Feb/Mar 2002
A New Contract With The Planet
Healing
After Terror
Michael Lerner
Indifference
Don Kyhote
The
Globalization of Poverty
Antonia Juhasz
World
Bank President's Secret Plan For Argentina
Greg Palast (Available after Mar. 1)
The
Trade Towers Without Tears
John Darling
Passcode
"Redwood:" Keeping Repression in Perspective
Starhawk
The
Uncooling of America
Kalle Lasn
Frankencorn
Fight
Ronnie Cummins
Oil
Company Advisor Chosen to Represent U.S. in Afghanistan
Patrick Martin
The
Next Technology Revolution
Steve Wallis, MA
Man
of Occasional Two Braids
Antoinette Nora Claypoole
The
Ecology of Community
Jesse Wolf Hardin
Love
and Leadership
Michele LeBien
Fearful
Feelings
Peter Moore, MFCC, CGP
Cosmic
Calendar
Salina Rain
Indifference
Don
Kyhote
I have been reflecting on our world during 2001 and I find myself drawn back to a piece that I have been handing out to my students for the past thirty years. I include it below.
“Indifference is actually the mainspring of history. But in a negative sense. What comes to pass, either the evil that afflicts everyone, or the possible good brought about by an act of general valor, is due not so much to the initiative of the active few, as to the indifference, the absenteeism of the many. What comes to pass does so not so much because a few people want it to happen, as because the mass of citizens abdicate their responsibility and let things be. They allow the knots to form that in time only a sword will be able to cut through; they let men rise to power whom in time only a mutiny will overthrow. The fatality that seems to dominate history is precisely the illusory appearance of this indifference, of this absenteeism.
Events are hatched off-stage in the shadows; unchecked hands weave the fabric of collective life—and the masses know nothing. But eventually the events that are hatched come out into the open; the fabric woven in the shadows is completed, and then it seems that fatality overwhelms everything and everybody. It seems that history is nothing but an immense natural phenomenon, an eruption, an earthquake, and that we are all its victims, both those who wanted it to happen as well as those who did not, those who knew it would happen and those who did not, those who were active and those who were indifferent.
And then it is the indifferent ones who get angry, who wish to dissociate themselves from the consequence who want it made known that they did not want it so and hence bear no responsibility. And while some whine piteously, and others howl obscenely, few people, if any, ask themselves this question: had I done my duty as a man or woman, had I sought to make my voice heard, to impose my will, would what came to pass have ever happened?
But few people,
if any, see their indifference as a fault—their skepticism, their failure
to give moral and material support to those political and economic groups
that were struggling either to avoid a particular evil or to promote a particular
good. Instead such people prefer to speak of the failure of ideas, of the
definitive collapse of programs, and other like niceties. They continue in
their indifference and their skepticism. Tomorrow they will begin anew their
life of absenting themselves from any direct or indirect responsibility for
things …
Certainly they are not born of that sharp sense of historical responsibility
that drives men to take an active part of life. Therefore, this new sensibility
must be drummed into us—we must have done with the inconclusive whinings
of the eternally innocent.
Everyman must be asked to account for the manner in which he has fulfilled the task that life has set him and continues to set him day by day; he must be asked to account for what he has done, but, especially for what he has not done. It is high time that the social chain not weigh on just the few; it is time that events should be seen to be the intelligent work of men, and not the products of chance, of fatality. And so it is time to have done with the indifferent among us, the skeptics, the people who profit from the small (social) good procured by the active few, but who refuse to take responsibility for the great evil that is allowed to develop and come to pass because of their absence from the struggle.”*
Could this be more timely? Isn’t it time to ask:
Could the theft of the American Presidency last December have occurred without the absenteeism of the majority of the American people?
How might have our collective indifference contributed to the terrible tragedy of 9/11? Are we merely victims of international terrorism?
Would the American
people have supported the “war on terrorism” if they had known that
the vast majority of the world’s people (89% according to International
Gallop Poll, 9/21/01)
weren’t behind it? Why didn’t they know that?
Did they know that the day after the first Anthrax exposure it was positively identified as being from the US Army’s Biological Weapons Program at Fort Detrick, Maryland? Why didn’t they know that?
How is our compliant silence enabling the current assault on the most basic civil liberties upon which this country is based?
How did the abdication of our responsibility allow the Enronization of America where an elite few enrich them-selves at the expense of the average Ameri-can and great public need?
What is it that we could have done, but didn’t because of the inconvenience of it all? Fail to question the loss of jobs in the country because it didn’t personally affect us? Fail to consider the cost and cultural impact of our addiction to monster cars, yearly available fruit, fresh, fragrant coffee—in short, to our “blessed way of life?”
Has our corrupt corporate capitalism become a “knot that only a sword can cut through?”
Where do you stand on the issue of globalization? With those who would export the Enron model worldwide? Or with those who question its value to normal people and see that indifference to their planetary neighbor’s fate is mirrored at home?
Who is teaching the danger of this indifference and what do they suffer for doing so? (Hint: many of those courageous voices appear on Lynn Cheney’s list of “unpatriotic interpreters of history.”)
Has our indifference to the abuse of women worldwide been reconciled by the recent disingenuous focused concern for women under Taliban rule? (How many times did CNN air that documentary?)
How much of our indifference is cultivated by those who benefit by it? And how do they manufacture consent for their weaving of events?
Are our personal interests or even universal interests served by our absenteeism? Whose interests does it serve?
Has your new vulnerability—your entry into the real world from the fool’s paradise of God’s invulnerable promised land—encouraged your active engagement in determining the future or are you willing, now more than ever, to allow the “active few to weave the fabric of your life in the shadows?”
Just some questions to think about.
*Unsigned, Turin edition of Avanti, 26 August 1916 under the heading “Sotto la Mole” in Gramsci: Political Writings 1910-1920.
Don Kyhote is an educator and supporter of those who speak truth to power and has been confronting the status quo his entire professional career.
