Rant

This whole post is a huge rant. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Talked to some girls at my church last night, who told me that they would have read the Chomsky book review entry, but it was too long, and it was too boring, and blah blah blah.

And I got all indignant and self-righteous on them. "If North Americans aren't willing to learn about this stuff, then we're just contributing to the problem", blah blah blah.

Not that I think that my particular book review was all that important. The problem I have is not that they didn't read my blog entry; the problem is that people in North America get so immediately bored any time you start to talk about world politics. Even mention people dying of starvation in Latin America, and their eyes start to glaze over; good luck even getting to talk about whose fault it is that those people are starving, because by that time your listener will have completely tuned you out.

If we're not even willing to talk about a problem that is our fault, and therefore ours to fix, then how are we going to fix it?

To end this on something concrete, think about this: How much money did you spend on entertainment last year? I'm talking movies, books, CDs, concerts, etc. Could that money have been spent better? Could you have used it to help someone else? And how much time did you spend on entertainment? I wish I could find some concrete figures on how much North Americans spend every year on entertainment... (The only figures I have seen are specific to pornography, and I think world hunger could be wiped out altogether just with the money that was spent on porn last year.)

Think also about the amount of time you spent on entertainment. Could that time have been spent better, by learning how people are mistreated and killed around the world (by us) in the name of capitalism? (It could also have been better spent by reading your bible, but that's another story...)