It was John F Kennedy who said “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” I believe it is every citizen’s responsibility to direct that question to him/herself. To express sorrow and grief has just become such a standardised reaction to tragedies that unfold in our country that I believe it is time to feel a stronger emotion: anger. Our nation is plagued by the epidemic of apathy. We can sit in cafes and drawing rooms condemning the government, which has become a national pastime, and not to mention the most convenient form of escapism for all civilians. As citizens we have completely absolved ourselves from any moral or ethical responsibility to affect any sort of change in this country. Breaking news about helpless children dying is actually no news at all. I find the indifference of our generation abhorrent. The persistence with which we continue to live our lives after such tragedies is simply repulsive. Each and every one of us has unknowingly disbanded all semblance of humanity. If we cannot enter the political arena hours after a tragedy then the least we can do is feel empathy. As human beings we are obligated to feel empathy for fellow human beings, and as citizens of Pakistan we are obliged to share in the suffering of innocent victims that have been massacred yet again. That being said our empathy needs to reach beyond the bounds of words and carelessly given verdicts and statements lamenting the state of our country. When will we realise that our country is not an entity composed of just our politicians? That every citizen is a part of it and therefore each and every one of us is partly to blame for the tragedies that are taking place. In the past 10 years thousands of people have lost their lives in vain, and in our political dialogues that take place behind closed doors they are termed as mere ‘collateral damage’. Human beings are not financial assets or liabilities; their worth exceeds any economic analogy. It is imperative that each and every citizen takes it upon himself or herself to refuse subjugation to a system that is both morally and financially corrupt; after all who can these leaders lead if we adamantly refuse to be followers? Who are we to point fingers at our leaders when all we do as citizens of this country is feel terrible for a few hours as we sit despondently in front of our television sets for 45 minutes, sometimes only for 45 seconds. We end up switching off our televisions, going to sleep and waking up in the morning, consuming our coffees and the lies that politicians feed us and going about our daily rituals as if nothing even happened, nothing important anyway. We set out about our business fuelling the economy that is laden with corruption and foreign debt, fuelling the very government we claim to hate and fuelling terrorists with our unprecedented apathy. The sad truth is that we continue to live our lives as if we are invincible to bombs and bullets. And that such tragedies are reserved for the masses. That is the cancerous disease of the elite; they are perpetually under the delusion that money and power renders them indestructible. One day we too will be punished mercilessly and will pay the price for both this arrogance and indifference in blood. Terrorism is just a synonym for inhumanity. The word ‘revolution’ is defined in the dictionary as “a forcible overthrow of a government or social order in favour of a new order”. If the current attacks have not instilled enough anger on a national level to propel the nation into a state of chaos that has the potential to manifest into a revolution then maybe we will be victimised by dirty politics and stale ideologies till the end of time. When will we all individually stand up and muster the courage to take responsibility for the slow demise of our nation? When will our leaders do more than express ‘condemnation’ when something as precious as human life is barbarically snatched away from innocent children? If tragedies such as the Army Public School attack and the Iqbal Town tragedy have not provoked every citizen of this country to leave their homes and comfort zones to protest against this injustice, then perhaps the few remaining idealists in this country should immediately surrender all their dreams for a better Pakistan. Apathy is the most inhumane and degraded human emotion that anyone can feel because it goes against the very essence of being human in the first place. We all sit and convince ourselves that we are helpless by continuously reiterating the question: “What can we do to change the world?” This is a question that should never be answered with a shameless ‘nothing’, for that is not expressing true helplessness but on the contrary it reflects an inconsiderate decision to stand by and do nothing. Each one of us is capable of taking a stand for humanity and each one of us has the power to valiantly fight valiantly the very apathy that has torn our country at the seams. For if we do not defend our nation as a collective whole, who will? The writer is currently a student of anthropology at the Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad