Free The Elephant of Surprise (The Russel Middlebrook Series Book 4) by Brent Hartinger Page A

interesting point of view—definitely one I hadn't ever heard before.
    "Some freegans think we should drop out," Wade went on. "That we have dropped out—that we should reject everyone and everything else. But that's not how I see it. We are a part of society—why should we be considered any less American than anyone else? We just see things differently. And I think we can see the future. There's a revolution coming, Russel. You can feel it in the trees—you can taste it in the dandelions. Like I said, you might not see it if you spend all day staring at a computer screen. But it's definitely coming!"
    On one hand, this whole Passionate and Idealistic Young Man thing was totally working for me. On the other hand, even I'm not this wild-eyed.
    "A revolution?" I said. Of people eating out of Dumpsters? For me, that's what it kept coming back to. I'm sure Wade could hear the skepticism in my voice.
    "The world can't go on the way it is," he said. "It just can't! Why should this small percentage of people consume more and more while everyone else just gets less and less? The planet won't allow it. Why should everyone else? Why would everyone else?"
    "Well, yeah, but…"
    "What?"
    A wind blew, kicking up dust on the top of that hill. I shook my head. "Nothing. Forget it."
    "No. I want to hear what you have to say."
    "Well, okay, let's say you're totally right about limited resources, and the dying planet, and the crazy distribution of wealth, and all the rest. I actually agree with you about all that."
    He smiled, enjoying this. "Okay, yeah."
    "Well, how are you changing any of that? You're consuming less, and that's great. But how many of you are there? Ten? Out of a city of hundreds of thousands? You're not changing anyone's mind. You're doing all this stuff, but people don't even know you're doing it."
    "They can see," Wade said. "People know we're here."
    I shook my head. "They don't. You've become the person you used to ignore. If people notice you at all, it's to laugh at you or pity you or judge you." I hesitated, not wanting to hurt his feelings. Then again, he'd said he wanted to hear. "This is the Internet era. You can complain about computer or TV screens all you want, but that's where people live, especially young people, the people you need to persuade if you really want to change the world. Maybe you're listening to the trees, but those people aren't. They're listening to their iPods."
    "Without trees, there are no iPods!"
    "Eventually, I guess," I said. "But in the meantime, people don't care. Your ideas are great—they're really, really cool. And maybe you do know people better than any of us—maybe you do know all our secrets or hidden things. But what difference does it make if people have never heard of you?"
    "You think we're irrelevant?"
    I actually laughed. "Are you kidding? This is America, land of mini-vans and shopping malls. And you're telling people not to own things? Of course you're irrelevant! Completely and totally irrelevant! But that's not even the point."
    "What's the point?" he said. Wade had a little of that shell-shocked expression I remembered from when we'd gone to the same high school. But I couldn't stop now.
    "You're missing an opportunity," I said.
    "How?"
    "People are connected now, in a way they've never been connected in all of human history—thanks to technology, I mean. In some ways, that's probably bad. I know all the arguments: we're not connecting to each other as human beings anymore—we're only connecting as blips on a screen, as images, as ideas. But in some ways, it's really good."
    "How is it good?" Wade asked.
    "Well, for one thing, it means that things can change a lot faster than ever before. It doesn't take years or months or weeks for a new idea to travel around the whole country or even the whole world. It can happen in a matter of hours. Minutes!" I should admit that by this point, I was totally quoting from my Media Studies teacher. But it sounded good,