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Its nothing new. Everyone knows it. The media is the opiate of the masses. But no one has realized just how bad it is. Every single aspect of the media only serves to aid in building apathy in the youth of today. From the most frivolous materialistic tripe on MTV to a deep and thoughtful documentary about war-torn Sudan. The problem with the media we see every day is, we see it every day. It has become an everyday occurrence to hear about the troubles shaking a far off country. Blood and gore do not have the same effect as they used to. When footage of a genocide is seen alongside footage of Saw IV, the trivial becomes reality and reality becomes trivial. It all meets on this basic median level, entertainment. The opiate of the masses.

Its a problem that I've been hearing lately. Media tells us all these things that are happening in the world and all these evils that must be fixed. Media tells us to stand up and do something about it so this media can't be the opiate can it? No the opiate tells us everything is alright, not to worry, nothing can go wrong, just be happy. But that's where things have changed since the 60s. Unfiltered, raw media coverage of world events is now the norm, so we should all be very aware of the evils in the world. We should all be standing against them, right? But we aren't. The youth are mesmerized by the evils they see in Michael Moore's documentaries and movies like Hotel Rwanda and even Youtube footage of violence against peaceful protesters in Iran, but do we stand up. No. It stays in the back of our heads. We feel like because we saw Blood Diamond, and because we listened to a protest song by Rise Against or The Flobots, that we have done our part. Education is as far as we go.

Some of us will pass the information on, teach other people, tell them about what goes on in the world. But truly we are just introducing our friends to the opiate. Its come to a point where knowing whats going on in the world and learning to live with the fact you can't do anything about it is better than not knowing what is going on in the world around us. This is why even the most morbid and depressing of media is an opiate. If we know whats going on in the world we are less likely to go out and see it, and if we are less likely to go out and see it we are less likely to try and change it. Very few of us will ever, learn the truth, teach others, and go on to take action against the evil.

The other problem is when we confuse meaningful media with media that makes us feel good. An example that can be made is of Bob Marley. While Bob Marley does have quite a few protest songs, his songs are famously happy-go-lucky. There is value in music that promotes peace and love, but at a certain level it starts to give a false impression of peace and love and allows us to believe that everything is okay. Meanwhile wars are being fought all over the world and soldiers on route to fight in Iraq are listening to Bob Marley in their Jeeps to keep up their morale. Happy music does create or invoke feelings of happiness and satisfaction, so it can also, not kept in moderation, make us blind to the truth of the world around us.

So there it is, the source of all our apathy. Its the connectivity; the media bombardment we encounter every day. A mélange of good, bad, morbid, frivolous and earthshaking content. It all becomes overwhelming when we try to separate it into its respective categories, especially when we have to deal with the bad. So what do we do? On some unconscious level we mix it all together into the one category we can easily manage, entertainment. We become desensitized and our sympathies do not become actions or even often words. We have to be careful with our intake of media. We have to be sure to separate the good from the bad, the frivolous from the meaningful, and we have to consider what does it all mean? How does it affect me, and those around me, and others? These are all important questions for every concerned citizen. And finally if you want to break the cycle of apathy, what can I do to change this?

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