Silent Revolution and the Students’ Legacy.

    Students used to be proudly anti-establishment, pro-revolution – unwilling (at least temporarily) to admit that all they wanted was money enough for a nice house and maybe even a swimming pool. It must have been something to do with clinging to those last few years before drudgery of a regular hob, a career in such-and-such, or becoming Dr. So-and-So, when idealisms were allowed to thrive because nobody said they weren’t possible. When did we lose our flare?

    Dragging my soles along the food-packed corridors of Morrisons, I squeeze past a three-for-two frozen pizza deal, then by an untidy shelf of items reduced as they came perilously close to their sell-by-date, and I think this place – an integral centre of student life – is about as soulless as they come. Suddenly it doesn’t surprise me that we lost our revolutionary zeal. Student loans can’t afford to pay for revolutions. Perhaps we can shrug it off – campaigning for social justice is too seriously, rather than fashionably, Left-Wing, and environmental considerations to elitist and outdated. But both of these education to question commonly held assumptions – the daily consequences of which are damaging to ourselves, to those that lack the same luxury of curiosity-time, and to the land upon which we depend for our sustenance.

    We can hardly pretend not to know about some of the blatant and perpetuating global dilemmas. Everyone’s aware of the climbing levels of obesity in America and England, and of Africa’s simultaneous struggle against the scourge of malnutrition. This simple fact surely illustrates that the poor distribution of food, rather than its scarcity, is responsible for shortages. The disparities multiply the world over. The reason that we are not motivated to do anything is because for us here, in England, the present economic system seems quite suitable - it provides us with material riches, longer lives (oh the elixir of prescription drugs), and the happy distractions of cinema, alcohol, sports, entertainment. And yet, the documented facts form images of immigrant workers in food-packaging warehouses; of factory-reared animals injected daily with antibiotics just to survive their living conditions; of towns all over England beginning to look uncannily to resemble each other of taxpayers funding the imperfect environmental clean-ups necessitated y intensive agriculture, these facts and images still appear to us as far-removed, grisly myths, that exist only as the crude imprints on protesters’ banners. We hope and believe that any pending disasters can be averted before the y hit – our inaction lies in the creed of man-made (technological) solutions for everything.

    Are we all taking degrees so that, somewhere within the complex systems of the employed populace, we will find a well paid job to see us through to retirement? Very likely. These three or so years might delay the moment that we’re expected to be full of resolve – typed-up life-plans at the ready. Or we might gain from these years the opportunity to meet like-minded people, to make the most of the student scene and that wonderfully legitimate reason for living in a city – namely taking a degree. Let’s take it that, after all this, our ambition is the aforementioned well paid job. The money is important, despite what anyone may say. So would the attractive prospect of increasing profits lead us through our professional careers, or are there certain things we would not do for money? For example, sanctioning the release of a new drug onto the market and knowing it’s long term effects to be harmful? Flogging cigarettes to china if it was the best paid work on offer? If we decide that our professional careers should not have a harmful impact on to other people. Then might we settle for something neutral, with neither a beneficial nor a deleterious effect as far as we can see?

    If we get as far as acknowledging to ourselves that we would prefer to leave the world a better place when we depart, then undoubtedly now is the time to consider what impacts we can make. For now, absorb the certain fact that at some stage during our working lives the oil will run out. Long before the physical absence of oil and petrol there will be severe shortages and price changes on a massive scale. Will out chosen careers be impervious to the cast ensuing economic implications of these changes? It is by definition certain that those products and services dependent on oil will fail unless a substitute has been found. Now is the opportune time to find out which careers will prove sustainable, or even beneficial, in the long term. The very first step n this process is an attempt to understand the environment in which we live, and the threats being placed upon it in every country whatever its political system.

    If you are prepared to say that learning about the environment is boring then you are abdicating responsibility for the actual maintenance of the habitat of mankind. It Is a abdicating responsibility for the actual maintenance of the habitat of mankind. It is a truism that should the habitat of a species be destroyed then that species is a part of that destruction. If you understand the prices of degradation now going on, you are in a better position to do something about it however small (access to research and information of these expanding movements is readily available), and you will be more able to have an influence on others, rather than if you were uninterested, or simply felt that the subject of huge importance - my ruminations during interminable trips to Morrisons, while being gently nudged through the isles by my weight on a trolley, can hardly do it justice. There is something about the repetitiveness of picking and dropping items into trolleys, hearing the dull beep beep at the checkout till, and knowing that the cycle will continue in your absence for the hours and the days, that reminds me of an automated system in a factory. And before I despair that our resignation towards this tedium may never turn to inquisitive or thoughtful action, I remember that revolutions always start in unexpected places.

    If you are interested at all, ten I recommend checking out this website – www.themeatrix.com – even if only for the brilliant animation and its comedy value. The simple fact remains: the needs of the natural are more important than the needs of the economic system. It’s the land base and not the economic system that is the real source of life – of food, air and water.

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