Have
just read pilger's G8 report about the lie of african debt relief and
the role pop stars play in legitimizing the entrenchment of western
exploitation. His description is wholly accurate except for the fact that, in
blaming the elites of government and the entertainment plutocracy, he
disregards the culpability of the population at large.
He does this because for
decades Pilger has been lambasting the mainstream media, blaming it for lying
to the country on behalf of nationalism, imperialism and the corporations, for
manipulating agendas and for keeping the people ignorant of the facts. This is
correct, but as poisonous as it is, not everything put out by the media is
believed by most people.
In their everyday lives,
everyday people understand there is a massive gap between what they are told by
the TV or the glossy magazines and what is actually happening. They discern
difference between the two versions on a daily basis. The media is responsible,
therefore, not for delivering a false representation of reality which people
believe, but for delivering a false representation of reality which people
emulate and aspire to. This has catastrophic consequences.
Because the media is
driven by the profit motive, it's representation of reality is on a constant
downward spiral as it gets ever more degrading in its search for novelty and
the ratings which come with it while incessantly promoting the consumer
lifestyle which makes greed seem normal.
This representation is in
good measure fictional because it artificially creates new, degrading viewing
opportunities in the quest for novelty and holds up tantalising, out-of-reach
lifestyle features because, by the very nature of consumerism, people must
always aspire to what they don't have.
But people don't have to
be informed by the Observer that accumulating more and more luxury while half
the world starves is a bad thing. They know this but suppress the knowledge,
hiding behind a rationale which supports their comfortable lifestyle: the greed
of western nations helps the third world poor; the way things are is
inevitable; personal anti-consumer action would be pointless because no one
else is doing it. They blame the politicians. 'We are trapped', they say.
But this is happily
self-deluding and a lie.
In excusing their
enthusiasm for materialism, people shunt moral responsibility for the
destruction it causes onto the wider social mass and pretend they have no
responsibility themselves. But people are not trapped. The basic facts of
global inequality a child can understand and there is plenty everyone could and
should be doing to fight consumer-nationalist-imperialism. While that is the
case no one can escape personal responsibility for the contribution their way
of life makes to great misery.
Social justice fails to
happen not just because people are lied to but because people lie to themselves
in pursuit of selfish dreams.
---
G8
cartoon here