O people;
HELLO, from now on I’ll be here with you in this column every Sunday.
What you’ll read in this column will be nothing but my observations.
I’ll write about them not as a commentator—who am I to do that?— but from the perspective of an ordinary citizen.
***
The first thing I’ll talk to you about is our indifference.
In other words, I’ll write once again about things you won’t care about.
***
Have you heard that people have died in Fallujah?
Have you heard that ….. children will die this year because of hunger and misery?
Have you heard that the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean have become the EU’s chemical waste dump?
…………..We could add many more examples.
But there’s not much point in listing one after another the things we all say “I don’t care” about, only to say “I don’t care” even more.
Indifference is generally gratifying for the person expressing it.
But it’s not so gratifying for those listening or reading; in fact, that discomfort quickly turns into distress.
No matter how uncomfortable it makes us, someone has to start speaking about these truths.
***
Don’t you realize that we don’t care about anything?
Isn’t it wonderful to live like this?
Every time, saying “Oh, come on, life is short, forget it”—how quickly it solves our problems.
Indifference has seeped into our blood; not caring has become a way of life.
We care about what suits us and the rest is just hot air,,,, *** We just can’t seem to become citizens of the world.
Developments around the world don’t concern us.
Here, too, it’s easier every time to trot out the same old line: “The world doesn’t even know we exist.”
We’ve already isolated ourselves.
We don’t care about anything.
***
We have civil society organizations.
Our little civil society “organizations,” which should be leading the way on this issue, are concerned only with domestic politics.
Unfortunately, nothing else concerns them.
As is customary, let me add this: “I’m not saying that about all of them.”
***
When have we ever held a demonstration about an issue happening in the world outside domestic politics?
When has the world’s problem become our problem, too?
I’m not asking these questions only of you.
I ask myself, too: “What have I done about these problems?”
Well, do you ask yourself?
I think most of us don’t ask ourselves these questions.
If we did, we wouldn’t be talking now about why we are an indifferent society.
***
And here I am talking about the world’s problems.
We don’t even take any action over the environmental disasters we’ve caused right next door—Dikmen dump, quarries, our streets, our beaches…etc. We don’t care...
And we’re going to react to the world’s problems, too?
***
If only we cared a little.
If only we weren’t so apathetic.
If only we showed concern for the problems of the world we’ve so thoroughly alienated ourselves from.
That would become a reflex for our society.
In other words, it would become a way of behaving.
Then “Connecting to the World” could stop being a political slogan and become a dream come true.
I hope that day comes.
Cem KAR
cccemkar@yahoo.com
www.cemkar.net