on the passivity of a generation

Have we become so comfortable, with our "on demand" society, that we've failed to struggle for the things that are truly important?  Too distracted by the 47 ways to manipulate something as simple as coffee to understand the complexity of human nature?  Satisfied with activism that involves pressing the "forward" button after reading a message with an agenda, or signing an electronic petition with a fake name that will just get lost in the throes of cyberspace?

It's unfortunate that I know the answer to these questions, and simply by writing this myself I have joined the complacent ranks of those who complain about their woes on a nonexistent medium.  It will be read, possibly agreed with, and soon forgotten.

Oh, the many distractions of an era.  We spend so much mental energy in a given day on the evermore crucial decisions to be made.  Venti or grande.  Hip-hop or rock. Comedy or drama.  Where to engage in consumptionism.  Should I spend my paycheck on this pink iPod or this blue dress? What is the devil wearing these days, anyhow?

I believe there was a time that people cared.  I'm beginning to think that it's not en vogue anymore.  It's not plastered on the cover of a magazine, nor can I sense that any periodical is telling the true story of our generation.  When I think about the artistic landscape we have created, I see confusion. Creativity has been replaced by distraction, and this will be passed on as a melody that the future will hear. What will be the indication, as I have heard and seen in preserved traces of past culture, that there has been any struggle for justice?  Will a painting today give any hint of what it was like living in these times, or will style destroy substance beyond recognition?  How will anyone know what has happened to us when they read between the lines of a book?

The critics of my criticism have a favorite answer. When they hear of my nostalgia for a more fulfilling time, they tell me that things have always been this way.  

As if they were there.

As if they were there when people were willing to die for their freedom. True freedom, not the idealized buzz word that has been used to justify killing.  The freedom that breaks the shackles off ankles and gives a woman permission to speak in a room.

As if they were there when atrocities, though carried out, were met with fierce opposition.  No justification of war without a critical eye, and loud voices crying out for the foreign voices we could not hear.  Drowned by firemen's hoses and police batons, silenced by silencers.

As if they were there when the words of a song demonstrated the state of a broken world and the everlasting pain in the soldier's heart.  The power of haunting verses and a discordant chorus not lost in a sea of cacophony.  Bittersweet rhymes that permeated future generations and told the true story of the past in a way I could understand.

Sometimes I feel as if we are a grand, failed experiment under a watchmaker God's eye.  I just don't want him to point an angry, disappointed finger at this phase of results and say, "Here.  This is when they gave up."