A Self-Test:Are You an Activist or a Passivist

There is no scoring system. Responses of mostly “A” have no significance any more than predominantly “D” responses. You decide where you rate.

1. If you saw a woman being attacked by three men, would you
   
   
   
   1. Look the other way
   
   
   2. Assume she deserved it
   
   
   3. Call for help and hope someone got there in time
   
   
   4. Decide there was nobody who could help her anyway so not do anything
   
   
   5. Do something yourself to help her
   
   
   6. Join in on the attack. After all, mob mentalities can be so much fun
   
   


2. If you knew that people were being used for medical experiments unknowingly and/or unwillingly, would you
   
   
   1. Report it
   
   
   2. Look for a means of stopping the event BEFORE it was too late
   
   
   3. Look for a way to make money out of the knowledge you have of the event (after all, why shouldn’t you get a cut of it?)
   
   
   4. Decide things had gotten out of hand when they were so bad that even you could see what was going on so you actively start pursuing anything that would help put a stop to it
   
   
   5. Proclaim your innocence. After all, you are not the one performing the medical experimentation
   
   
   
3. If you knew an person was being given lots of prescription drugs that would not help, make them dependent on other drugs, and/or given drugs that would make them worse off, would you
   
   
   
   
   1. Figure it was a good scam and find out how you could get in on it
   
   
   2. See if there was a way for people to pull together, in private groups if necessary, so that you could collectively put a stop to it
   
   
   3. Speak out, armed with all of the details of what you have been able to discover, so that people might realize there was a need to address this issue
   
   
   4. Help each person that you learned about on an individual basis, as best as you could, including helping them to find honest doctors that treated their problems
      
   5. Rifle through their medicine cabinet looking for Oxycontin
   
   



4. If you discovered that the Holocaust had never ended and was still going on even against people close to home, would you
   
   
   
   1. Learn everything you could about the Holocaust in order to figure out how it could have happened in the first place and what needed to be done to stop it this time
   
   
   2. Assume they must be really bad people and therefore deserve what they are being subjected to
   
   
   3. Become outspoken in what you have been able to learn in an attempt to wake people up
   
   
   4. Assume you were mistaken so do nothing
   
   



5. If you discovered that portions of your own government were performing acts of genocide against its own people, would you
   
   
1. Figure that was just crazy since we do not live in Zimbabwe and you must obviously be mistaken; therefore, you would bury your head back in the sand


2. Start studying everything you could get your hands on in order to determine who could be trusted and who could not (realizing that things are seldom as they appear and propaganda abounds) so that you could work together to stop the genocide
   
3. Go to the United Nations researching first to make sure you could trust the person you approached because obviously your own government is the source of the problem


4. Find a role that you could perform that would ensure your silence while you made money on the deal


5. Be as quiet as possible, making sure not to upset the boat. After all, you do not want to become a target of hateful people, do you? Leave that to the other people who somehow ended up in the ‘scope’ of the hateful people. (It must be their fault somehow, right? They were born black, or Native Indian or whatever.)
   



6. If you learned that corruption was rampant and that it was at an unacceptable level by anyone’s standards other than the totally corrupt themselves, would you
   
   
   1. Decide that corruption was obviously the way to make money in this world so you would find a way to become indispensable to the more powerful corrupt people
   
   
   2. Decide it was time to do something so you learned the ropes of activism
   
   
   3. Speak out loud and speak out often! Silence is what allows corruption to continue
   
   
   4. Become involved in HONEST politics in an effort to effect a change
   
   
   5. Do nothing. After all, what can one person do?

The first time you break free from apathy, it is scary but you are left with an exhilarated feeling. You broke the mold! You did something the old you would have merely accepted because to do nothing is so much easier, at least at first. But once you do it that first time, once you refuse to accept what you have always accepted, every other time gets easier. You no longer feel like a rebel, you feel like a PERSON! You feel like a whole person who does not accept those things presented as inevitable or unchangeable. You learn to stand on your own two feet for the first time in your life, and to walk upright feels wonderful.

Try it just once. “Life” may neutralize your attempt, but that feeling of exhilaration… or at least the memory of it will stay with you long afterwards. Remember that feeling. Do not let it go. Hug it close. Nurture it. And the next time an opportunity comes along, pull that memory back up so that you try again, hopefully meeting success this time. Suddenly you will see possibilities. It will become increasingly easier to find ways in which you can bring about other positive events. You will be using a part of your brain which has likely been dormant for a long time, but just remember that it is dormant rather than dead and regaining use of that portion can be an awesome feeling.