I would like to address the issue of apathy among my generation and provide not a justification, but a reason for our common apathetic mentality.

Every one of us cannot deny that the context in which we were reared has been anything but static. During the past century, our culture has conformed to the industrial age, which is currently evolving toward the information age. This is due to the influx of information that we have amassed and the capacity to produce, retain and distribute in our society.

In regards to our culture and this growing body of knowledge, we all seem to have a sense that all philosophies have been invalidated, all ideologies discredited and all faiths antiquated. We have watched our so-called "progressive" culture crumble the traditional foundations that preserved the cohesion and stability of previous generations.

From a distance, all of this seems quite beneficial to the world, but at a closer look, it is indisputable that it has afflicted us with various problems, one of which is the decline of the human spirit.

We as a generation seem to have nowhere to orient ourselves and no sense of purpose. Many of us are reluctant to whole-heartedly affiliate ourselves to a group or cause. We are reproached and ridiculed for being too apathetic toward current events and social issues.

The antecedent generation fails to understand the fast-paced changing context in which we were reared and has subjected us to a state of informational uproar at an early age.

Our advanced context has rendered everything so complex that it perpetually leaves us feeling intellectually and psychologically fatigued, and above all else, utterly confounded. As a result, relatively all of us have lost faith in the politics of the current social system as well as in ourselves. It is manifested in the low voter turnout among the student body at Penn State, as well as among similar institutions where our generation is encouraged to participate. We desperately scour for something tangible -- some form of stability and something to adhere to -- but to no avail.

It has become apparent that solidified traditional cultures steadily become fragmented and are ultimately rendered bankrupt with the advent and progression of social growth.

There is little doubt that we are the victims of such a defective and bankrupt culture.

It seems our generation does have a collective cause, to simply find solid ground amidst a sea of conflicting data, a pathetic cause forced on us by the modern concept commonly known as "progress."