What happened to us? We used to have such ambition, but slowly as we each grew older with each passing day, we lost faith in ourselves and the endless possibility that our lives can hold. We are born to be free in thought and in spirit but that doesn’t last, does it? Besides, the kid who spends all day staring out the window probably just has some sort of attention disorder.

A little forward? I do apologize but it has been awhile since I’ve written something and I’d be lying to you if I told you that I wasn’t angry about things. I’ve been having issues with this whole idea of growing up and can’t seem to understand why age and abandonment hold hands as we slowly skip along to our graves. We are conditioned to fit into some sort of mold. I’m not saying that we all fit into one singular mold that works for 7 billion people. That would be ridiculous as there are far too many of us, but our nice little social structure does find a place for everyone.

The problem with this is that we are all left to feel powerless to the larger tide of things. We have become convinced that there is nothing that we can do to make our world and our lives better as the motion against us is greater than anything we could push back with. Watch five minutes of the news and you’ll see the world is a bad place where bad things happen because of bad people, and there’s not a thing that can be done about it so you might as well turn the channel to “Chopped” until you fall asleep.

This, of course, is nonsense and should be regarded as such. This generation is starting to understand that we have reached capacity on what we’ve been doing. We know without even being aware of it that we need change and if you don’t see that, tilt your head and look at it again.

Our country and the world itself is in ridiculous amounts of debt that everyone just seems to be ignoring. There is war and revolution around the world that you can watch get suppressed and oppressed on the 5 o’clock news. There are assassinations around the globe that you and I have never even heard about. They don’t even have the courtesy of human conscience to further justify the kill because an unmanned drone shoots rockets at a house from a mile in the sky and just zips away without caring if it was even the right house or not. It can’t, it’s not human.

Meanwhile, all the true art forms suffer as commercialism just sells and tells us what we’re supposed to like. We are supposed to wear Abercrombie and look like the guy in the ten foot black and white picture behind the pile of clothes that has a price that borders on ludicrous. We toss away our own values and subject it with the one Taylor Swift sings about in some of the worst verse ever passed off as music.

That being said, it stands to benefit us as a whole if I point out a few people who are seeking justice or their version of it, in this terribly unjust world. Ever hear of the global hacking group Anonymous? Although no one knows their identities, I have to imagine that if one of us would pass them on the street we would think nothing of it but they have the establishment of the world in a panic even if they show no signs of it. They claim to fight for free speech and there is a large number of people who stand with their message. If you don’t believe me, just wait until Nov. 5.

Ron Paul, although he is often just seen as a bit old and a bit crazy at the very least, seems to be one of the few well known politicians that actually seems to genuinely want the freedom of the people back. His largest contributors to his campaign consist of every branch of the military because he doesn’t feel we should be policing the world and really being a bully to a few places. I’d much rather be a country who is cool and just gets along with people, those countries stay popular after high school and college anyway. More than half of the people who actually vote and care about what’s going on in America want to clean out Congress. America is where we live by the way.

You should check out this thing called the Venus Project by a guy named Jacque Fresco. His ideas are quite intense but it travels in the general direction of something that is rare in this day and age. The main concern of Fresco’s activism is promoting this thought of being able to have civilization blend with nature for a self sustaining balanced relationship. I couldn’t tell you if any of his ideas would work but at least he’s thinking ahead and trying to spend the resources of this planet less like a college student or better yet an irresponsible middle aged person with a credit card. There’s about the same amount of both of those demographics.

So I suppose I’m here to ask something of you. I want you to stop and just look out the window for me. Take your time, I’ll wait.

I live on the 10th floor, which is the top floor of the tallest building within blocks. To me, the world looks small, almost like a snow globe and I thought and asked myself if I thought I could do anything out there that would be good and worthwhile. I think you should ask yourself the same thing and if you really think about it with some sort of sincerity, you will come up with the same answer.

You can. I can. Every single one of us are in control of what goes on involving anything and everything else for a few million miles at least and you can bet that could be a bad thing if we don’t make smart choices and pay attention to our ever changing world. In order to do that, look away from the TV and the blackboard and stare out the window. If you are watching, make sure to act accordingly.

To contact The Ionian’s Brian Sears, e-mail him at [email protected]