"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” --The Lorax
The formula for success in my sport of cross country is finding a way to harness fatigue and throw it away. It is a purely endurance sport that seems to ask, "How good are you at not being tired?" In the end, the runners who develop the mental and physical framework to tear down the walls of fatigue are the ones who enjoy the most fruits of success.
Could this practice of abolishing fatigue have practical implications in our world? Could it reverse climate change? Or police brutality?
The translation of mental and physical fatigue in the real world is social and political lethargy, the poisonous default for many of us. In an ideal world, we wouldn't need activists. If there are activists for something, that something is probably in disarray. There are "animals rights activists," for instance, because animals don't have rights. Unfortunately today, activists for gun control, social justice, the climate, animals, equality, etc. are also needed.
There's a difference between believing in a cause and being an activist for that cause. And only the latter group affects anything. The typical American, however, is not an activist. Activists are easily seen as extreme, self-righteous outcasts. Lethargy builds a barricade in front of the path of activism. And right now this barricade dominates. It's unsurprising to hear of acts of terror or police brutality in the news because, horrifically, it has just become so normal. The destruction of nature is also normal. It's saddening to know about the unpleasing rates of carbon emissions and deforestation, which are less shocking for media attention. Besides blocking the way to peace, this apathy facilities the path of least resistance. It is so easy to perpetuate the entrenched systems of inequality and injustice. And it's even easier to stand by and do absolutely nothing.
Once people in our culture slough off the skin of ignorance, action should be expected to follow. When people hear about terrorism, or climate change, or injustice, they typically just say something along the lines of, "Well that sucks," almost as if they are unaware that they are doing nothing. On the other hand, if we optimistically assume that most people care about all these issues, then the real problem is the belief that they "can't do anything" about them.
We not only have the ability to make a difference, but are also privileged with the beauty and practicality of empathy and passion. We, and we alone, have the innate ability and responsibility to extinguish apathy from our social consciousness. No other life form cares about the well being of its cousins across the globe. As the only species with the power to care about one another, we thus do a disservice to the universe and to the wonderful and deliberate processes of evolution when we succumb to fatigue and give up on caring about the world. Of course the complexity of socioeconomics has many people tied down; there are those who only have the means to worry about their next meal. That being said, those with the privileges of consciousness and wealth hold a unique capacity to do something about guns, about climate, about torture, and about anything we deem worth caring about.
We need more Loraxes, more people who take his words and create our future.
