Apathy = A Dead Society

Directed to CSUN audience:

In the coffee shop the other day, my friend’s brother shared with me the following quote by Bobby Kennedy, “The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects.” How ironic, I thought, that Steven, my friend’s brother, who is mentally ill, brought this to my attention. I probably thought it ironic because I assumed that mentally ill people are unable to tell right from wrong, and that they can’t make decisions for themselves, therefore they can’t have a rational opinion of society. You know what I mean? My false assumptions aside, in sharing this quote with me, Steven was telling me that Bobby Kennedy was describing a problem with American society: people’s apathy.

Apathy is concurrent with a me first approach to life. We do not worry about our neighbors, heck, we don’t even know who our neighbors. At least, I don’t, let alone his or her problems. And who cares, right? It’s none of our business. This kind of attitude, this lack of concern or interest for others around us characterizes a large portion of our population. I’m sure it stems from the idea that each individual is responsible for their own problems, or better yet, as Curtis White observed, “we pursue our individual, socially isolated right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” even at the expense of others.

But the point I want to make is that all of us have responsibility, social responsibility. Steven, the guy who shared the quote with me, used to be a student at UC Berkeley, with the intention to enter medical school. His mental disorder got the better of him and stopped him from furthering his education. He’s not well, in the sense that his behavior threatens his safety and that of others. He needs help. His family can barely stay afloat. His mother works a minimum wage job, barely able to support herself. She is also like my mother, a person who immigrated to this country, and who depends on her daughter to do most things that require the use of English because she can’t speak it that well. Steven’s sister also struggles like their mother. She works three jobs, sometimes seven days a week. Her rent, bills, credit card and student loans are what has her working more than one job. Both mom and sister, the only caregivers in Steven’s life, are struggling to make ends meet.

Steven needs attention. He needs his family to be there with him when his disease gets the better of him. He needs someone to be there while he goes back and forth from mania to depression. He needs to be looked at the way one would look after a child. His family doesn’t have the time nor money to do that. They can’t intern him anywhere, not even jail. The psychiatrists offer no alternative therapies for his disorder. Sometimes he doesn’t take his meds. His mother and sister can’t monitor him all the time because both work, and they can’t afford paying someone to do it for them. That would be a viable solution, hiring someone to care for him when they’re not around. The problem is there’s no money.

Having more money gets you the help that you need. Money guarantees better services, access to quality healthcare. And this is where the problem lies. More people will do more for money. Shit, even I’ll do more for money. I’ll take on more classes because I’ll get more money, because earning more money means I get to pay off my student loans much faster so I can finally have money to buy myself a house, and fufill my American Dream. But if I take on more classes, at what cost? The degradation in the quality of the education I provide my students? All of us are willing to do more for money because more money means a happier life, right? Surely my friend would be happier if she had hired help for her brother. And surely, hospitals having more money might provide better services for patients. Money is what these hospitals lack, money is what many of us lack. Certainly, all of us know the CSU system lacks money, otherwise I wouldn’t be getting 10% deducted from my wages this semester, and you wouldn’t have be getting a tuition increase this year, and, let’s face it, next year too.

My point with all this is this, at what point do we step in and say, okay, what the fuck is going on here? How can we make things a little better for ourselves?

It ails me to see my friend continuously struggling to help her brother. I want to help. But how can I? Am I helping already? Is being a college teacher doing my part? Is writing a play about blaming social irresponsibility as the cause of death for so many Americans also a part of helping? Is it me questioning whether or not I’m doing enough?

I think Bobby Kennedy would smile right about now.

Looking Back On Now

From one extreme to the other. Hot and cold. Day and Night. No in between. Like a fucking nut that can’t understand the word sanity. There’s no reasoning with her. So much has been lost. How much has been stolen. Unable to regain a voice for those furies. Always looking back, always making sure to do the right thing. While he just keeps on walking, threading joyfully along, not picking up his mess, too self-absorbed to see how his self-indulgence enslaves me. Originally, this was supposed to be about the ying and yang. About this uncontrollable untamable mind. It has to be one or the other. No moderation. Doesn’t exist in her vocabulary. Yet.