A Little Left Wing Prayer by A. M., Lisbon, ME

The human race has become this narcissistic, shallow, self-absorbed monster too apparent in the world today. The apathetic attitude of "it is not my problem" is all too common and altogether too depressing. Have we lost all sense of humanity?! All we adolescents are concerned with are our clothes or this boy or that girl and what happened at so-and-so's party last week and who is failing what class.... Do people have any idea how shallow and terrible this blind ignorance and these seething tides of hypocrisy are?

When a person could consider videotaping the severe beating of a man as opposed to putting down the camera and helping, all hope of this alleged civilized society is shattered like so many other images in this ill-pressed adolescence. Too many people think it is better not to get involved or, even worse and lower on the evolutionary scale, that they could profit from someone else's suffering! The audacity is appalling!

And we must realize that this generation is so frigid and has set up so many self-protective barriers that few could realize the horror in such terrifying pictures as the Jewish concentration camps during World War II.

These are horrors beyond comprehension and yet the teeming masses do not even flinch at these demonic portraits. Photographs of children huddled together desperately trying to force out the chill and ward off the inevitable hunger pains. These cause no emotion to stir on our indifferent faces. That children fear to walk in their own neighborhoods for fear that a carload of bitter youths may decide to re-decorate the streets with lovely bullet-sized holes. All this because society has taught us that apathy is essential for self-preservation.

What will it take for you to make it stop?! Witnessing your own mother being brutally beaten by lead-pipe-brandishing 15-year-olds? HELP! End it. Put down the camera and help the defenseless man. Set aside your egocentric fears and pull the screaming little girl from the tangled metal car wreck. I implore you. You have no one to blame but yourself if you do not. Stop this abusive treatment! Even if it means simply ceasing the ridicule of a classmate. You hurt them more than you realize with your harsh words.

Every movement everywhere began with one person fed up with the way things were. "Even the waterfall begins with a single drop." The Power of One. Just do it.