Once in high school, a classmate of mine asked our history teacher what term she would coin for the age of civilization we are currently in. Almost immediately she said, "The Age of Entitlement." As cliche as this sounds, I find myself thinking about this phrase a lot. I sometimes wonder if we have become too entitled. I wonder if we expect too much for too little. I wonder if we compare our situation to the past too often. I believe that many people are entitled. I believe that there are people who have a complete disregard for all they have and all that they have been given. I have caught myself being too entitled, feeling like I deserve more than I do. Frankly, I think entitlement can be dangerous, but I also think it can be helpful. Entitlement can be progressive. Do I think it's wrong for people to feel entitled to payment for their work? No. Do I think it's unacceptable for folks to feel entitled to answers about the fiscal irresponsibility of this nation? Not really. Do I think it's outrageous for humans to feel entitled to safety and security regardless of their gender, race, or social standing? Not in the slightest. For arguments sake I would say that entitlement can work towards the betterment of all things just as much as it can harm our moral compasses.

I think there is something as equally, if not more dangerous, than entitlement. It is something that far more of us suffer from and infinitely more of us could avoid. It is indifference. Indifference is dangerous because it allows us to recognize problems in our society without pursuing them. Indifference authorizes all of us to see social injustice and blatantly ignore it. Indifference desensitizes us to the horrors that many people face every day in this country and others. Essentially, indifference takes our natural empathy and slowly suffocates it.

I want to acknowledge the fact that technology bears a large amount of blame for paralyzing our generation and I too am going to play a part in this. All of us, regardless of how active we are on social media, how often we watch television, or how current our phones are, are affected directly by technology and its ability to spread data like wildfire. When we are bombarded day to day by graphic images, sob stories, and CONSTANT comparison to everyone around us it can be hard to process things with empathy. There are so many problems and doing nothing becomes so much easier than trying to spend any extra energy we have at the end of the day on fixing them. Not only do we regularly see death, loss, destruction, pain, suffering and agony through technology, we also see endless petitions, rallies, meetings, and calls to action. When there is SO much going on, and there always is, it can be hard to choose any one thing to focus on. The world can often seem like an abyss where we are never doing enough or trying as hard as we could be or doing as well as we should be. This is where indifference comes in. If there are so many things to do, to care about, that you can't do all of them, or even a fraction of them, why do anything at all? Technology supplies us with interminable options, which can so easily become the ability to opt out of all things.

I think that indifference is hazardous. I believe that only bad things can come from us watching chaos unfold. I think that above all it is important to care for other human beings. I want to remind everyone that you do not have to do everything. You don't even have to do a large fraction of all of the things. However, every little action counts. We are all aware of what is happening and awareness without action is, by definition, indifference.