Khairudin Lee // Creative Hub

Society At Risk

Tuesday February 28, 2006

Movies, films, television, photographs and images as we all know it, are powerful visual mediums of communication – there is no doubt about it. Understand that there are basically two types of media at work here, the privatised institutions that are the Mainstreams, and the Independents. For the former, its mediums can reach out to a vast majority of audiences with one single purpose; to entertain, to educate, to makes us laugh, to piss us off, to send across a message or lack thereof sometimes. There is no denying the fact that it does its job extremely well of reaching to us general public – the masses. For the latter, even in a democratic constitution, more often than not, it can fail to reach us but, in this global and Internet age of ours, they are equally accessible if you know where to look for.

Lets focus on Mainstreams, the crucial thing about Mainstream media is that – and crucial to take note of – what you hear and see is not always entirely the complete truth, sometimes it is not even close to half of it. In fact, it can actually be said there is no such thing as “half-truths”, a more suitable term would be “half-lies”. It is suggestive yet it does sound appropriate. They tend to sensationalise certain issues to fit their own agendas. Sometimes, the initial issue at hand is a trivial or even a boring one, for many reasons to sell the story; the media adds various types of seasonings to make it tastier. Likewise, a serious issue, deemed too ‘hot’ for the general public due to many unforeseen reasons by the institution, might well be toned down to suit our taste buds. These sometimes misleading re-edits, false inventions and “half-lies” are then fed to the gullible masses on a daily basis.

Not only is the media a powerful medium of communication; it is also now a powerful and often overlooked medium of manipulation. Like there are many purposes for communication, there as are many if not more purposes for manipulation. For a simple reason again, to further one of their many hidden and selfish agendas. By selling a story, it generates publicity. In turn it generates large revenues. What it does is that it capitalises on the means of “communication” as a means of profit making not only in terms of monetary but sometimes politically as well. Huge unthinkable amount of it capitalised in any and every possible ways it can until it is exhausted. Most of the time it is done “legitimately” of course, either by legislation loopholes and / or corruption. Ethically however, a gigantic question mark looms directly over it and no, not like a halo.

Are we not a civilised society? Do our civilised society not poses intelligence? The answers to both questions of course, we are and we do. We have a mind that can think on its own and so it is our social and individual responsibility then to seek the truth by any and every possible means we can. Enter the Independent media, the news, documentaries, books, Internet etc. Thousands of them did not make it to Mainstream media for many reasons. Of course, we still have to filter through them, finding them is not the end nor solution. Only through thorough research and study, sufficient substantial evidences and facts from multiple sources, can we then start gathering the necessary information needed to derive a conclusion. By letting the conclusion be the basis for our understanding and eventual beliefs, the solution is therefore made much more clearer than ever before.

To make matters worse, we are posed and infested with new and rapidly growing disease outbreaks – The privatised and globalised institutions under the guise of “businesses” also know as Corporations. They consist of our fast-food joints (McDonalds, Burger Kings), our coffee houses (Starbucks, Coffee Beans), our petrol stations (Shells, Mobiles), our beverages (Cokes, Pepsis), our electronics (Microsofts, Apples), our apparels (Nikes, Adidas) and even our medias (CNNs, BBCs). With the Mainstream media as an ally, everywhere you turn to look, there will be billboards and advertisements littering our streets. Every time we turn on our televisions and radios, every time we flip our papers and magazines and even in our public transportations themselves we see them many times trying to con and deceive us into buying consuming their products.

When these “businesses” are privatised and globalised, they gain sole authority, control and power not only over running their own “businesses” freely anywhere in the world but also over the welfare and wages of their labourers. There is absolutely nothing wrong to making legitimate, hard-earned and well-deserved income to support our families, in fact it is advocated. It is most of these Corporations with their CEOs and shareholders virtually doing nothing raking in huge unthinkable sums of profit while their labourers are paid peanut wages working long hours with little to no stability, compensation and compassion. They mine and manufacture their products usually in third-world countries for the low costs of maintenance, cheap labours and then selling their products in major developed / developing countries for hundred times more than what they are paying their individual labourers.

They mine places usually in hazardous conditions till its natural resources are depleted. When standards of living rises for the particular country, so does labour costs. Mines and factories closes down, abandoning their expandable labourers, jobless and unable to support themselves and their families. These Corporations then simply move on to another country repeating the same destructive cycle. It is a flawed system where the rich is getting richer, the poor getting much poorer – this is Capitalism and its promised glory – oppression and exploitation. Who better excels at it than these capitalist Corporations themselves? In simpler words, the closest resemblance to Corporations are like of dictatorships, creating their own rules govern solely by laws of profit making. Money revolves around the world only because we mould it that way but it is, not irreversible.

Some people try to justify these “businesses” with their unethical methods of money and profit making help boost a country’s economy; indeed they do, but for how long, at what costs and at whose expenses? Fact is, most of them blatantly have no regard and respect for the environment and its natural resources, basic human rights, consequences and society. What ever happened to the human conscience? Intelligence, morals and ethics are some of the greatest gifts ever granted to mankind. Without it we are merely lifeless souls like those of primates and machines. Is that how we want to live our lives? Is that how we want our future generations to lead their lives completely boneless unable to think and act for themselves, enslaved by these flawed privatised ideologies?

This article is not a doctrine, manifesto of any political system or belief, it is not an attack on the Mainstream media per se, it does not tells you to boycott various the Corporations and its products, and it does not tells you to stage an uprising against any constitutions for that matter, no. The sole purpose of this article is to question you as an individual about our society and where it is heading at the rate things are going. It is largely up to you to decipher the content, derive the conclusion, decide the solution, uphold your beliefs and then come up with your own definitive actions. At the end of the day, only we ourselves are responsible and accounted for what we do and don’t do and we ourselves have the ability, power and control over our own thinking and our own actions.

// Filed under: Stimuli

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