On (Student) Apocalypse

The other day, I decided to have my public speaking students (college level) compose and present a speech about what they would do if there were an apocalypse. They were each given a random object and were to present their ideas for innovation to the class.

I gave them 40 minutes and told them to be as creative and imaginative as possible. I told them to envision their future: imagine obstacles, people they may encounter, how they would rehabilitate the land, the earth, using their skill set.

I was excited about the prospect of their speeches. Once I heard them all, I was saddened.

In every single scenario, a student wrote about finding an empty Wal-Mart, Target or King Sooper's. Once entering each abandoned consumer hellhole of choice, students looted what was left and either stayed there or magically discovered a car, which they miraculously hot wired, and drove off to some distant civilization.

Not one student thought about survival skills; not one student considered cultivating the land; not one student considered the environment itself: water, animals, farmland, trees.

This scares me. Even in a post-apocalyptic world, when capitalism has crumbled, when consumer culture has become obsolete, students still gravitate to the remnants, the ghosts of the capitalist world. They would rather pillage an empty Wal-Mart for cans of tuna and insta-mac n'cheese than move to an open space and begin an alternative community, which would involve arduous labor, farming, agriculture.

I don't blame the students for this, I blame the current state of our techno-capitalist consciousness; I blame our education system that prides itself on consumer culture, business, corporate monopoly, and marketing; I blame our American leaders, who propagate false ideals of economical gain, world power and exponential capitalist growth; I blame the West in that it has all but eradicated the importance of the arts and has transformed Hollywood celebrities, political pundits and reality tv stars into modern gods and goddesses; I blame our open acceptance of an easy culture where everything is handed to us, where an ecological ethic is marginalized and pushed aside for those "liberal tree huggers"; I blame free-market global capitalism that imports cheaply produced goods and exploits poor, third-world minority workers; I blame American apathy, in every sense of the term.

As an educator, I feel an even greater responsibility to educate my students on the importance and vitality of the imagination. But in an age in which students are anxious to update their facebook statuses, watch the latest episode of Jersey Shore and tune out the world with their I-Pods, my battle becomes increasingly insurmountable. When I present my students with the complexities of Modernist art, the Dadaist Revolution or the feminist poetics of Adrienne Rich, students roll their eyes in frustration, in boredom. And it pains me, to the core, to see such a sea of apathy rising before me--as I truly believe that art enables the human mind to expand and appreciate the world in ways beyond the sheer limitations of our ego-ideals.

Is there hope for us? I am a dedicated warrior, armed with my passion for the arts, ready to continue my journey. But I can't help but feel saddened, defeated and worn by that which we are faced against: utter human listlessness.