THE PASSIVE VOICE
By LANA BASTAŠIĆ
March 11, 2008
Criticizing culture makes you a significant part of it. This came to me today earlier while I was listening to a student’s debate on today’s activism. I must admit I wasn’t much of a speaker myself, but I certainly was a listener, and I truly believe that this highly improves our own rethoros.
While catching up with all the arguments that had been presented during this class, I wasn’t really observing the facts and conclusions that our debate might have come up with. I was observing the students, the orators, and the voice of particularly paradoxical “activists”. So here they are – these young folks with their ideas and wide discussions; they were practically shoaling in their open-minded sentences and criticism. They were aware, which, I will dare say it, from my point of view, is too old-school today. Yes, we are aware of the media influences on teenager behavior. Yes, we are aware of that massive corporate industry that literary infiltrates each segment of our lives. Yes, we are aware of the so-called consumerism and the sold-out culture that is no longer our own.
Yes, we are aware? That’s it? It is almost humiliating, and there is also a great part of self-criticism in this awareness, to be a part of such a great, and yet scornfully passive generation. Shakespeare said that strong reasons make strong actions. We’ve definitely listed a wide range of reasons. What happened to actions? That same “Chernobyl generation”, the generation of those last young people who were born without a cell phone and who were still playing in the mud, the generation of that great exchange that took place right in between the old and the new world, the last Pokemon-free generation, the generation that has observed the two extremes is active by being aware of stuff? The same generation that has witnessed the Bush administration, the Russian revival, the chopping of The Third World, the mainstream, the independent, the mainstream independent, stands silent. The generation that has criticized the melting pot, the ignorance of those who are demolishing the integrity of the small ones, the eyes-wide-open generation is active in one perspective only – they blurb, they criticize, they conclude, and then go home. The silent generation with prospective thoughts and ideas rests on its puffy red couch and zaps the TV channels, waiting for the delivery guy. Is this what we are going to be remembered for? Being aware of the culture collapse? When we become the victims of the same standards we were once only chatting about, where are we going to find excuses for not doing anything?
Lately, I have been talking to many young people, just like myself, about the political issues and activism in our country. Most of them are assured that Bosnia has no politics, they argue that Bosnia cannot produce healthy politics and liberal opinions, that Bosnian politicians, including those from the Republic of Srpska, have no time for liberalism, since they’re too busy eating lamb. What about the lamb on our own table? What about the “why should I vote, it wouldn’t make a difference” opinion? We are eating that same lamb, only served in a different version. Some of us refer to politics as “that boring TV stuff I’m not interested in”. We believe that, by ignoring those corrupted lamb-eaters, we are so much better than them. But no politics is also politics, and no activism is the most dangerous activism. It surely sounds romantic to come up with great ideals and words, but the world, as we know it today, does not need our platonic love. This world, the ever-revolving globe of absurd, is fed up with words. We’ve had our words; we’ve had our healthy views and opinions, but we’ve never had that one simple question – what’s next? Hoover once said that words without actions are the assassins of idealism. Are we to be the very cut-throats of our own ideals?
So before criticizing culture, let’s turn the binoculars in our own direction. Where are we in this culture? Where are we in globalization and consumerism? College students in Banja Luka usually argue that there’s nothing to be done. They produce this strong, intellectual pessimism that has embedded itself in the minds of those idealists who’ve given up their ideas. These ideas might have been those very first steps that would have constructed the small, significant change. But these people, with their, as paradoxical as it sounds, passive activism, stimulate the opinion that there really isn’t anything that could be done. They ignorantly believe that changes come in big packages only. When discussing this particular matter, they usually put out a strongly pessimistic, rhetorical question – and what could I ever change? I believe it is very unlikely that those great world activists, while in their twenties, thought of themselves as the great world activists. Maybe we cannot reconvert the whole MTV generation, of course we cannot close all the McDonald’s and The Burger Kings, nor can we stop the massive turbo folk billow and the plastic image of perfection, but we sure can do something.
Let’s tend to be small world activists. Let’s be that guy who says something when the big sharks are around, let’s be that writer who repeatedly emphasizes his ideals until they find their place in a small local column. Let’s be that crazy filmmaker who runs around like a weirdo collecting the tiny bits of global culture and pointing at it with his finger. Let’s be that student who doesn’t turn away from the reporter’s camera when a question is asked. Let’s be the crazy ones, let’s be the loud ones. Let’s be the ones who walk at the head of the change, not wearing bars and rocks, but ideas and arguments. Let’s stop being the laid-back generation aware of the situation. Let’s make the situation. So maybe, and pretty likely, we are not the head of the process, but we sure can be one of the neck muscles which would turn that head for at least a millimeter. It is a small, almost unrecognizable longitude, but let’s make that millimeter. Let’s be that millimeter.