Ideal

I ran into an ex-boyfriend of mine at a wedding last weekend. He was a writer for an independent paper/ filmmaker, turned financial PR man. I can remember when I met his mother, she said to me-without knowing me or anything about me- “we thought it was time he let go of his ideals and start making a living.” Did I mention the financial PR firm he worked for belonged to his parents? At the time I didn’t think much of it beyond that she was your standard overbearing mother, until days before I was to meet his father and her for a formal dinner, when he and I suddenly ended our relationship- guess I was part of the ideals he needed to let go of.

Anyway this isn’t a story about ex-boyfriends, it’s about the ideals part, and so let me move on. A little while ago I began an email conversation with a friend of mine which moved towards a discussion about the older generation of activists and the ways in which they more clearly and firmly are able to articulate their vision of a better future, and I started to wonder- is our generation somehow different in our approach to real, positive, change? What I spoke about with that friend was how the older generation, having seen change, was able to visualize it better than the newer- those of us who have grown up primarily within republican administrations or within the Clinton years (which isn’t saying much). And while this seems like it may be a definite part of it, I also wonder about the ways we utilize technology today and the ways in which our approach to dissent differs. Take for example this blog. Anyone and everyone can write what they feel on the internet and you can just bet that someone will read it, and so- good or otherwise, articulate or otherwise, your voice seemingly gets heard. Or take for example the rising in the last 5-7 years of the internet based activist networks- moveon.org, one.org, and the like. Suddenly people don’t have to leave their comfortable apartments to take part in the protest against what is inhumane, un-patriotic, or un-democratic. With the tap of a finger against a key they can sign a petition to end the war, and where that petition inevitably ends up few people probably know, but by hitting the send button they at least feel like they’ve contributed. And while in the age of technology, online petitions were the inevitable next step- followed closely by those anthropologically fascinating youtube debates-, and while they can certainly have a positive influence, it makes me wonder if part of the problem with the newer generations protest and our articulation of a better future isn’t simply that we’ve gotten lazy.

We are a generation of people with carpal tunnel syndrome and poor eyesight thanks to all this new technology and yet none of it has seemed to make its mark in quite the way that protests in, for example, the civil rights era did. No, despite the amount of times people write, and click, and make witty political commentary online it just doesn’t seem to have the same effect. Now don’t get me wrong- there are still many people out there marching themselves to the capital, holding signs on street corners, and tramping up and down a picket line in the cold of winter, but somehow these efforts seem to have lost their teeth. Like the efforts of a select few that I run across every week in Manhattan during their protest of the working conditions at the Four Points Hotel. They scream and shout and get videotaped, and yet the giant blow-up rat that stands behind them (and incidentally follows other picketers on various other protests) seems to be mocking them. The security guards stand around them, bored and yawning, occasionally refocusing their cameras and the picketers never make an effort to move outside of their picket area, so kindly designated for them by cheap metal barricades put in place by the hotel administration. (And no I don’t expect anyone to be throwing themselves on water hoses or scuffling with the police, but it does just make me all the more aware of how protest has changed over the years.)

The thing of it is this: while the civil rights era protests may not have been perfect (and they truly weren’t), activism has somehow become a whole lot more passive, and I don’t know that those two things can go together for any significant amount of time before something gives. Maybe if we made ourselves more physically involved in the things we feel passionately about, and maybe if we didn’t leave behind our idealism for what other people tell us is a better use of our time, we wouldn’t be stuck with problems like a president who effectively voted himself into office his first term.

Anyway, that’s just my 2 cents from behind my keyboard, inside my warm apartment, on this miserably cold winter night.