The Scarlet A that Everybody's Wearing

It's been a mystery to me since grade school and it continues to be a mystery to anybody that has ever cared passionately about anything. 'How,' we ask, 'can you not be concerned about Global Warming?' 'Why can't you just work a little harder at school?' 'Why don't my professors work a little harder to teach us the material?' 'Why don't my kids pick up after themselves?'

For anybody with a level of commitment to any cause in their life, they know that apathy can be a dangerous, debilitating, and frustrating force. In the political spectrum, the biggest source of apathy is of those at the college level; millions of students who continuously demonstrate the capabilities of leading our country or at the very least making a truly informed decision when they go to the ballot box, but choose not to. Why is this?

Apathy comes from a number of places:

1. Parents not teaching their children the value of a particular cause
2. The media failing to emphasize the importance of a cause
3. People lacking the intelligence to comprehend a topic or cause so they choose apathy as a defense mechanism
4. Self-conscious people who don't wish to be seen as ignorant so they pick apathy instead of acting with limited knowledge
5. People who are "following the trend" as it were, choosing apathy over action for fear of looking foolish to their peers
6. People who fail to see the relevance of a cause and therefore, do not devote any time to it

Obviously, a lot of these issues are beyond one's immediate control, however one of the biggest factors, number six, is one that can, surprisingly, be taken care of.

When someone my age goes to the grocery store, we walk in and we see a wall of products. Hundreds of products ranging dramatically in price from one item to the next, and covered in labels proclaiming that each one is "loaded" with vitamins, nutrients, and other stuff that might as well be a foreign language to us. We usually go with the cheap brands because, well, we're poor. But when we eat the food, we gain the freshman fifteen. Why?

Because the content of the lowest level food products in all of our markets is determined by a piece of legislation called the farm bill. It provides subsidies to different providers of raw materials with the intent of allowing our crops to be competitive on the national market. The crops that receive subsidies are usually the lowest price goods, and therefore make there way into the production of the lowest price foods.

What about when you get to the gas station? You pull out the nozzle and start filling the tank, but every time you get to the pump, it seems like you approach that $20.00 mark faster and faster and your tank is a little less full each time you put $20.00 in it. The price of oil that you pay at the gas pump is determined by a number of trade agreements as well as the political landscape of the people in control of the oil.

So let's say you don't even leave your house. You sit at home and watch Animal Planet all day. The money that you pay for cable each month is determined by everything from the cost of the cable box itself, to bills regulating and controlling telecommunications.

The problem with apathy among my generation is that we're afraid of two things: being alienated from our peers for caring, and appearing undereducated about a certain topic.

The first one has a very simple solution. Email your congressman if you don't like something. Nobody has to know about it, and you're doing a civic service by playing an integral part in Democracy: asking for what you as an American citizen want.

The second is a tad more difficult because the items attached to an issue as simple as food prices tend to have large and confusing names. You don't immediately think of the word 'subsidy' when you consider how much you're paying for frozen pizza. So here's what you do if you want to get involved in an issue:

1. Google your issue. Learn about everything attached to it and what the government does to control it.
2. Search it on a major news website. Look for any recent news about the topic and see what direction it is headed in.
3. Email/write/call your representative in Congress about the issue.
4. Stay up to date. Read the newspaper and see if your issue comes up.
   
5. VOTE. If a piece of legislation directly affecting your issue goes to the polls, vote in the direction you want it to go.
6. Congratulations! Consider yourself educated, knowledgeable, and active.

Its hard to get the message across, but I feel like I can't say it enough. Becoming active about a cause is as simple as taking an hour and researching it on the internet from credible sources, and then voting or calling your congressman, both of which only take half-an-hour tops to do. When you eat breakfast or have a break during the day, grab a newspaper or hop online to a national news syndicate and read about the top stories of the day. It really is that simple.

Apathy may be the scarlet A that everyone is wearing, but in an age in which politics touches everything we experience, its time that people changed their shirt. And believe me, it's as easy as changing your shirt.