Monday, October 11, 2010

I don't agree with Columbus, but I'll take the day off.

And that pretty much encompasses my activism and hypocrisy in one sentence.  I've been silent this week because of some sort of crisis of conscious I've been having.  That blog posts remains in the draft folder.  I started to come full circle on the issue.  I noticed a lot of people use their Facebook stati to promote or support certain issues.  I suppose this does no harm.  Though it brings to mind a few things:
1. What does it really do?
2.  There are so many issues out there, can there really be a Facebook group for every one of them?
     2a. Yes, there probably are. 
3.  Doesn't this create an over saturation of ideas and organizations that essentially do nothing?
4.  I don't know Mark Zuckerburg, but I saw The Social Network, and I don't think Facebook was created in order to tout political ideals.  Social ideas, maybe.  But nonetheless, I don't like the idea that if I don't make my status reflect the latest political fight, I'm probably a bad person.  I then choose to make my page politically neutral on all things.  It is also pushing me to cancel my page, due to #3 above.

So what appears to be laziness is actually a calculated effort to not get caught in an accidental web of hypocrisy.

I would love to tell everyone I know why we should no longer celebrate Columbus.  The story we were told as children about the great explorer is pretty much all lies.  It's not even secret lies anymore.  Any book about Columbus tells us the same thing:  he was awful.  He killed millions of indigenous people.  He raped and pillaged and lied, and probably didn't recycle.  But he was able to sell the story well to those that would buy it, and five hundred years later, we choose to sweep the horrifying details under the rug and enjoy the day off.

Of course I'm not about to go into work anyway just because I don't agree with why we're getting the day off.  It's not really an option, the office is actually closed.  But, as unpopular as this would be, I would support revoking the day off.  In exchange, of course, for another day off.  Such as Eleanor Day (Eleanor Roosevelt's birthday:  Oct. 11, 1884) or Lucy Day ("I Love Lucy" premiered on CBS-TV: October 15, 1951).  We could put it up for a vote.  But a real vote, not a Facebook vote. 

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