who you vote for, the government always gets in" - it means I get to whinge about the current government, whoever they are, without having to make any effort to change it, because I hold no illusions that anybody else would be any better.
What I really want is no government, hence the anarchy.
The idealism comes in because I'm pretty sure that my idea of how anarchy would happen is probably hideously innacurate.
The lazy part is where I can't be bothered to investigate how this anarchy actually would go, or what I could do to create it.
So that's just a small taster of how I think, of what I care about, and more topically, what I don't.
It can pretty much be summed up as... I care, as long as I don't have to do anything.
So the same as most people really.