Bringing Awareness to the Apathetic

My apologies to my dedicated readers. I know it has been awhile since my insightful postings. I recently started working for a website called Associated Content. It’s basically a library of content on anything and everything. We find people (who we call sources) to create keyword-savvy content that is easily searchable on sites like google. If you type a how-to question or an instructional question into google, chances are, an Associated Content article will come up. From an advertising standpoint it allows advertisers to totally connect to a target audience. Lets say you are on google and type in, “How to wear my hair on the beach”, and an AC article comes up, then the reader clicks on the article, and right next to the article is an Herbal Essences ad displaying a gel to wear your hair wavy! How perfect is that! It’s a cool concept, and I’m very excited about it.

But of course, as always, our world is an everchanging place. I encourage you all to stay informed. The best thing is to do is check out The New York Times. Even if its only for a few minutes. Take the time that you would ordinarily spend on Facebook (if you’re like me, that is at least one hour a day total) and cut that in half. Spend half an hour browsing the nytimes.com. I promise you you’ll feel better about yourself and you will sound so much smarter to others!

More awesomeness to come… I promise.

So I showed my brother my blog for the first time, and he had a very interesting criticism. Since he is my target demographic, I took his critique to heart and wanted to address it directly.

In my description of my blog, I say things like “Why should I care about what goes on in the Middle East?”, and the thing is, I really don’t answer that question. I just say that ignorance is dangerous and scary. But how is ignorance dangerous and scary and bad? Why? He still doesn’t get why he should care about problems that are going on outside of his day-to-day life.

Thanks Seth for bringing this to my attention. This is awesome.

Here is why ignorance is bad:

Not being aware of what is going on leads to someone being ignorant. An ignorant person isn’t a stupid person, they are just someone who doesn’t know things. Once you educate yourself on what is going on, you can make informed opinions and decisions on important things going on in the world around you.

If you stay ignorant, you inevitably will cause trouble to the situation. Specifically regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is something so current and paramount right now, we need to know what is going on. As young Jewish people, we have the power to mold and shape the opinions of our generations. Whether we know it or not, we have the ability to change the world. We can create organizations, start a movement, and really generate some heat amongst our peers.

Using an example from the past- look at the holocaust. This is something that happened only 60 years ago. It started in Germany. Germany people! Not a third world country, but one of the most developed countries in the world that housed some of the greatest intellectual minds in history. They used modern technology to create propaganda. If you were ignorant or ill-informed, you would have gone along with the Nazi party. It can happen again. It will happen again, if we don’t learn from history, and learn from our mistakes, and stay informed on what is going on. This is why if you are ignorant, you are part of the problem. Hoped this helped Sethy!