The New Year, for most intents and purposes, has come and gone. The only reason we really care about the famed day is because of foolish notions of sorting out our neatly pre-packaged lives. (Most of you call them resolutions and they usually have something to do with losing weight.) So, when fifty-six percent of a recently polled female population said they would much rather be thinner than smarter, I deduced that New Year’s was more of a girl-y holiday than Valentine’s Day. It doesn’t stop at that. It’s a holiday celebrated mostly for our escapist generation, one which would much rather fix the minor individual programs than think on a greater, more selfless scale.
Instead of trying to find the perfect swimsuit that accentuates your figure while guzzling down beer after beer during Spring Break (Cancun edition), our generation needs to take note of its degenerating lifestyle. However, a simple realisation of how we are losing the fight against our own rights does no good if we are not willing to do something, or even any thing, about it.
“The world’s stupid optimism must be shaken to the base. We must face the ugly truth as well as the beautiful, we must give the bitter and nasty truth a chance to wrestle with the sweet and lovely lie…
If religion will not do its work, if science fears to draw its conclusions, the bold, the fearless spirit of artistic genius must (perhaps) go down in the mud to clear the way for the advance it needs must have, and which it cannot get from its servants” - Lincoln Steffens (1891)”
Our education does not and should always take place within the confines of a windowless Pace University classroom. If your professors are not facilitating progressive intellectual discussions like you would want them to, then it is your duty to take the initiative to make those discussions happen in the hallways, in parks, on the Brooklyn Bridge.
your guilty pleasure of Wednesday night television or whichever day you might prefer on your 500 channel television set is not freedom of choice. It is confinement. We are our worst oppressors because we are buying into this façade of freedom. Turn off the television; pick up the newspaper (and I don’t mean Page Six). There are too many among us who decide that it is okay for us to perpetuate escapism in our own lives because there are enough people out there who do care about current events. What you are forgetting is each and every thing any of us does is political, whether you like or not. Stop trying to escape from it and do some thing, anything.
For starters, become involved in the world around you by volunteering. the Centre for Community Outreach is sponsoring a trip to New Orleans where you will be able to help with various projects to restore shelters and traditional housing. Next, read up on members of Congress who are up for re-election this year. Get involved with their campaigns.
The fog is only as real as you want it to be.
Originally published in the February 2006 edition of the Pforzheimer Honors College newsletter (NYC campus).
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