Written by Mohab Bockstein   

As a non-activist, I have become increasingly aware of how many of us there are for whom 'raising awareness' has become substitute for action. Not that raising awareness is a bad thing in itself, but these electronic days it is so easy and painless to wax critical and indignant, that I for one am beginning to feel like a hypocrit. Signing petitions may be of some value, and even I make use of those in order to appease my conscience, and of course one could argue that signing petitions is better than nothing.

My sense is, however, that this is a false sense of accomplishment, not unlike the inspirational messages that clog Facebook. I confess I read them in hopes of finding something exquisitely worded, not in expectation of finding inspiration. Inspiration is sugar-coated advice, and as such feels to me like ego tripping, even if it's a 'shared' posting. [Hey everybody, look what I believe in!] More often than not the poster is complimented on the post, which, cynic that I may be, often strikes me as the object of the exercise.

Somewhere in the play Peter Weiss commonly called Marat/Sade there is a line by Marat: "Talk is cheap, but the price of action is colossal."