Where is the anarchy in the UK?

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There is something stunningly passive about this generation. For me, at least, in a home county in the UK I can feel a certain lack of something. A lack of passion, perhaps. An unfair statement for me to make on behalf of a few hundred thousand people but bring forth the evidence and I will swiftly dispute my own belief.

In the last decade or so there have been violent attacks on innocent, western civilians in the blasphemous name of religion that have now been seen to be an affront on freedom of speech. We were all Charlie Hebdo, but two months on some of us have forgotten the need to care. We have fought a war in two countries we were scarcely drip fed information about so that, even now, why or how or what are still hazy questions to ask. Groups like Stop the War Coalition tried to tell us what was about to happen at the time, but the rise of a hippie movement and the propagation of love failed to repeat after its boom in the 70s. The banking crisis 2008 happened because politicians allowed the banks to assume an enormous amount of power and no one has officially called them out on this or forced them to pay back and fix what they broke. Occupy tried. Occupy failed. We're still in a recession. We are all asleep.

There is, of course, an infinite number of problems humanity faces and will face. The Man will always exist. But the monopoly of banks and corporations is mindlessly growing and rising prices without looking back into history to think, go figure, something has got to collapse. We are literally allowing the planet to dissolve and burn and die at our feet and we call those who care time wasters who should be focusing on "bigger" things. The Man is getting stronger.

We are facing the same stories of discrimination, violence, financial crisis, and war. The platform on which we stand as a society is even shakier than it was before, technology and the internet have shifted us and we are struggling to find our feet. We could fall if we're not careful. And yet, where are the Punks? Where are the Hippies? Where is the passion? Where is the solidarity? Where is the activity?   In reference to our recent news in Baltimore: at least someone is doing something.

I know people who care. I know people who are angry. But... Now what?

So to end my cliché teen angst with another cliché: If not us, then who? If not now, then when?