Loeb's discussion naturally leads to an examination of what cultural forces stifle our urge to bring justice to the world, and, beyond an examination of why activists burn out, he also looks at the multifaceted phenomenon of American cynicism. Despite the fact that life has improved for many due to the civil rights, feminist, and (one could argue) environmental movements of the past 30 years, cynicism looms larger than ever in today's cultural arena, Loeb concedes. Media and advertisers routinely portray detached, blasé, or aloof folks as the ultimate form of youthful hipness, while mirthless academics and cultural critics, for reasons of their own cluelessness, find such detachment and its echoes in the culture dazzling. Instead of taking this analytical path, Loeb brings our cynicism to a very concrete application: He suggests that it indirectly contributes to injustice by paralyzing would-be activists.
In fluid, patient, circumspect prose that he garnishes with quotes from thinkers like Thomas Moore, Sister Helen Prejean, and the Dalai Lama, Loeb takes a hard look at the cynicism that most of us unthinkingly accept as a kind of fashion. And in Seattle, where social involvement is probably higher than in many communities across the country, the polarities between cynicism and its opposite -- a commitment to justice -- seem in especially stark contrast.
Beginning with an advertisement for Microsoft's Slate -- which complacently touted the web magazine as embodying "a certain insouciant smirk that thinking people find compelling" -- Loeb asserts that a complex illness is at work in this culture. The hip detachment suggested in the ad, he says, implies that "we simply need to acknowledge that the world is inherently corrupt, bought for and paid for, and all talk of changing it is naive... that human motives are debased and always will be, and that no institution, truths, or community bonds are worth fighting for."
Loeb gives many examples of ordinary people who, at some point in their lives, have taken a stand against injustices incurred directly or indirectly by hypercapitalism. In one example, he describes a Long Island teacher, Carol McNulty, who learned that the Gap and Eddie Bauer were exploiting Central American teens and children in their factories located inside a free-trade zone. McNulty was outraged that the youths worked 18 hour days for 50 cents an hour and were not allowed to speak on the job. Like others across the country, she began picketing the Gap nearest her home with others from her community, and to McNulty's amazement, these vigils led to some reforms and to the Gap's CEOs allowing their foreign workers access to unions.
Numerous counterarguments to Loeb's thesis come to mind -- for example, a Marxist-style assertion that in order for true change to occur and greed to be eradicated under our current economic system, the web-like structure of economic power and its configurations must be overhauled entirely. Loeb doesn't explicitly take on such counterarguments, but the beauty of his book is that through the evidence of the numerous, small victories he documents, it seems quite possible for the public, through protest, to have some control over the weird, hermetically conceived capers of corporations out to maximize profits bar nothing.
Since Loeb is Seattle-based, and since in some neighborhoods our streets are literally piled with blasé youth and this very newspaper, which is known for its mocking, cynical attitude, I asked Loeb what he thought about the link between the media and the kind of cynicism that encourages people to believe that injustices are immune to activism. "Well, definitely the media reinforces the culture and vice versa," Loeb answered. "The attitude is, 'Oh, I'll sit back and be alienated now,' and that's fashionable. And tastemakers are afraid to deal with hard issues and would rather spin out what's already there: a version of, 'Oh, idealism has all been tried, and it's always failed.'"
When asked what exactly constitutes a "hard issue," Loeb responds, "You know, if the major media were actually to pose the question, 'What can we do about getting medical care for everyone?' Or, 'How can we get the carcinogens out of the air?' That kind of thing."
The lack of journalism of that sort -- nearly impossible to find these days since "news" is so closely integrated with shopping and entertainment -- also promotes what Loeb calls "learned helplessness." He links this indirectly to the culture's cynicism, and a prevailing attitude that "teaches us that nothing we do can matter. It teaches us not to get involved in shaping the world we'll be passing on to our children." Intriguingly, Loeb describes that feeling of powerlessness as affecting the affluent as well as those who aren't in a good position to work for social change.
I asked Loeb what's so bad about being passive. "Well, being passive, just watching the world go by," he says, "is just a less good way to live. Not that it's easy to work for reform, or that you'll win what you want immediately, but it matters because you feel amazingly good and connected in joining up with other folks, working for a common goal. At first, people just aren't used to openly asking questions regarding injustices around us. It's uncomfortable at first. But it's like trying to do something you're rusty at. The more you get used to asking these questions, the easier it is."
Loeb's conviction that there's a different, more hopeful way to live is strong enough that this book thrums with its own patient reason while discussing many examples of people who really have changed noxious corporate or legislative policies. Loeb's self-evident, humanitarian arguments stand firmly against the familiar characterizations of community activism as boring and distasteful, and activists as obsessives whose work is symptomatic of maladjustment or displaced anger.
A philosophic thinker in touch with current dialogues between various ethicists and religious leaders, Loeb is convinced that activism is what really matters in life, even in this era of media maneuverings -- which, with deep, distracting ironies and double entendres, convey that everything is fine, and that it's fine to turn the other way, though it's really not. As Loeb puts it, "Increasingly, a wall now separates each of us from the world outside, and from others who've likewise taken refuge in their own private sanctuaries. We've all but forgotten that public participation is the very soul of democratic citizenship, and how much it can enrich our lives."
