Generation A: The Politics of Disinterest

I sat down the other day with the new Douglas Coupland book Generation A. At first glance it appeared to be the farthest thing from contentious or political, but the more I read the more my gears began to turn. Coupland, by far my favorite Canadian author, was talking about bees, yes those pesky creatures that most of us run screaming from, or possibly that’s just me. The point though is that the more he went on with his unique prose, the more the scenario reminded me of the direction in which our society is going, the isolation we seek, the things we simply don’t care about anymore. This novel is supposed to be about my generation, a time era filled with people hungry for solitude, and then it hit me. This isn’t just applicable to teenagers, to us moody unappreciative monsters, but instead to Canada as a whole.
We don’t want to be politically active anymore, we don’t want to debate; we don’t even want to read about what those strange freaks who do want to debate are saying. We just want to be left alone. The more you search the more truth this statement seems to hold. In elections, barely fifty percent of eligible Canadian voters do. News channels are focusing less on politics and more on what celebrities are doing. Many citizens don’t even know who’s in power. I repeat there’s this complete disinterest.
So I look to Generation A for answers. In the book it points to ‘Salon’, a pharmaceutical drug designed to make people care only for themselves. Today, in the real world, I think we call this commercialism, globalization, the new society of ‘oh you deserve it’. Sure we seem to like our drugs here in the year 2009, but none of this seems to rot our sense of oneness, our empathy, our line of communication, like this cancerous idea that we are special, so special, and need autonomy.
I say this as a self critic as well, I too enjoy finding a one of a kind shirt, relishing in a homemade bracelet that no one else will ever wear, but the political consequences of this seem terrible. The screaming matches in parliament are just a little more lethargic, the bills just a tiny bit slower and there remains this lack of public excitement. It’s enough to make one terribly upset; or it would if our feelings weren’t so darn rusty.