All ideas, reflections, and criticisms are welcome at mort@mortrosenblum.net. My purpose is to spur discussion on how we might bolster "the media," on which we all so heavily depend. At the same time, this is meant as a forum for ideas on how we all might do better in each of the areas that threaten our survival.
At least at first, this is not an open line. Comments may be shortened or, if unfit for human consumption, gently deleted. Links to helpful sites are most welcome.
Contents
One: Off the Wall
Two: That Five-Letter Word
Three: Why Do 'They' Hate Us?
Four: Terracide
Five: Plagues on All of Us?
Six: The Generosity Sham
Seven: Shock and 'Aw, Shit'
Eight: Corporate Colonialism, and Worse
Nine: The World, In Fact, Is Round
Ten: Escaping the Cave
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Chapter One
The Cave Wall
Plato, who was never much of a populist, believed most of his fellow humans were blind to reality. He imagined prisoners in a cave who could see events outside only as firelight reflections on a wall. These shadows, cropped by the cave's opening, were distorted in size, their details blurred. They loomed suddenly and then vanished. Twenty-three centuries later, these images appear on backlit screens with words like Sony or Dell stamped beneath them. Otherwise, Plato's simile still seems squarely on the mark.
Back then, musing over philosopher kings and a utopian Republic was an affordable luxury in a Mediterranean universe at one corner of the little-known world. Now, blindness to reality is killing us.
Today, a widening abyss between the rich and the desperate erupts regularly into violence. Our planet is dying around us. Lies carry the weight of truth, just as George Orwell and Aldous Huxley foresaw. In practice, we are not neither as free nor as democratic as we proclaim. And the world no longer trusts the only superpower it has.
This book is a cri de coeur from an American foreign correspondent who spent 40 years in the wilderness watching soluble situations in remote backwaters escalate into world-class calamity. Unlike captives in a parable, we are not chained with our backs to reality. To save our world, we need only turn around, take notice, and do what matters.
In the 1960s, as a cub reporter wading into the blood-spattered intrigue of Mobutu's Congo, I was sure my intrepid colleagues and I could right what was wrong. We would report reality; my ennobled countrymen would inspire a "world community" to do the rest. Not exactly. You can almost bank on it: When a crisis looms, Americans somehow manage, with the best intentions, to make things worse. Challenges we face demand sustained deliberation. Yet we approach them with the attention of hummingbirds in heat.
Foreign correspondents who could help us do better are endangered as a species. For all the words and images we call "media," precious few trained eyes see distant reality up close, and these grow fewer by the year. When reporters do warn us of a crisis, we pay scant attention. We react to effect and ignore the causes. And then, overwhelmed, we cite that old saw as a path of least resistance: You can't worry about what you can't change. We must turn this around: You can't change what you don't worry about.
Chapter Ten
Escaping the Cave
A great escape is easy enough. We need only turn around and focus on reality, with all of its complexities, rather than on distorted reflections. Doing something to change things is harder - but not by much. With a little clarity of purpose, it is astounding how effective determined people can be.
If we grasp the issues, we can vote for leaders who will act on them. We can put to good use a democracy most of us only complain about. Each of us can speak up to enlighten others. George W. Bush may not strike many as a great president, but we elected him twice. And if we did not really elect him, how did one party allow another to steal a national election with the whole world watching?
We should not oversimplify. Yet why overcomplicate? We are killing our planet, but we can do things differently to restore its health. We have the resources; how else do we bankroll war in Iraq? We can lessen poverty that breeds hatred and despair. We can demand accountability from our leaders. We can pursue corporate scoundrels and criminals who exploit us. And if not, we can only blame ourselves.
This smacks of a deluded dreamer thundering toward windmills with a blunted lance. But I have seen human nature at its worst and its best in a lot of places over forty years. Nations are no more than individuals writ large. All have dominant character traits, good and bad. And each is capable of change.
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