Empower Yourself: Apathy Is Becoming Obsolete
Apathy is Fatal
FATAL: "decreed by fate,” from Latin fatalis "ordained by fate," from fatum (see fate); sense of "causing death." Fatality is "disaster resulting in death." Fatalism is the philosophical doctrine that all things are determined by fate; fatalist in the general sense of "one who accepts every event as inevitable."
—Dictionary
The root of apathy and defeatism is our false sense of weakness. The fatalist despairs and thinks: "What can I do? Why worry about problems I can’t change? I have to just accept how things are." The easiest argument for doing nothing is that you are powerless to do anything. Who can be expected to do what is impossible? If you understood that you could do something about almost anything, you wouldn’t have that excuse any more. Instead, you would have a choice. Feel subject to forces beyond your control?
"The defeatists have taken over and there’s nothing you can do about it!"
"GO BACK TO BED AMERICA, YOUR GOVERNMENT IS IN CONTROL." — Bill Hicks “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.” —Joseph Goebbels “In Absentia Luci, Tenebrae Vincu. (In the absence of light, darkness prevails.)” —Hellboy Rational IgnoranceEconomists believe that there is a rationale behind ignorance. Like General Motors recall coordinators applying the "cost of recall versus cost of wrongful death libaility" formula, each one of us is inclined to know something if the benefit of knowing it exceeds the effort required to learn it. If effort exceeds benefit, we don't want to know. In otherwords, if people see more benefit or less required effort, they will learn more. The Price of Apathy"The greatest danger to our future is apathy." —Jane Goodall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese
"I'm fairly radical politically, but am interested in too many causes, and become apathetic through not knowing what action to take first."
|
 |
Empower Thyself“Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be, the man who thinks, becomes a light and a power.”
—Henry George
Empowerment is a choice.Many people are convinced they have no power. We resemble war veteran amputees who feel phantom limbs where none remain. They have tingling sensations where the limb used to be and dreams as though they still had the freedom to leap and play sports with their whole body. We’re the opposite, like emancipated slaves who still feel the chafing of shackles long outlawed. We have phantom chains that no longer exist. No human power can make us slaves except in our own minds. Some people do live under fascist dictatorships. There was once a time when our ancestors feared physical violence, but the power that rules us is psychological and economic. There is no system of control now that public awareness and activism cannot remedy. It’s not a question of being right or left, but of active or passive, involved or silent, aware or asleep.
“It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.”
—W. Edwards Denning
“The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that’s the essence of inhumanity.”
—George Bernard Shaw
““The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.. Without a direct action expression of it, nonviolence, to my mind, is meaningless.”
—Mahatma Gandhi
Activism is what makes Empowerment effective and the reverse is also true. Without Empowerment, activism is very difficult and undisciplined.
“All that is required for Evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.”
—Edmund Burke
“Be proactive. Being proactive basically means that your life is a product of your values, not your feelings. Your life is a product of your decisions, not your conditions. To be proactive means that you take the initiative to do whatever is necessary to make good things happen. In other words you’re the creative force of your own life. To use the computer metaphor, habit 1 is the awareness that you are the programmer. It is the budding awareness that the best way to predict your future is to create it. The opposite of being proactive is to be reactive, which basically means that your life is a function of your feelings, your moods, your impulses, how other people treat you… you feel victimized, you feel under the control of other forces. They’re doing it to you.”
—Stephen R. Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Successful People
“Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice.”
—W.J. Bryan
The ultimate responsibility for the world lies with individuals. The best system can be ruined by worst people and the worst system overcome by the best people. We’re responsible for making choices about the world’s future. It’s time to come out of the rainy trenches to warm up with an umbrella movement that allows everyone to achieve their goals.
“I suspect the difficulties involved in all these levels of galvanizing involvement or even just attention have to do with a reflex assumption of incapacity.
Why should I give my time, energy, or finances, regardless of how much I agree that gun control would be good, or that restraints on corporate owners or even attaining a whole new economy would be good, or that more and better alternative media would be good? My contributions will not yield much, so why bother making them? Skepticism about prospects and I suspect perhaps also a kind of embarrassment to be seen as naively thinking that one can make a difference curtail even easy, low cost commitment. Our good will and humane values don’t repeatedly get trounced because we cannot, in fact, win change. Conditions and possibilities are not insurmountably unfavorable. We fail to win, instead, most often because we think we cannot win. This sad situation must be reversed both in the large, regarding the institutions of our societies, and also compositely regarding our local campaigns and operations... How do we improve confidence and thereby in turn increase involvement? Or put differently, what have guns got to do with alternative media? These are question worth our time, I believe.”
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
—Franklin Delanore Roosevelt
Okay, I believe in empowerment. But surely that’s not enough? Thinking positive thoughts doesn’t change the reality. How can all this empowering thinking translate into effective actions that make a difference? And how will my small contribution make a difference? I don’t know where to get started. |