The Apathetic Activist

From Pain To Power: The Apathetic Activist Deals With A World Gone Mad (Pt. 1)
By Russ Reina

The end of our 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st found me living in intentional community in Oregon. There, amongst socially responsible, if not cutting-edge innovators in sustainable living, I found myself having to deal with my own incredible lack of concern about things going on in the greater world around me. For five years, while living at a hub of activism, I let the world take care of itself, and continue to do so today. Some call that apathy.

It started with that impending nationwide glitch called Y2K. While so many of the people around me were stockpiling food and water and building networks of cooperation, not to mention paranoia, I went about the business of running the community’s conference center. Did I concern myself about the impending threat and rally with them? Not a whit. Around the same time, the WTO Seattle protests found busloads of my friends traveling about 150 miles to get suppressed by the Police State, and I didn’t blink.

Then, some guy named Gore did blink in a showdown with a guy named Bush, and it was all a big Ho-hum, business-as-usual thing to me. Shortly thereafter, the World Trade Center got slammed, and, of course, at first appalled, within a short period of time I came to the conclusion that the bigwigs were using the whole mess to set something up for something that I wasn’t in the know enough to understand, let alone affect. Sure enough, the Iraq war (?) sprung from those loins and then occupation came and continues, and, outside of a cursory wonderment, I have no cry of outrage in me.