Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Why Steven Colbert should change his name to John Lennon...


Ok...so we've all gotten them. We've all gone to our Facebook pages and had the group requests. And then, if we have REAL friends, we get invited to some sort of cause group, or common interest group. Because hey, what better way to cure cancer than to join a group of 300 other people that think they're going to find 1 million people to stand with them to cure cancer. The really ironic thing about this whole group thing is the social implications you can find by comparing the titles of groups. Just in this little "1,000,000 strong...cancer" niche, you have ~300 people that want to cure cancer, but almost 1.5 million that hate cancer. Basically, out of those 1.5 million that have somehow been wronged by cancer, only 300 want to cure it. And what can we draw out of this? Well it seems that this may be our society's Freudian slip. Basically we can all see the pain, the sickness, and dislike it very much...but when it actually comes to doing something about it..."Well, ummm, I don't really have the time or want to get THAT involved." Basically our society wants to take a stand...but not an active stance. Maybe this is why so many people are against the war in Iraq, National Health care, tax reform, or really anything that means things are going to be messy for a while and may require a little more effort on the part of our citizens.

Now when I started this entry I was going to write about how Jesus will never have one group that has more than a million strong in his favor because the church would rather split over unimportant theological smears than unite under the one love, one Christ, and one God which happens to put all things into motion. I was also going to point out that Steven Colbert has more than a million strong for him...which would mean that he's more popular than Jesus.

But rather this post has been turned into a call to action...no whining. We can see how our nation is, we can see the injustices of the medical industry, injustices of tyranny overseas, and the injustices of poverty. We can hold protests for either side of any topic and have a grand ole time waving our flags, getting mad, possibly getting arrested only to complain about the police force doing their jobs...but what will really come out of it? The problem with speaking out is that everyone has the choice to listen or not. Now with the speed of technology, silencing a protest is a matter of turning the channel from CNN or FOX News. But the real protest is one that is an active process of changing the current situation. If you are against the War in Iraq or National Health care or tax reform, don't just complain, get involved in letter writing campaigns or better yet, work to get a position in the government and work to make changes from within. It's only when you take an active part will your voice ever be heard, otherwise you just remain a loud cymbal...annoying, but through the noise, eventually muted.

2 comments:

Betsy said...

First off. I read your blog AND i posted.

Second. I totally agree about getting active instead of standing on a soapbox. Granted I don't know that much about politics, but I DO feel that way about world hunger, malaria, child education, etc. Don't just sit there and say, "oh that's so bad, somebody should do something." YOU are somebody and you can do something, like volunteer or be part of an organization that does something more than sit on it's butt in front of a tv and cry about children in africa.

oh, i'm sorry, was that a rant?!

KaGe said...

rant...confirmed. but isn't that what blogs are for anyways?