Paradoxes of Faith

I’m not always a fan of Mr. Friedman, but he has impressed me with his analysis of your 20-somethings on college campuses. Particularly striking is his analysis of our generation being ‘too-online’, ‘too virtual’, and not socially active enough in a physical sense, though humanitarian work is booming among our generation.   These words are ‘tough love’ for our generation (me included, sadly) who wear the “activist” label on their (red)-campaign GAP t-shirts, and mistake charity for justice and empathy for empowerment. A great paragraph from his editorial follows:

America needs a jolt of the idealism, activism and outrage (it must be in there) of Generation Q. That’s what twentysomethings are for — to light a fire under the country. But they can’t e-mail it in, and an online petition or a mouse click for carbon neutrality won’t cut it. They have to get organized in a way that will force politicians to pay attention rather than just patronize them.   

Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy didn’t change the world by asking people to join their Facebook crusades or to download their platforms. Activism can only be uploaded, the old-fashioned way — by young voters speaking truth to power, face to face, in big numbers, on campuses or the Washington Mall. Virtual politics is just that—virtual.

May our campuses find their moral compasses, including their activist ones as well.

For the revolution won’t be televised as long as it’s quarantined to Instant Messenger conversations, and online pseudo-communities.

Let’s continue to get our hands dirty.