Stubbornly Irresponsible

Today someone in one of my classes said something interesting. A group had just finished giving a presentation about the Occupy movement and we were having a class discussion about the Facebook poll the group had asked us to fill out the day before. One of the girls in my class pointed out that she was unfamiliar with the entire movement and felt ostracized regarding the poll because she did not have Facebook. She went on to say that she doesn't read the newspaper or watch TV and that anything that isn't about marine biology isn't worth her time.

Keep in mind, this is a graduate level class in a program with an interdisciplinary focus on preserving natural resources. It seems to me that a big part of managing resources is understanding the state of the world in which those resources are being allocated.

I couldn't help but get a little annoyed. When Facebook first became popular I could understand people not wanting to jump on the bandwagon and share their personal information with the masses. However, times have changed. Facebook is now a ubiquitous, not to mention effective, means of communicating with a large number of people; sharing news; sharing ideas; and organizing events. If you are over 20 years old in 2011 and don't have a Facebook account, you are a freethinking, autonomous individual in the same way that the Amish are.

Granted social networking has its problems, mostly in the form of privacy issues, but you don't have to create a complete profile with your likes and dislikes and the names of everyone in your family in order to make effective use of the communication aspects. Hell, you don't even have to post a picture of yourself. Though this would make it a lot tougher to know if you are the Jane Doe I am trying to add, and seriously? You don't have ONE picture of yourself that it's all right to show people?

We are social animals and we live in a social world. You can make your life as hard as you want it to be by denying the fact that people use Facebook for practical purposes, but why would you? At a certain point, living in a self-imposed media blackout not only makes you difficult to work with, it damages your credibility when discussing current affairs.

The Occupy movement is a revolutionary and important idea that embodies what, until recently, our generation was seriously lacking, passion. It is inexcusable to remain voluntarily ignorant about global economic and political movements, especially if you expect to be one of the leaders of tomorrow.

-Steve