For some of you moving on, up, out, wherever, this may be the last time you ever read this paper. If you’ve read my column every Wednesday, then I am stunned and flattered. Most of you probably glance for something interesting between classes and that’s that.
All cynicism aside, to see people who once spent so much time together spread across the earth is a beautiful thing to be a part of.
The average UF student has great potential to change the world. This might sound fantastical, but you are the key to the future, and you have a choice to shape it. As I see it, the status quo cannot stand. It’s going to be up to us, as a collective human force of will, to do something about actually changing our world. You should be sick and tired of letting old guys in suits drive your world headfirst into oblivion. They won’t be alive to see it, and it’s hard to say what the tipping point will be. But it’s going to get ugly.
We live in a world where those in control seem so disconnected from reality, I’m pretty sure they’re drowning in their own gravy train. We see Tasers used on children in schools, and we’re asking how much a child should weigh before you can safely use a Taser on them rather than should we use them at all.
Every day there is less oil to fight over, more weapons being built, less potable water, expanding deserts, higher international tension, mass deforestation, population growth and fewer pandas. That’s right, fewer pandas. The doomsayer is always written off as a hack, but eventually, anyone who cares even slightly about people we’ve never met gets a desperate feeling that something has to change.
Our generation harnesses an incredible amount of power. There was youth before us, and there will be youth after, but we are the first generation in the history of mankind to have grown up with the Internet. That’s right, me, you, and if you’re on campus, most of the people you see around you, are Net natives. We have a unique adaptation.
Our minds are bombarded with relentless torrents of information in traffic, movies, interactive media, the Internet and nearly everything else unless we’re sleeping. More kids are being diagnosed with ADHD every year, and people wonder why. It’s so easy to get overwhelmed with stimuli, and sometimes it’s hard to even notice. But that jaded feeling creeps over all of us from time to time, and we talk with the bitterness of someone 30 years older as if we’ve actually experienced anything. The clenching of our minds in reaction to too much data closes us off to what really matters. What doesn’t matter is so shuffled and mixed with reality, it’s barely possible to determine if you’re more angry with social injustice or that ad trying to sell you flavored water.
Does it not bother anyone else that you have to pay extra money to get truly clean water?
If you actually don’t care and pray to talking heads that one day you will be one of the suits so you can ride the gravy train to the church of corporate worship, then few of these ideas are for you. In the end, as Net natives, we have the ability to quickly, collectively and cohesively stand behind ideas for change instead of standing around waiting for the next meme to laugh at. But it’s hard to do. We have to overcome ourselves, because our exposure to such high amounts of information is both a blessing and a curse. Maybe we’re too late, and we’ve already been inoculated beyond revival. Time will tell. Be the change.
Wesley Campbell is a fifth-year English major. His column appears on Wednesdays.
