Threat to the movement

Its been over a month, and the Occupy Wall Street Movement still stands. It faces many forms of oppostion, though; arrests, fighting, ridicule, contempt, and as always, apathy. Ignorance is also fuel for this fire, in many ways. It could be the singularly most challenging factor to the movement and the reasons we stand behind it. But I would go even farther and quote an old assertion, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” All of us.

Many of the challenges that face the future emanate from Wall Street, so naturally most solutions start there. But our problems do not end there. If we stop with Wall Street, some things may get better for a time, but there is a good chance that tides would shift and history would start to repeat itself again. How we as a group decide to face our problems is critical to the solutions we choose.

A professor once told me that, “It is not anonymous social factors, nondiscriminatory environmental events, or apathetic trends that decide the fate of a society. It is the choices that people make in reaction to these factors that determine whether they will live or fall.” The Easter Islanders chose to ignore the environment they depended on, fought between themselves, and the end result was a sharp downfall in the quality of life – one barely worth living at all. However, a few other Pacific Island nations facing environmental problems chose to work together to avoid severe possible effects. While it meant giving up a little for a time, the rewards were great. Similarly, the American Civil War faced historical challenges of piecing a nation back together. While many chose not to forgive, some key people did. The French Civil War, however, was plagued by hatred that consumed generations. That hatred caused generations for the next hundred years to live a grim life, almost every one facing another war. America averted that fate, but only barely (and for some not really).

The Easter Islanders and the French may not be American, but those people were just as human as we are. Already, two of the greatest democracies in history have succumbed to the apathy, ignorance, and especially the hatred of their citizens. Ignoring apathy, maintaining ignorance, and especially relying on hatred will all-intensively guarantee that we will repeat the past. And if the Occupy Wall Street protesters do not recognize the need to deal with these inherent problems and change themselves, how would anything else in history change?