Danielle
Kent
Alisha
Geary
English
4950
28
March 2013
Awareness Centered On Compassion:
Achieving a Sense of Global Identification
Introduction: Feeling the
Psychological Effects of Propaganda
I think most of us could agree that
human suffering, discord, and division run fairly rampant throughout the world.
Poverty, disease, oppression, and human trafficking are just some of many
negative issues that living people suffer from, many or all of which could be
prevented or eliminated by awareness and compassion. This paper, in part,
focuses on ways more people within our culture can achieve genuine awareness of
these issues and progress towards a shift of the common paradigms by which we
view them. As such efforts have been made countless times before, the other
part of this paper is to hopefully shed light on the obstacles that inhibit
this achievement, namely the psychological effects of rhetoric, propaganda, and
the media. The social classifications by which people establish illusory senses
of identity, such as religion, culture, and economic status, create inhibiting
delusions of human division. In order for us to abandon these illusory
identifications, an unbiased awareness of the psychological limitations within
our varying conditions and cultures must be recognized. By acquiring knowledge
of global affairs solely via digital resources, awareness and compassion will
continue to grow stagnant unless we integrate real human interaction into our personal
education.
As a recent student to rhetoric,
studying such things as the psychological effects of propaganda, I have been
made increasingly aware of some of the ways in which people respond to stimuli.
Edward Bernays called propaganda scientific in the sense that "it seeks to
base its operation upon definite knowledge drawn from direct observation of the
group mind, and upon the application of principles which have been demonstrated
to be consistent and relatively constant" (72). The artifacts of
propaganda then, such as commercials, posters, political debates and
personalities, are delivered to the masses in such a way as to modify their
emotions and behaviors. The producers of propaganda therefore possess
influential power to condition people to feel inclined or disinclined towards
particular objects, ideals or issues. This is especially relevant in areas of
politics and consumerism.
Identification with Objects
and Human Suffering
Eckhart Tolle is an influential
author who has studied philosophy, psychology, and literature at The University
of London and Cambridge University. In his book, A New Earth, he discusses consumerism by covering the ways in which
people identify with objects and instill artificial importance within them.
"In many cases," he says, "you are not buying a product, but an
identity enhancer" (36). Consider for a moment the sort of commercials and
promotions we see: A large part of the appeal for most material objects lies
within how we believe they will contribute to our identity, especially in
comparison to other people.
According to Richard Boyd, an
American philosopher and scholar, bourgeois societies such as our own are
heavily characterized by a conspicuous inability to see ourselves without
mediated comparisons to others (524). In his article, "Pity's Pathologies
Portrayed", Boyd employs the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau to support
his own ideas of democratic compassion. Rousseau's influences in the
development of political and social thought are still relevant more than two
hundred years after their initial contact with social and political culture in
eighteenth-century France. His teachings are perhaps even more valuable today,
as a perspective on collective human interaction before our current digital
age. Like Tolle, Boyd and Rousseau also contemplate upon the assumed value of material
objects connected falsely with our identity, and how easily they can become
unreal concepts to which many people attribute irrational importance and
urgency. "When you live in a world deadened by mental abstraction, you
don't sense the aliveness of the universe anymore" (Tolle 37). It is such
abstraction that desensitizes us and corrupts our understanding of human
reality and effective compassion.
More disturbing than the conceptual
and abstract way in which we look at material objects, as consumers, is the
related manner in which we regard human suffering. This manner has been called
voyeuristic, and it is not difficult to see why. In the cases of plays, movies,
and television shows that depict dramatic or tragic circumstances,
"suffering humanity becomes an abstract, imaginary category identified
with charismatic actors rather than the particular individuals we know in
everyday life" (Boyd 527). Misery thus becomes the stuff of fiction. So
long as the suffering of real human beings lacks the glamorous and epic appeal
of romanticized theatrical productions, the majority of our culture will
continue to find it difficult to sympathize with actual people.
Inspiring a Sense of Human
Reality
Nicholas Kristof and his wife,
Sheryl WuDunn, have strived to bring the reality of human suffering to greater
awareness. They have reported on social and political issues regarding the
treatment and health of women in such countries as Sri Lanka, Africa, India and
Afghanistan. Of the issues covered, some are high maternal mortality rates, sex
trafficking, lack of basic health care, nutritional needs, and education. While financial assistance is beneficial and
often necessary to aid in many of these areas, more can be done to generate
change than economical solutions. The suffering, or unproductive stasis within
humanity, requires ethical solutions, as they are first and foremost human
rights issues (122). Kristof and Wudunn believe making people aware of real
people and issues is one of the first steps to inspire action and instill a
sense of humanity's collective reality.
Instead of worrying about real
people, many within our culture find it easier and more satisfying to become
consumed with fictional characters from television shows. Instead of doing
something worthwhile with our time and money, we obsess over how soon we can
buy the new Apple product, or anything else that will aid us in feeling like we
are keeping up with the latest fads and gadgets of our culture. As a result of
propaganda in the media, people are left with a desire to find esteem,
affection and acceptance from the largest number of people within their
immediately surrounding culture. Thus, propaganda "pushes the individual
into the mass until he disappears entirely" (Ellul 169). People are thereby
limited in their application of thought, and we lose our individual selves
along with the ability to think originally, imaginatively, and compassionately.
Without compassionate imagination, how are we to consider what it must be like
to exist as another person if we can't even fully understand the reality of
existing as ourselves? Further, how are we to feel compelled to take action in
grander causes?
Misguided Perceptions of
Altruism
Kristof has found that reports of
suffering people are most influential when they tell the stories of
individuals. An experiment was performed that invited people to make donations
to the aid of starving children in West Africa. One group was asked to donate
money that would benefit millions of children. Another was asked to donate
money to a girl named Rokia who lived in the country of Mali. A final group was
also asked to donate money to help Rokia, but more information was given
regarding statistical information, and context of the larger issue. As was
expected, people donated more than twice as much to help Rokia than to help
millions of children. However, people were less
inclined to donate money to her in the group that was provided with more
contextual information. "It turned out that even providing background information
on African hunger diminished empathy, so people were much less willing to help
Rokia when she represented a broader problem" (99).
The
above experiment represents the selfish side of altruism. People are more
inclined to help others when it is represented to them as aiding a large
proportion of those afflicted. The amount of lives that could be helped or
saved is not nearly as relevant. This is due to the irrational and unconsidered
tendency of people to seek the satisfaction of feeling like they have provided
aid to a larger percentage of an issue. Assuaging the hunger of just one
starving child feels more noteworthy and impressive than contributing to her
when she is associated with a hundred others.
Grant Miller, a
scholar at Stanford University, provides another example of an irrational and
selfish perception of aid. He found that "when
women gained the vote [in early 20th century America], the politicians in that
state scrambled to win favor from women voters by allocating more funds to child
health care; this did not happen in states where women remained unable to
vote" (198). In such a case, we cannot help but ask why spending more
money on children's health care was not considered worthy of pursuing before.
We can add to our awareness, however,
another example of the ways in which particular audiences are targeted to meet
specific ends. This further points to charity and compassion as being
prioritized by convenience, personal gain, and illusory concepts.
Modification Through
Propaganda and Desensitization
Jacques Ellul declared that a person
subjected to propaganda "does not remain intact or undamaged" (161).
The attitudes and emotional structures are modified in people through such
exposure; thus, propaganda codifies social, political, and moral standards
(163). Awareness of this and acceptance of its truth should lead us to ask the
question of whether or not some of the issues we believe to be urgent and
necessary are not illusions created for us for some ulterior, illusory gain. In
cases of consumerist influences, certainly, the influences of media and
propaganda are arguably desensitizing us from deeper truths.
This desensitization is not just the
case in the Western world with all of our distracting technologies and
investments in unnecessary pursuits. Even in third world countries, Kristof
reports high statistics of fathers spending their expendable incomes on alcohol
and prostitutes while their children die from conditions that would have been
less expensive to prevent. We might posit that education and building awareness
might solve matters such as these, but it is not always enough. You can teach
people about preventable diseases, and they might modify their attitudes and
actions. But how do you convince a father that the life of his child is more
important than getting drunk? Before we judge such a father too harshly, we
might consider comparable methods of escapism practiced within our own culture
through the media. We might ask ourselves if there is anything more urgent or
relevant to us than spending three hours on Facebook, or watching a TV marathon
of reality show re-runs.
Rousseau distinguishes two
faculties, anterior to reason, that are present in natural man. These are:
self-preservation and pity. The latter "inspires in us a natural
repugnance to see any sensitive being suffer, principally our fellow men [and
women]" (Boyd 521). These faculties are insufficient, however, in spurning
us into action to aid our fellow sensitive creatures. The faculties of
self-preservation and pity, though they seem to imply duties toward other
"sensitive beings," the sum total of these is simply to refrain from
harming or mistreating others (522); they do not necessarily inspire a duty of
action. Acquiring further faculties, such as moral liberty, self-consciousness,
and imagination, requires reason and effort. According to Rousseau these do not
come naturally, and until they are perfected, "pity and compassion toward
others can not bear fruit" (522). The awareness and reason required for
acquisition of these transcended faculties is made more difficult by our
media-saturated culture and loss of identity.
Assistance and The Illusion
of Right and Wrong
In the case of a father who buys
himself alcohol and cigarettes when his children are in need of care or
medication, we might consider his attitude to be lacking in the standards of
basic humanity. Surely it must seem natural and common sense for one's child to
seem of greater worth than temporary satisfaction. However, we must consider
that the father may just be unaware and untrained in thinking this way. In some
cultures, it is an accepted reality that a large number of infants and children
will not reach adulthood, and that mothers commonly die in childbirth. It is
necessary to understand and sympathize with the perspectives of others before
we can rightfully assume to know how to correct a perceived problem. Kristof
accurately points out that "any kind of foreign assistance is difficult to
get right, as it involves tinkering with the culture, religion, and family
relations of a society that we often don't fully understand" (177). It is
difficult to not feel divided from or superior to other cultures over certain
issues or paradigms that vary from our own. It is more difficult still, and
dangerous, to attempt to affect change by assuming that we know what is best
for others. That is why this paper is not focused on committing to the aid of
suffering people, but on the awareness and modification of our sense of
relationship to them.
"Beyond the realm of simple and
verifiable facts, the certainty that I am right and you are wrong is a
dangerous thing in personal relationships, as well as in interactions between
nations, tribes, religions and so on" (Tolle 69). Feelings of separation
and division from other people and cultures have been part of human history for
as long as we have record of human history: Me against you, us against them, my
truth and my way versus yours. Tolle also discusses ways in which people
sometimes consider their own religions and contemplate upon those of others.
"If you believe only your religion is the Truth, you are using it in the
service of the ego. Used in such a way, religion becomes ideology and creates
an illusory sense of superiority as well as division and conflict between
people" (71). When viewed in such a way, the conflicting or divergent
ideals and actions of others can negatively impact human relations in the same
way.
Finding the Common Ground
To combat this lack of understanding
and sense of common ground, we can employ rhetorical listening. Krista
Ratcliffe defines this as a trope for interpretive invention and more
particularly as a code of cross-cultural conduct (196). As a figure for
interpretive invention, rhetorical listening "signifies a stance of
openness that a person may choose to assume in relation to any person, text, or
culture" (78). By this explanation, Ratcliffe emphasizes the existence of
choice. She further proposes that "if rhetorical listening is to be
practiced, then new ground for this praxis must be imagined, such as a place of
non-identification that functions as a place of pause and reflection"
(93). In such a place, I imagine a sense of openness to broad interpretations
of truths and terms. I imagine a paradigm where people do not sense superficial
differences, and instead can relate to one another on the common ground of
humanity. In literal terms, I imagine a more common practice of people
travelling to new ground, ground that they have not truly visited before, in
order to achieve understanding and non-identification. Whether this travel is
literal, or through active study and an open perspective of the culture and
conditions of other people, is a choice for the willing traveller.
Rhetorical listening and
compassionate understanding can be achieved through paying full and active
attention to opposing views. Objective and open-minded thinking must therefore
be in effect when feeling active compassion for people whose perceptions of
reality vary from our own. Before we can properly target our actions of
compassion, the emotion must be first instilled within the masses as a high
priority. This must come through more direct channels, replacing those things
which have cluttered our minds and been made artificially important. Imagine
the gradual ideological shifts that could manifest if reality television
consisted of home videos taken by real people all over the world. Imagine if
colleges and universities actively funded students to travel abroad and intern
with global organizations, and encouraged them to publish their experiences and
reflections. Imagine if blogs that featured the experiences and interactions of
the author with people of other cultures and political environments was somehow
more inspiring and entertaining than the relationships of celebrities, or
rooting for a candidate in a competitive TV show.
In his Social Contract, Rousseau takes a strong stand against difference.
He criticizes religious diversity and those partial societies that limit the
political community to something less than the harmonious, homogenous whole
(Boyd 534). He posits that natural sensitivity and notions of natural equality
are "overwhelmed by manifold conventional differences, to the point where
individuals are so different from one another that they can scarcely recognize
any common humanity beneath the layers of acculturation" (523). Further, Rousseau claimed compassion to be a
force that, "moderating in each individual the activity of love of one's
self, demands that we look outward and consciously attempt to see the world
through the eyes of another." (523). This involves the understanding of
our individual selves and our psychological tendencies to the extent that we
can easily imagine and sympathize with the same type of understanding, however
variant, occurring in other beings. True compassionate relation to other people
requires more than just wisdom or self-knowledge, but an awareness that such
knowledge extends to other people in their own perceptions. Despite the
extensive mediums available to us to become aware of global issues, we must
consider that a deeper understanding can only come through direct, unfiltered
interaction with our global community.
Operating in a Digital
World and Imagining Solutions
The Western world is in a digital
age, where medias abound that process information[DK1] for us, entertain us, and substitute our
identities. Complex networks of signs and concepts are created; layers of
reality that are difficult to detect and distinguish. It is unnatural to remain
content and unaware in our limited understanding of the psychological
influences that are in effect against us. Douglas Rushkoff, author of Program or Be Programmed, discusses at
great length the digital age we find ourselves in and our relationship to it.
He states that, despite the wealth of information we have access to,
"instead of becoming empowered and aware, we become frazzled and
exhausted" by the media and propaganda that overwhelm us. "We
sacrifice thoughtfulness and deliberateness ... for the false goal of
immediacy" and satisfaction (35). In a culture run by propaganda, we often
delude ourselves into thinking that we are only fulfilled if we keep up with
those things made to be important within our societies.
I am not the first one to propose a
paradigm shift through a collective view of humanity through education and/or
compassionate awareness. The kind of compassion that I envision does not permit
feelings of condescension when interacting with people we may deem to be in
less fortunate conditions than our own. I do not believe that in order to
achieve such a perspective of understanding that we must abandon all of our
worldly possessions or refrain forevermore from indulging in excessive
spending; we don't have to become extremists. Rousseau advised that "in
order to commiserate, we must transcend our self and the illusion of
self-sufficiency by putting our self in another's place, seeing the world
through her eyes rather than our own" (524). Interestingly, Rousseau calls
this process "identification", meaning to discover some common identity among all other people.
All that may be required, then, is a gradual paradigm shift, in which we move
into a more common and collective mental state that empowers us with
knowledgeable consideration of the kinds of things we choose to assign urgency
and importance. We must also consider that in order for people to truly see
through each other's eyes, we may have to go where they are and put ourselves
behind their natural lenses. Once enough people favor thinking in these types
of higher forms, a gradual evolution in the way we regard human relations can
begin to effect the directions we take in global affairs, politics, and the
media.
Slowly,
we could create a generation of people who have a slightly more enlightened
perception of human reality. These people would begin to take the places of our
leaders and politicians. At the very least, we can all challenge ourselves to
consider the larger world through a different lens than our computer or
television screens provide. "The defibrillation of the body overloaded
with empty signs ... is a very slow process" (Baudrillard 10), so let's
get started.
Works Cited
Baudrillard,
Jean. America. New York: Verso, 1989.
Print.
Bernays,
Edward. Propaganda. New York: Ig
Publishing, 2004. Print.
Boyd,
Richard. "Pity's Pathologies Portrayed: Rousseau and the Limits of
Democratic
Compassion." Political Theory 32.4 (2004): 519-546.
Web. 24 Mar. 2012.
Ellul,
Jacques. Propaganda: The Formation of
Men's Attitudes. New York: Vintage, 1973.
Print.
Kristof,
Nicholas D. and Sheryl Wudunn. Half the
Sky. New York: Vintage Books, 2009. Print.
Ratcliffe,
Krista. Rhetorical Listening:
Identification, Gender, Whiteness. Illinois:
Southern Illinois University Press,
2005. Print.
Ratcliffe,
Krista. "Rhetorical Listening: A Trope for Inerpretive Invention and a
'Code of
Cross-Cultural Conduct'". College Composition and Communication 51.2 (1999): 195-224.
Cross-Cultural Conduct'". College Composition and Communication 51.2 (1999): 195-224.
Web. 14 Apr. 2012.
Rushkoff,
Douglas. Program or Be Programmed. Berkeley:
Soft Skull Press, 2011. Print.
Tolle,
Eckhart. A New Earth. New York:
Plume, 2006. Print.
