The Present Age by Søren Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard would have likely thought our time as one that is passionless.  There is much chatter and hype but little action and passion.  In our hyper media and advertised world, it is easy to chatter.  It is disheartening to see uneducated, racist, sexist, speciesist and other biased comments on websites and on social media outlets.  These comments come in often anonymously and with little consequences to the commentators but may have deeper consequences to readers and authors of the websites/social media outlets.

Social media has allowed for passionless inaction within the social justice movement in which there is much publicity and majority support for important issues like economic injustice, animal abuse, the broken food systems, racism, sexism, etc., little is actutally done.  There is just much chatter online but at the end of the day, we generally continue to accept the economic injustice, animal abuse, the broken food systems, racism and sexism of this world without actually actively doing anything about it.

I agree that passion is needed to propel one into action.  Malcolm X said, "Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change."  I do think that there is deep truth in tihis statement.  It is deep passion that propelled me towards veganism and my limited involvement with social justice causes.

In a sense, we feel sympathy for a cause for a brief moment but essentially tune it out of our mind immediately afterwards causing apathy.  In the end, most of us do nothing after learning about injustices in this world.

When one reflects on the lack of passion and on the high passion in 'heros' like Malcolm X, Steve Biko and other activists and ordinary concerned citizens, the tension caused by our lack of action in turn causes endless reflection and is often, at least in my experience, reaffirmed by the public majority - "It's no use.  One person cannot change the world." - you  start to believe in this statement.  There is truth to the statement after all...  Apathy affirmed.  No action.  No passion.

I, too, have been guilty of this apathy.  But also of passion.  Such is the human condition... or is this just something I say to make myself feel better?

I agree that we need to apply our knowledge, that is to act.  I disagree with one of my classmates who said that to publish in an academic journal is to contribute back to society.  Well... let me clarify - there is value in producing and publishing in academia but the reality is that academia is a highly privileged world, available to only a small group in this world.  I am much, much more interested in learning on how to act on a daily basis and how to give back to society at large, not just producing literature for the consumption of a select privileged few, of which I am a part of.  This means figuring out an ethical path in life and in the context of the GLS program, a project that w ill be widely accessible to a greater population than just those privileged enough to be a part of higher education.

2010 Olympics protest