We all like to think that we have a social consciousness - a sense of social responsibility.

Business sites that try and utilize marketing departments to get this warm and fuzzy across to customers are typically suspect at best. Dell is a good example of this so-called social/eco consciousness with their Plant a Tree marketing scheme. They get all the buzz but the customer pays the freight.

So while my hat goes off to the Million Souls Aware site for being a truly non-profit run at the owner’s expense effort I wonder if our MTV soundbite society will embrace it as well. I found out about the site via Philipp at Google Blogoscoped (who by the way I am having a great discussion with in the A-List post comments) who also wonders about the staying power of the idea.

After all this is a society where white missing women receive predominately more attention than black women, where poverty in third world countries is more important than at home and where survivors of natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina as still waiting for promises to be kept.

A very good friend of mine Jason; who’s family lives in New Orleans, went back there a year later and took these pictures. A year later and people are still living in FEMA trailers; if they actually got one, and some are still waiting to come home.

Where is the social conscious - the social responsibility we all espouse. As Technorati tracking shows there are some 55 million blogs out there. That makes for a pretty incredible voice but it always seems that our need for the newest gadget news, the freshest celeb news and the hottest political happenings take precedence.

We live in a world of incredible technological power and the blogging world has its finger on the pulse of so many parts of it. We know what is going on, we know what isn’t being done and we know what isn’t right - just as we know what is wrong. Yet with this large voice we can’t seem to stay on track to really effect any real changes to our world. 

I wish Yvo Schaap all the best for his vision that Million Souls Aware hopes to achieve but if past experience is any measuring stick it’s going to a long and hard road.

Conversation Tags: Internet, blogs, bloggers, social consciousness, social responsibility