Perhaps we are losing the ability to make things personal.
And perhaps the recent cartoon debacle was able to spiral out of control for this reason ... instead of being about an editor, a few cartoonists and individuals whose personal beliefs were injured by a thoughtless few - it has become about countries, about race and about religion ... the great depersonalizers, the place where the voice of the individual is lost in amongst the masses.
Kevin Sites made sense when he wrote 'The world becomes countries, the countries become people, the people become stories, the stories become understanding ... the world of stories becomes manageable.'
If we personalise things ... if we know the country (not what it did in the past or what it's rumoured to be), the people (not the stereotypes), their stories (not spin-doctoring) and if we try to understand it from our point of view (not the point of view we are driven towards) ... perhaps the direction the world is running in would be less about ego-driven, powerfully corrupt people guiding how we think and what we believe, and more about each individuals reality.
1 comment:
Interesting: I just read the opposite in Harper's Magazine. The author, Thomas Frank, was commenting on the latest right-wing book against liberals. Frank wrote that thoe liberal-bashers get too personal. Quote: "[In that perosnalized perspective] What happened at Enron is not an example of the no-rules capitalism of the Nineties doing its thing; it was the doing of a handful of very bad people."
I understand that those cartoons were produced by some individuals - but is it really an exception in the Western society that such cartoons are not offensive? Isn't it a reaction asked for by the likes of Jean-Marie LePen?
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