Eight months ago, hundreds of thousands of March for Our Lives (MFOL) protestors mourned for 17 deaths in a high school shooting and decried prevalent indifference toward gun violence. Just four weeks ago, a gunman walked into a local bar and killed 12 people before taking his own life in Thousand Oaks, only two hours away from our school.
In the midst of this déjà vu, where are the hundreds of thousands of protestors? Instead of using this recent shooting to recharge their fight for stricter gun control, the movement’s leaders and participants have largely remained silent. This shocking stagnation of a previously fiery and widespread movement to occasional announcements on its website is an obvious sign of humanity’s current illness: apathy that renders people ignorant to existing plights in their communities and prevents improvement of the world.
Interestingly, a 2011 study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that people express concern for a month at the most before losing interest and moving on. Even though people may have donated or volunteered during that period of time, they rarely extend their sympathies long enough to actually solve the problem that stirred up the movement in the first place.
Because of this human tendency to focus for only a short time frame, if a social cause does not persistently generate empathy and support for its goals, its past efforts will be wasted when tragedies that it attempted to eliminate arise again. Indeed, the Never Again movement’s failure to employ later shootings to maintain its momentum has consequently led the public’s attention to fade despite more than 300 mass shootings recorded by the Gun Violence Archives in this year alone.
But blaming the weakening zeal of the Never Again movement (or other similar trends) on “psychic numbing,” a phenomenon in which the level of empathy decreases with increase in the number of victims, is unacceptable. The victims of the social cause are not mere numbers—they are someone’s parents, siblings and friends. By exhibiting placidity in the face of recurrent violence and injustice, people inadvertently propagate more ignorance and detachment.
Clearly, people need to start putting themselves in the place of the victims, who may encounter difficulty achieving societal transformation as individualTherefore, the people and the government must work together to promptly execute necessary actions for safer, fairer communities. Viable solutions like legal measures or mindset shifts could save lives and conserve resources.
In the meantime, however, the current government seems to need constant reminders that it is never excused from its responsibility to protect its people. The elections in the United States are usually marked by lobbying frenzy from the deep-pocketed organizations that pour millions of dollars to safeguard their interests. This year, the National Rifle Association (NRA) spent more than $3 million in lobbying in addition to millions more in years past. In comparison, the Never Again movement raised $3 million, which was all spent on organizing the March for Our Lives. But this movement as well as other social causes have secret weapons: youth voters.
America’s youth is gradually demonstrating its vast influence with 31 percent of voters aged 18 to 29 partaking in this year’s midterms—a record turnout in decades, according to Pew Research Center. Instead of sitting back and letting external forces dictate their lives, people must hold the government accountable to its promises of change with their votes.
Enough is enough. Act now because social progress does not allow any inch for lazy apathy—be it from the government or the people.