Carrying On: Activism across decades

My generation can be divided into two types of people: those who care about making the world a better place and those who just don’t.

Of those of us who care about civil issues and activism, many of us fawn over what it would be like to live in the 1960’s. “Man, I should have been born in that decade. I was meant to be born in that decade,” they whine. Although these comments stem from annoyance with the general Millennial, Generation Me narcissism, they miss the point entirely.

The first problem with the activism of our generation is that it glamorizes the 60’s.

I remember the first time I watched Across the Universe. My friends and I, part of the small group of students at my high school that cared about social change, drooled over it. The interplay of plot and Beatles songs gave the music a whole new aggressive interpretation.

I brought this bad ass, stick-it-to-the-man film home, excited to show my parents, who both left for college in 1968 and raised me on the ideals of civic responsibility and social justice. I was so excited for them to see the scene where Max is drafted in the army while a giant Uncle Sam poster sings “I Want You” and shifts into an image of the army carrying lady liberty across Vietnam singing “She’s So Heavy.” When the film was over I turned to my parents—they weren’t entertained. I asked how they liked it, wasn’t it so cool? My dad simply said, “It isn’t ‘so cool’ when you live through it.”

And this response was generally the same each time I came home with a fascinating story about my parents’ era. The 60’s simply weren’t a fun time to live through. Everything was uncertain, riots left many dead, rights were constrained, and families fractured over changing times. My dad was from the Kent State area. My mom was in Birmingham.

Our generation’s form of activism and social justice is extremely materialistic. We want to look like we’re doing our part and get a new profile picture of us doing it, but how many hours of work do we actually put in to real causes? And, this idea pervades every part of our generation, even our music.

My dad was confused  that the only bands that seemed to have anything to say about America’s political climate during the Bush era were System of a Down, The Dixie Chicks, and Green Day. In fact, most people in our generation are turned off by the idea of music with anything other than empty lyrics, music that can not only be popular but do good, like U2. We simply aren’t into that. We simply aren’t interested in anything that isn’t observable by the next person.

We don’t have as many in-your-face issues like my parents generation did and there are many areas in which we have made momentous strides, like in LGBTQ rights, for example. But, instead of wishing for the 60’s when we look around us and see unmotivated fellow youths, we should focus on being present for our current battles. If we really cared enough to want to find solutions to the world’s problems, the current culture wouldn’t matter to us, our appearances wouldn’t matter to us.

The 60s’ weren’t glamorous or fun, and I guess neither are our generation’s issues, but that shouldn’t stop us from wanting to fix them.