The apathetic masses

Here’s the post I tried to do earlier…

Wallpaper looks good, Kat has given us a very designer bedroom bless her!

I've just read Jon's post on apathy and you know what? It made me want to blog! So there you go, one person can change the world etc... Have a look at the post by clicking the link above.

I thought Jon made some interesting points and he is the Capt. so who I am to argue really? However, I was motivated to write a response of sorts because I don't agree with the main thrust of his argument: namely the media's portrayal of our country.

Now, I feel that the media do a good job of stoking whatever flame is currently burning in our collective consciousness. It's their job to sell papers: giving us to an extent what we want to hear, good or bad. The capt.goes further to suggest that they manipulate and gleefully overexaggarate to cause unfounded hysteria, especially regarding crime committed by youths (the immigrant issue would need a whole other post! you lucky things ;) ).

Okay. Yes, to an extent. I mean, I tend to read all the free London papers and sometimes the Evening Standard (we sell it), the Guardian (when I can justify the price) and the Daily Mail (my parent's paper of choice) and if you soaked up all the negative stories on the topic of the day you'd never leave the house... Clearly, the media, and each paper/group in turn, have their own agenda, but I have to say as a Londoner, things "on the street" have definitely changed and not for the better.

I would argue that it is not just the media that is lazy in their thinking and yes, apathetic,(leaving aside the fact that as a nation we are hardly the most demanding readership) it is also to varying degrees each and every one of us.

I believe that the media is essentially a mirror of our society. Of course, the argument is the old chicken and egg one, and while I do think that we are all much more influenced by the media than we used to be, I'm still of the opinion that whatever crazy predictions or stories or trends they feed us, we, the public, will always be one step ahead in terms of sheer-"what the fuck?!"-ness.

Certainly, not all kids are happy slappers, fuelled by under-age drinking and drug-taking, who care only about themselves and their needs and desires.

And yet...

I have become increasingly aware, having lived in both East and West London, that over the last few years there has been a shift in attitude from a certain proportion of our fellow city dwellers - and the younger members of our society make up quite a bit of that proportion. Now, whether this is purely a "London thing" (get the London look etc) or whether it is country-wide - I’m not best qualified to say but it is clearly there: On the street. In bars/clubs. Shops. Schools. Anywhere and everywhere. Call it lack of respect (not in that awful," you dissing me?" way but proper decent respect for each other), lack of consideration, whatever: something has changed.

Forget media coverage, you only have to look around you. I may be disturbed by accounts of senseless and apparently motiveless violence in the papers and on tv but when two of my friends have been mugged with unnecessary and cowardly violence in as many months... That's when it hits home.

Recently, I've seen a man brutally kicked up a tube escalator (for no reason I could see) and then verbally abused the rest of the way... A friend's trainers were slashed on the tube while she was wearing them (motivation: jealousy)... Another friend was knocked off her bike and had her head smashed up against a wall by a gang of kids for no reason she could fathom...

I don't list these things to try to shock or scaremonger, but rather to illustrate that it isn't just that more incidents are being reported in the paper (the reverse is probably true of crimes actually reported to the police), it is that as a society the majority of us have stopped thinking we can do anything about it. I'm not saying that we would ever dream of acting in any of the ways I've described above but it is due to this cancerous apathy that we are in danger of letting the rotten element rule us. I may well sound like I'm 47 rather than 27, but I don't care. If more of us (espeically those in power) were less bothered about people thinking we were making moral judgements or being uncool for saying something is wrong, maybe we would be able to find a solution to these sorts of problems.

I'm a liberal person, but unfortunately, not as liberal as I would like to be anymore. It's hard to be unconditional liberal when people constantly take advantage of the fact.

Of course, I know there are plenty of decent people out there but its getting harder to find those that will stand up against scumbags such as those who attacked my friends. Not that I can blame anyone who looks the other way. I don't know what I would do if I was in a similar situation but I'm sure it wouldn't be what one community worker did the other day. He told a local drug dealer, in an area plagued with drug related crime, to move on and got knifed in the head for his trouble. Luckily for him he could handle himself (martial arts) and managed to pin the guy down until the police arrived, unluckily for him the dealer is now out on bail. So whatever this man's motive was he better be looking over his shoulder now (he stated, even after the incident that he "wouldn't put up with the dealers any longer.)

I don't know whether this man should be viewed as brave or stupid After all he had already been partially blinded when defending a woman against muggers several years earlier. I do know that not too many of us would be willing to do something like that about this problem, preferring instead to whinge about it like I am now...

Like any other decent human being I'm not sure I could stand by and watch if someone was being attacked in front of me, but when it comes down to it, we all want to look after ourselves and our loved ones (I'm sure the community worker's loved ones don't sleep too easy at night.) So perhaps its not apathy but fear that stops us. Sadly, it is this fear that feeds people like that dealer, they expect it, even rely on it.
I don't think anyone who lives in London or any big city can have escaped feeling that fear at some point. Perhaps being a woman compounds it, but anyone can be vulnerable to it, and at the moment we seem happy to trill "kids will be kids" or "they'll grow out of it". True in some cases I'm sure but not in enough. I wish kids were kids as they have always been, but unfortunately, with this escalating aggression towards each other and the rest of the world, (whether due to racism, homophobia or any one of a thousand reasons) is made so much worse but the prevalence of knives, guns and other weapons on the streets. Fair fights no longer exist.

I love London. I can't imagine living anywhere else. But somehow we have to take control of this situation. I can't see the government being able to do anything about it on past form. We have to take some responsibility ourselves. Most of all we need to retain the ability to walk in another person's shoes. Without that crucial empathy, respect and good manners towards each other we are worse than apathetic; we are complicit. I wish the media were to blame for overstating a problem, but in this case I think they are merely chasing its tail.