The Apathy Lie

Boomer columnists claim that because youth don't vote, they must be apathetic. The truth is, they have better, more productive things to do.

There was a fair amount of chatter among my friends last week responding to Lawrence Martin's column “If there's an inspiration deficit in our politics, blame it on the young” in The Globe and Mail. My friend Alison Loat wrote an excellent, albeit polite, response, pointing out that blame could be spread across numerous sectors and generations. She's right. There is lots of blame to go around. And I don't think Martin should get off so lightly.

The problem with Martin's piece is that he's looking in the wrong place. He's not looking at what young people are doing, he's looking at what he thinks they should be doing. To say an entire generation has given up because they don't vote or participate in party politics is farcical.

Yes, young people reject the status quo, but it is deeper than that. They eschew the tools that Martin wants them to use – not just party politics but traditional media as well. They reject the whole system. This isn't out of juvenile laziness, but for the very opposite reason. In a world filled with choice, one that fragments our attention, they seek to focus their energy where they will be most effective and efficient.

This frequently means they are uninterested in the slow and byzantine machinations of politics (why engage when every party, even the NDP, are conservative?), the snobbishness of traditional media (when's the last time a Globe columnist actually responded to a reader's comment on the website?) or a hierarchical and risk-averse public service (held hostage by the country's auditor general).

Indeed, Martin's example of voting is the perfect starting point. Here is a system that has not changed over 60 years. By and large one must still vote at the local church, community centre, or school, places that may or may not be near public transit and are not frequently visited by young people. In a world where shareholder proxy votes are regularly done over the web (not to mention credit card transactions), how are young people supposed to have confidence in a system that still cannot manage electronic voting?

Complaining that an Elections Canada campaign targeting young people didn't work is akin to wondering why a marketing campaign on Facebook didn't generate a bigger youth audience for a cable TV Matlock marathon.

Nor can they find much comfort in the media. If newspapers are the gathering places for political discussion, how inspiring are they for young people? At The Globe and Mail, where Martin writes, the opinion page's most frequent columnists include Rick Salutin (68), Rex Murphy (62), Roy McGregor (61), Jeffrey Simpson (60), Margaret Wente (59), Christie Blatchford (58), John Ibbitson (54) and the one young voice, Jim Stanford (43). Martin himself is 61. It's not just political parties that have boring old guys (or BOGs, to use Martin's term). I think it is safe to say that the hegemony of the boomers isn't limited to the polling station.

Just because someone doesn't vote, prefers blogs to The Globe, or doesn't find Ottawa engaging doesn't mean they are either inactive or a bad citizen.

Take my friends over at Mozilla, some who vote, some who don't – but all of whom are young. They are part of a worldwide movement that broke Microsoft's monopoly over control of the web (probably the single most important act to preserve freedom of speech and expression in the world) and now, through a combination of technology (Firefox) and advocacy (the Mozilla Foundation) are continuing to innovate and find ways to preserve the freedom of the internet. This is something no political party or government initially cared to do anything about. Should the Mozilla team have devoted their time and energy to get involved in politics? Should they have instead lobbied the government to regulate Microsoft (for all the good that ended up doing)?

Or take ForestEthics – another organization started and staffed by young people. Canadians may consistently rank the environment as one of Canada’s top priorities and yet inaction consistently wins out. So ForestEthics bypasses government altogether and combines the power of protesters with that of market forces to improve logging practices and save forests. It identifies corporations – such as Victoria’s Secret, with its vast catalogue distribution – whose consumption shapes the paper industry and offers them a choice: cooperate and reform their practices or face painful protests and boycotts. ForestEthics works with procurement departments of cooperating companies to help it adopt more sustainable practices. This has given ForestEthics direct influence over the forestry industry, since logging companies have to pay attention to their largest customers. Would the staff of ForestEthics be more effective running for office or working for Environment Canada?

Young people (and many Canadians in general) are not just engaged, but are innovating in new and transformative ways. It just happens that most of it isn't on the radar of today's BOGs.

If there is a real danger, it is not for young people – they are going to be just fine – but for the institutions Lawrence Martin and Alison Loat worry about. Today's newspapers, political parties, and public service look a lot more like General Motors than they do Google, Facebook, or better still, Mozilla or ForestEthics. As they look at the institutions Martin assumes they should engage with, they're thinking: should we bail them out or should we just let them go bankrupt and start from scratch?

Martin misidentifies where the real innovation gap lies. The fact is, these aren't institutions where new thinking or experimentation can easily take place. They may have been at one point but they aren't today. The young people Martin believes are wallowing in their vanities and entitlements aren't apathetic, they have simply opted to deploy their social capital elsewhere, places Martin isn’t looking, if he even knows where to look.

Will such innovation manifest itself in some political revolution? I don't know. Will it change Canada and the world? Definitely. It already has.