Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Un-historic passion

Once again slightly piggybacking on the topic before me, I watched the movie Across the Universe over the weekend. In the opening few minutes, it shows some 1960s riot scenes. I said aloud, "People in our generation don't really riot." Then my friend said, "There's not as much to be passionate about -- not like there was in the '60s."

I realize that people do occasionally riot and protest and strike these days, but definitely not as often as what we saw in the news in the '60s. I agree with Adam that we still need to honor our individual and our collective historic past and learn from it. But is our generation passionless? Are we "Generation, Huh?" or "Generation Who Cares?" Look at how we sometimes get hyped up but then don't follow through -- look at our attempts to "Rock the Vote."

So -- what are you passionate about? What do you think about our generation? Are we passionate or far less than those who came before us?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I don't think out generation is passionless. I think we could be called generation fear. Or on the otherhand maybe we're just a little more educated about where riots get you. (Side note, is there anyone wanting to cause trouble with the police force these days in Shreveport? Not me and I know many who agree.)

So "Rock the Vote." Well get out and vote and see what it gets you. Not much if you paid attention to the Gore/Bush election, right? So maybe that's not the best example, so quicly an arguement to vote can be made and immediately countered with "it doesn't matter anyway."

Maybe you're right, maybe we don't have to fight for the freedoms people once did. But maybe, just maybe we're more scared of the consequences of sticking our neck out. If we're educated enough to know the issues, then we're educated enough to know that getting out there and stirring up some trouble is going to attract negative attention to us and create (or add) to a record that will follow us around for a while. We know the consequences of that in our social structures, in our jobs, in our churches. So to overlook the consequences, it would have to be a pretty big issue or a passion. Are we blessed to not have those issues or do we skip over the smaller ones out of fear and wait for things to get so bad that we don't have a choice?