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On my bedroom wall, tucked behind the mirror, is a postcard. I think I must have picked it up at a festival when I was seventeen: When I wore converse and thought that standing in a muddy field with several thousand others would change the world. On the postcard is a photograph of a young woman, walking in the park. She holds a placard which reads; “Are we that great generation?” I haven’t looked at it for years because, when I try to answer that question, it is always in the negative. Our generation faces challenges every bit as great and terrible as those who have come before us. But the evidence of the world around me gives me little hope that we will overcome them as they did. We face the physical destruction of the world as a result of our own greed, the failure of the socio-economic system that has defined the modern age and the alienation of people to such a great extent that they are willing to kill themselves to attack the society that they hate. But what do we do in the face of these? No. We deny the evidence of our eyes, talk and talk until the time for action has long passed and the ask why someone else hasn’t fixed the world for us.       It seems so much easier to talk than to do. To distract ourselves with the petty and unimportant rather than attempt to do what is necessary to tackle the far greater problems. They are the more intimidating. A perfect example of this attitude is the expenses scandal in the UK. We found ourselves in a global recession. Millions were falling below the poverty line because of mistakes made on city trading floors and in banks. But it was these institutions upon which we had based the very economic basis of our society. Now they had failed us and we were forced to ask ourselves why we were paying people millions a week, essentially to gamble our money away. Acting entirely against character, the government made the right move. They insured our money, invested enough cash to ensure that the thousands who had invested in good faith did not lose their savings. At the end of the process they found themselves with majority shares in several leading banks.

      This was one of those defining moments. This was the abolition of slavery; this was the Norway debate; this was a chance for a government to stand up and say that the economy served the state served the people not the other way around. This was the moment to tell the Fred Goodwins of the world, those who had grown rich exploiting others, that they could go to hell. It was also the moment when we, as subjects, should have acted like citizens and supported our government in this task.

      Whether Gordon Brown and his cohorts would ever have gone through with it, we shall never know, because the support he needed was never forthcoming. At the crucial moment, the rightwing press broke the news of the expenses scandal and we turned, like mindless dogs, on those who might have forged a fairer society. Why? Because here was something we could get self-righteously angry about without actually having to act. Rather than questioning ourselves, rather than asking how we, as a society, had let an economic system develop based on the principle of screwing the many for the profit of the few we found a meaningless issue with an easy scapegoat, and took ignorant pleasure in their slaughter. The banks went back to gambling, the government went back to failing and we all went back to pretending everything was ok. Religion is an old man’s game: Apathy is the new opium of the people.

      So what do we do now? We must realise that history will not accept our excuses. The legacy of our generation will be what is; not what could have been if only. Our parents’ generation has failed. They have left us a world in turmoil. But it is up to us whether we bask in the comfort of our self imposed impotence, or stop talking about our problems and start solving them. We are the heroes of tomorrow. We are the Churchills, the Roosevelts and the Wilsons. We can be that great generation, but we have to stand up and be count ourselves, not wait for someone else to do it for us. As one student said, before they took him out to be hanged; “Wretched are the vanquished. But at least on their day they fought.”