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We saw in the second part of this mini-series on communication how reaching out to the distant corners of the world and embracing different cultures had given Britain a great empire, while conversely, in the first post, we saw how British politics in the 21st Century has used immigration as a stick with which to beat racial fear into an impoverished society. Arguably this ends up making a society even more impoverished - whilst simultaneously highlighting our discriminatory stereotypes about race.This isn't about defending political correctness, in fact this is political correctness gone too far. This seems to be the latest incarnation of political correctness - the ugly attitude that some humans are more valuable than others. The corollary that follows from making one kind of person more valuable is that people who are not in that group are less valuable. With all the concern for more courteous discourse in the world, I would think that making some people less valuable than others would be a problem. It communicates that some people are somehow "more" human than others.
Our floccinaucinihilipilification of where this all might lead is readily apparent. It creates a physical strabismus in our world perspective; we begin to see the world in skewed terms. Communicated via the news events and political machinations of the day we are now filled with an irrational fear against people that look "different" than us, or act or speak or communicate in ways not similar to our own. If the nature of communication is to generate social contact, and through this an understanding of the object we reach out to, then this fear of difference, and our growing intolerance of it, is a form of regression - and the communication gap is widening. As the communication divide widens between groups of people, so our troubles will begin to grow - as evidenced by the news headlines that reach us at home and around the world.
News is a great form of communication, and regular readers will know that I like getting my early morning "news fix". Some will say it's an easy way to invite undue negativity into the start of your day - and when I look at recent headlines, I can see the value of that argument. However, burying our heads in the sand isn't being positive, that's being unrealistic. We need a positiveness grounded in reality, so that we can learn to bravely face our challenges head on.
Read why you shouldn't avoid reality.
And if the news headlines are anything to go by, we have a lot of challenges to deal with, at the start of a century we thought would have been very different than the picture portrayed by recent news events. If you use a Firefox browser by Mozilla it has a "Latest News Headlines" bookmark app, which is linked to BBC News Online in the United Kingdom. It is very useful, because at the click of a button you are provided with a list of current headlines that communicates the flavour of the day.
Point being, following the senseless killing of British soldier Lee Rigby on his home streets by a black Muslim convert, a violent and racist group known as the English defence League (EDL) have used the memory of the fallen soldier to gather more people for their Nazi-like marches. Corrupting such a sad loss for your own evil purposes is as sickening as the people that killed the soldier; it communicates that nothing is sacred, neither life nor its memory.
In the aftermath of this latest murder, some politicians in Britain have called for unity and a resistance to fear, of the kind that can snowball into something larger than any community can handle. Because the people that did this, and those others than use it as an opportunity to promote more fear, do it to try and divide us, and these divides seem to be growing. The divides between rich and poor, East and West are getting ever wider. The East-West divide is not a product of modern times, however; the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity, Constantine the Great, cemented this division.
Constantine used his supreme power to initiate a religious revolution that would put global history on a new direction. The remarkable result was a Christian Roman Empire, journeying from its long pagan traditions to its Christian future, with his mother Helena, becoming one of the most celebrated saints of the early Church. It's believed that it was his mother who converted Constantine to Christianity, whose actions whilst emperor in the late antique, medieval Christian world would fix the division of the Roman Empire into two parts, effectively splitting it into East and West.
The previous emperor had divided the empire as it had grown too large for single governance by Rome - Constantine decided to relegate Rome's position as the capital city and built a new imperial residence at Byzantium, naming it New Rome - although the people called it Constantinople in his honour. Because of this he is considered to be the founder of what would become the Byzantium Empire, which eventually lead to the medieval schism of Christianity into its Eastern and Western branches.
Thus began centuries-long communication problems between a conceptual "East-West" divide, which, embedded into the global psyche, has firmly taken hold today to symbolise rifts between other ideologies and cultures. This is especially true in the West's adoption of the ethnocentrism and xenophobia that permeated the ancient Greek social structure, and assimilated by the Romans.
Although there was little in terms of unity between the various poleis in Greece, the Greeks were united in their condescension of other ethnicities and anything non-Greek. Throughout Greek antiquity there was always an emphasis on this distinction between Greeks and non-Greeks or "barbarians", and they used it as an excuse for their genocidal behaviour towards other races. This xenophobic snobbery has remained in Western culture, and we now attach it to the modern "East-West" divide.
Today we describe xenophobia as a very human but irrational or unreasoned fear of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange - which sometimes makes us do inhuman things. And as the gaps between the groups grow ever wider, it illustrates how, at the risk of oversimplifying, a lack of communication between different members of society causes visible integration problems. Sweden has had its international image of fair treatment towards minorities destroyed by the pattern of violence that has wracked the Swedish capital Stockholm for five nights - sharing similarities with those riots in London two years ago and in Paris in 2005.
In 2013, meanwhile, as the Middle East becomes more and more fractured into ever increasing smaller pockets of intense unrest from internal struggles, it seems we are playing out similar struggles within our own societies and personal relationships. Again not to simplify serious issues, but at the core it's all about a breakdown in healthy communication, and so we see the news littered with reports about husbands butchering wives that want to separate, or how violent pornography has become the social landscape for our children thanks to its easy access on the internet. It all illustrates that we need better education. We need to be better educated on communication.
Communication should not be about obfuscation or pushing division, it should be about clarity and a vehicle for unity. For example, I have on purpose used a few words in this article which are known to be rare in genuine use - and what do these words do when we encounter them They make us stop. They may make us think, and search for meaning when used correctly, but used fallaciously, they can hinder understanding.
We are what we communicate
If we lack understanding, for others and of ourselves, then we are going to bump up against a whole array of problems in life. We grow through understanding, and the more we grow, the better we can communicate. I was watching the BBC documentary "David Bowie - Five Years" the other evening, an intimate portrait of five key years in David Bowie's career. As it is well before my time, I was interested to see how Bowie's time had been instrumental in making him so iconic and influential in music.
One segment of the documentary was particularly revealing when it showed how Bowie brought together diverse elements in technology and musicianship to create something you wouldn't have had with either on their own. Guitar maestro Carlos Alomar on working with Brian Eno, a musician who experimented with ambient music styles, had this to say about working in such different conditions than he was used to for a Bowie album:
Some of it worked, and some of didn't, but quite honestly it did take me out of my comfort zone, and it did make me leave my frustration at what I was doing and totally look at it from another point of view, and although I didn't like the point of view, when I came back, I was fresh.
Thus, we may not like another's point of view, we may not like being forced to look at something differently, it can open up new doors of perception. And if things are not working, then we need to search for new ways to look at things. With the murder of off-duty soldier Lee Rigby, a top level taskforce is to be set up to "look again" at the British government's strategy for dealing with radicalisation and extremism. It will be interesting to see how this decade will influence the next - as each generation inevitably does.
Bowie's documentary also made the point about the sixties had given way to the darker era of the seventies, in which Bowie had started to make it big, because of the "sex without consequence" mentality that had been sown. Indeed, Britain has been rocked by numerous sexual allegations against seventies celebrities in a police investigation known as Operation Yewtree into alleged sexual abuse, predominantly the abuse of children, by British media personalities of the period.
Likewise, with extremism on the rise, governments and their intelligence agencies naturally wishing to combat this for the purposes of national security will need to look into how best to monitor the public. Following the murder, there are suggestions the Communications Data Bill could be revived - dubbed a "snoopers' charter" by critics - which would allow the monitoring of all UK citizens' internet use. It doesn't take a huge leap of the imagine to see a dystopia Big Brother future where our every move is logged and recorded for our own safety, and that we begin to live in an ever more uncommunicative society so as to protect us from ourselves.
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| People paid their respects to Drummer Rigby in Middleton, his home town/BBC |
Because if we teach children that one group is off-limits (they are white so they are better than dark skinned people), does that send a message that anyone not in that group is fair game? It could be possible that the youth of today would be better served by the simple idea, consistently enforced, that all people are of equal value. This is why I mention at the start of this article that this is really political correctness gone mad.
On the flip side of the coin, we shouldn't focus, for example, on "Muslim" bullying, either - we should say that bullying anyone will not be tolerated, whatever the reason behind it. It would certainly save time in the classroom, time that could be put to use teaching children to read and write and do arithmetic, and to educate them on how to use the internet safely. And it would give them a rule that is a lot easier to remember than trying to keep track of all the "special" groups they are supposed to be extra-sensitive to.
I often think of an article I read a number of years ago, written by a blind woman whose name I do not remember. What I do recall, vividly, is her musing about how she was born blind, then she was called handicapped, then disabled, and finally visually challenged, yet no matter what term was used to describe her condition, she still couldn't see. My own view is that society is disabled towards such individuals because of the need to categorise them, but does language really control our thought to this extent? Or is it possible that we've tried to control our language to the point where it's difficult to think?
This was what George Orwell's Big Brother idea from his novel "1984" was about after all, and rather than a warning of some dark future, some even call it a manual of for totalitarian rule. De-construct language so it's impossible to express dissenting opinions, alter the history books, remove civil liberties, do not educate the masses, and above all, make the public think you are always watching them.
It may be that without the government having to lay down stringent laws over how our every moved is to be followed, we can learn to be kind towards one another without having to walk on eggshells, and that we can foster intelligent discussion without being worried that every word is being weighed and measured on a scale that could only make sense to a listener who is looking for trouble.
And what is the real role of government in trying to police our safety? If the first role of government is to protect its people and afford them their rights (over securing the Treasury coffers), why has this Conservative government's focus been on measures over controlling the rights of legal migrant workers, the benefits system, and scrapping widows pensions for foreigners living abroad - while leaving out issues such as extending marriage for everyone, alcohol pricing and monitoring web use, which have been classed as a distraction from fixing the economy?
Critics say economical growth isn't about reducing the deficit, it's about commitments to boosting employment and tax reforms, to the environment and clean energies, to promoting people-friendly banking reforms, to welcoming people from across the world to help bolster our institutions, to strengthen laws on equal human rights and public safety and protecting existing freedoms. These aren't distractions from the deficit, these are important priorities that once dealt with will see a reduction in Britain's deficit as a direct result. One flows from the other.
After all isn't it how we communicate issues to the public that causes their reaction? If you preach political hatred, then you manufacture opinions based on that and can tell the public they share in your opinion, because it is really their opinion. Likewise with political policy on extending marriage rights for everyone in England, labelling this simply as "gay" marriage communicates a misrepresentation that somehow the LGBT community are a "special" group that are being awarded special rights. This is how opposing "hate groups" spring up, thinking that their way of life is somehow under threat.
Clearly this is not so, the laws are simply being updated to give every law abiding, consenting adult equal enjoyment under the law and to their rights within it. But it is easier to make sensationalist accusations, and rouse fear in people, because it is the quickest way to rally a majority towards your way of thinking - and fringe hard right-wing political parties have managed to do just that. Because when you make people afraid, they don't stop to think for themselves.
It's the sheep herd and sheepdog mentality, and if we give in to this - with one group vying to dominate another as lambs to the slaughter - then we shall start communicating with each other merely via a series of barks and whistles, instead of as empathic beings trying to connect with other souls to nurture understanding and find a solution to our modern day challenges.
When we create divisions and place ourselves in distant group, we cut off lines of communication needed to facilitate life. This isn't just about communication with the language of body and words, but with just about anything. Communication if positive has immeasurable benefits, while negative communication can harm us in untold ways.
The wrong communication between the public and damaging political policies to do with reforms - especially over the care and protection of our children - could have devastating consequences for generations to come. One mistake, one miscommunication, is sometimes all it takes, some believe, for our whole world to collapse.
An "end transmission" society?
Scaremongering is easy. Fear is primal, and it is easy to communicate, especially through every screen in our pockets and our living rooms, via the latest gadgets. Images from the world's news media invade our mind of a world that seems to be teetering on the edge. Society seems out of control. Can it be rehabilitated, or should we just pull the plug?
Because society will not prosper if we allow extremism of any kind to get a strong foothold in British society. I do not want to live in a society envisioned by Nazi-like groups such as the EDL, a group which makes me ashamed to be British, and the news that armed forces charity Help for Heroes announced it will not accept donations from the far-right EDL to prohibit them from "hijacking" the death of Drummer Rigby for their own political ends is a very welcome one. It communicates the right message.
But let's say we did create a society as the EDL wished - let's send all the immigrants out of Britain, what then? Shall we send every person with dark skin out of the country, too?
And what about the thousands of mixed families and their bi-racial (what a horrible term) children? Children are children, no matter what race they are, they need loving parents - so who will decide who stays and who shall go? And what about all those people of different colours that have lived all their lives in this country, worked for it, fought for it, laid down their lives for it - shall we simply show them the door to Calais?
And then when we have successfully whitewashed Britain, and its environs, of all races other than the stereotypical Aryan ones kept in the feverish minds of the racist, who shall do the work we find so demeaning? Who will work for Britain? Who will run the restaurants, or add that delicious difference multiculturalism has brought to British society and made it the envy of the world? And after we have whitewashed the people, what comes next? Our cuisine, our innovations, our language?
Or let's say that such a society is clearly a step too far for even the most dense of racist minds to fathom, what will they want instead? Rather than a quick send-off, will they prefer a gradual extermination of those they think would destroy their way of life? Shall we be generous and allow people of different colours and nationalities to stay in this "green and pleasant land", and simply "put them in their place" instead? Allow them lesser freedoms, give them only the most menial jobs, segregate them from public life, put their children into workhouses instead of schools.
Have I gone too far into the realms of fantasy? I think not. Only half a century ago this was happening in Nazi Germany. My recent ancestors fought to put a stop to such a society ever finding a home in Britain, and now some British people are seemingly ready to welcome a society that so many lost their lives to prevent in the Second World War.
Have we really, in over fifty years or more, still not learnt a single thing? Not just in terms of the cost of human life, and how we all belong to the same human race, but in terms of how we perceive and communicate with our world. For instance, how many of us are aware that in the Northeast Pacific, between California and Hawaii, human-produced waste which is dumped into the ocean is routed by ocean currents to a new "continent" of plastic flotsam accumulates, one almost 3.5 million km² in size?
According to observations made over more than 15 years by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, under the effect of the ocean currents, the garbage coming from coastlines and ships floats for years before concentrating to form the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch", a monster the size of which is calculated to have tripled since the nineties, and which now spreads over the equivalent of one third of the surface of Europe.
Just like a mighty ocean syphon, the vortex attracts all the residues of our over-consuming society. However, unlike in a syphon, the plastic waste (durable against quick degradation by micro-organisms) is neither sucked in nor destroyed; rather, it accumulates and remains very visible. Plastic now accounts for 90% of floating waste in the ocean. Back in June of 2006, the United Nations Environment Programme said that, on average, 46,000 pieces of plastic could be found in every 2.5 km² of ocean, down to a depth of 30 metres or so. Later the same year, Greenpeace claimed there were close to one million pieces of garbage per km² in its report on plastic waste and ocean pollution.
In some areas, there is up to ten times more plastic in seawater than plankton, an elementary link in the oceans' chain of life. This plastic soup of macro garbage is known as "plastic plankton". According to Greenpeace, almost 10% of the nearly 100 million tons of plastic produced each year ends up in the ocean. The problem is the time needed for these plastics to degrade (which is estimated to be between 500 and 1,000 years) and the toxicity of their component elements. The most classic example is the turtle that chokes on plastic bags it mistakes for jellyfish.
With such high concentrations of plastic, the entire food chain is affected, since the smallest pieces are ingested by birds or small fish which, in turn, will be eaten by bigger ones… Thus, Greenpeace estimates that, around the world, approximately 1 million birds and 100,000 sea mammals die each year from ingesting plastic. According to US scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, one out of every ten fish ingests plastic in the North Pacific, i.e. fish consume 24,000 tons of plastics each year in this area. This is fish we catch and consume ourselves.
All in all, some 267 marine species might be affected by this huge amount of garbage, according to the Greenpeace report. Rebecca Asch, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, says that:
...most pieces of plastic in this area are very small. The waste has been broken down by sunlight sun and ocean currents. So we're not talking about plastic bags or bottles. These are small pieces of plastic about the size of confetti. In fact, they're the same size as the plankton fish feed upon. That's why they eat the plastic, because they confuse it with plankton.
Once more, overconsumption is the origin behind a breakdown so extensive that it defies fiction. And all of today's "green" campaigns seem unable to change anything. The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen above 400 parts per million for the first time in human history, US researchers say, while the process of contamination is so extensive, it has even turned up in the manufacture of our clothes. In one such instance, a clothing store recalled a batch of metal studded belts that were found to be radioactive. A report found that a black peplum belt sold by Asos could cause injury if worn for more than 500 hours. The report said that none of the belts were suitable for public use or possession, adding:
Unfortunately, this incident is quite a common occurrence. India and the far east are large consumers of scrap metal for their home and foreign markets. During the refining process of these metals, orphaned radioactive sources are sometimes accidentally melted at the same time. This in turn [contaminates the process] and traps the radioactivity in the metal as an alloy or in suspension.
Still we continue to contaminate and consume at dangerous levels, despite certain obvious signs. Society can't do a thing because no one can slow down generations brought up on greed. However much we may have, we want ten times more. There are no more limits. Seemingly oblivious, we still guzzle gas and place money over ethics, as we inflate our egos in imitation of even greater ones - allowing racist political leaders to rise in popularity on the back of preaching their politics of hate.
Consequently we think, if people with such destructive views are gaining popularity, then the fear and hate they preach must be real. And so the mob gathers in size and strength. Pretty soon, like warring religious groups have done with the notion of God, warring groups of people will do the same in blurring the truth that we are all from one species. Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle has said that religions "have become so overlaid with extraneous matter that their spiritual substance has become almost completely obscured", that they have become "to a large extent divisive rather than unifying forces" and become "themselves part of the insanity".
In his books, Tolle writes that the most significant thing that can happen to a human being is the separation process of thinking and awareness, and that awareness is "the space in which thoughts exist". Tolle believes that the primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it - and thus how we communicate it to ourselves and the outer world. But can we ever completely guard against the evil of which we are all capable?
It could be argued that the rising of Islamic extremism is a case of the "worm that turned" - we continue to make tributes to 3,000 lives tragically lost when they are perceived as "white and Christian", but what about the lives slaughtered in the name of Christianity over the centuries? We often forget how the Conquistadors slaughtered the indigenous populations they met, and how Christianity - the white man's burden - spread like wildfire through Africa. Where are the names written of all the slaves treated like cattle throughout the centuries?
It is too easy an excuse to say, "that was then, this is now" because all is now, what happened then is connected and communicates to the power of now, and unless we deal with it, it won't let us go. We must focus on the present, but if we don't make peace with the past, then we will not have communicated to ourselves or the universe that indeed the past is over.
Hatred helps to continue such a stranglehold, only forgiveness can set us free, because it communicates that what once happened is truly over, and we can move on. As a society we are still struggling to allow people to freely express their sexuality, inherited from birth. Groups continue to rage against extending legal marriage ceremonies to all loving relationships, because of the word "gay".
But a word is just a word, what matters is the history that has helped us attach meaning to it, to give it weight. Still, we worry about sensitivity issues and making value judgements because we have come to laden words with meanings well beyond the scope of their intention. Racist words become hurtful not because of the word itself, but because of the way we have communicated it throughout the years. Female words, or words that suggest femininity, in the same way, have been looked down upon in patriarchal societies. Where we conjure up the true divine when we use the word "God", many of us think less when we read the word "Goddess".
It harks back to how society has treated women abominably in the past - a prime example being single mothers who were locked up to live in the old asylums of Britain's mental health system, because they had sex outside of wedlock and was deemed an outcast of society. While thankfully today that is no longer the case in Britain, a woman is still too often seen as an object rather than a subject. On this point, TV veteran David Dimbleby criticised television broadcasters for demeaning older women by discriminating against them because of their age, and effectively banishing them from the smaller screen.
The fantasy of television is that sometimes what we communicate on TV reflects us, other times it doesn't. The BBC has hit back at accusations that "Doctor Who" is "thunderingly racist", insisting the sci-fi show has a "strong track record of diverse casting" - but the lack of ethnic diversity we see on the screen is rarely what we see on the street.
Moreover, recent criticisms made against crime dramas is the glorifying of violence against women by making it sexy, something the BBC seems really keen on doing in many of it's dramas, such as "Ripper Street" and "The Fall". Many will say that American TV drama "Sex and the City" accomplished a lot for the portrayal of women, but one of its key actresses has confessed to being ashamed at its confluence of conspicuous consumption and love.
Are all single women just superficial, sex-mad and lonely, lusting after the most eligible bachelors as in "Sex and the City"? Or worse do women still use their body and their sexual relations to achieve subsidiary power, reinforcing the stereotype that women have only had this type of illicit power in patriarchal societies?
Certainly women have been "unsung heroes" and kept "behind the scenes" down the ages, so they have had to use whatever methods were available. However, sexual freedom today shouldn't mean using sex as a weapon, but freeing sex from becoming a weapon. Entertainer Madonna in her eighties music video "Express Yourself" was suggesting that "pussy rules the world", but is it right for an empowered woman to suggest that the power of a woman should be in her female genitalia? Rather than reinforcing the image of the "shameless woman", the power of sexual freedom should mean a woman can be seen as more than just her sexual organs.
Naturally, people watch such videos and TV shows to be entertained, not educated, but what we watch does influence us. TV programmes of the calibre "Sex and the City" purports to be don't necessarily tell us things, but they do show us things; they paint a picture of what the ideal woman should be like. And keeping men of senior years on screen, but replacing mature women with younger versions, communicates the wrong message for more enlightened times.
We could say that "Sex and the City" ended because the women aged, and no one wanted it to deteriorate into "The Golden Girls" - but if the premise of being a woman is about being an object with a sell-by-date, then that is what you're going to get. For instance, the second wife to King Henry VIII of England, Anne Boleyn was known for her sexual shrewdness and getting her own way, but ultimately it backfired when she couldn't produce a male heir and was beheaded under the orders of the man once besotted by her.
Power through sex is illusory. A woman is more than her body, and yet a TV show in Denmark called "Blachman" makes for uncomfortable viewing, in which a woman is required to stand naked in front of fully-clothed men and to remain silent as those men talk about her body. There are no naked men, and no women judges, and the show feels wrong - even though there is no apparent criticism or sexual innuendo - simply because a woman is being judged in this way.
A person should not be scrutinised like this, man or woman, and some argue there's far too much obsession with our looks anyway, and shows like this just perpetuate this. Many cite Italy's "bimbo TV shows" that portray women as merely cosmetically perfect airheads. In Britain, Dimbleby suggests that a cultural shift is needed, and looking at British society, he is not far wrong.
Ageism against women exists in most industries. From openly displayed magazines showing naked and semi-naked images of women on our shop shelves that give girls (and boys) body issues, to violent porn on the internet, to the social stigma that still remains about a woman's sexual freedom.
To battle against these issues, there are now calls to close legal loopholes over "staged rape porn" because sexual violence as "entertainment" causes "huge cultural harm", while others are campaigning that it's time we stopped obsessing about our bodies. A British minister has gone so far as to advise parents not to tell their children they look beautiful, because it places too much emphasis on appearance and can lead to body confidence issues later in life. Children should be praised for a range of skills, not just on how they look.
This isn't just about over-sexualisation or sex, but how it leads to a culture of dominance of one gender over another. One example is the small ethnic group known as the Mosuo living in China, close to the border with Tibet. It's not easy to categorize Mosuo culture within traditional Western definitions, but they practise a matrilineal society. Although the women carry out what we would describe as traditional female roles of housework and the like, because they have greater sexual freedom as to choice of partner their status is considered on equal par with the male, if not higher.
In the West, however, the media bombards us constantly with sexualised imagery from a young age, awakening minds too soon, experts say, to the responsibilities that the choices (and stigma) consensual sex brings with it. For instance, the media still loves to divide women into virgins and vamps, which when misfortune befalls them either makes them less or more culpable in the eyes of society, showing how chauvinistic attitudes to women in crime still are. But women are not always victims. The world has changed. Women run countries, corporations - and they even run previously male-dominated mafia organisations. And lest we forget, across the globe the situation of women in times past and today in places like India and Pakistan are far, far worse.
Indeed - as much as I fear a world as envisioned by the EDL - I fear a society run by Islamic extremists that would try to murder a 15-year-old Pakistani girl simply because she wanted an education just as much. Extremists, whatever group they belong to, have many things in common - not least that their method of communication preaches hate, and hatred acknowledges no other authority or principle outside itself.
This is the major reason why we will always be unsuccessful at fighting extremism with extremism; to defend ourselves against extremism in all its forms it's not necessary to "speak their language", it just brings us down to their level, when we should be trying to bring them up to ours. It's about creating an environment where the shock and awe of violence is no longer an attractive commodity, either in the media, or in our own minds.
Choose your method of communication wisely
If we communicate things are bad, when they are not as bad as they seem, for a more sensationalist story, or we give more space to violent headlines, then we are communicating to others that would wish to have their voice heard, that this is the quickest way to grab the media's attention. The killers of Drummer Rigby did not run away, they waited around for people to take pictures and call the police. They wanted to be caught, because they wanted to send out a message. And even though we are more likely to be hit by car crossing the street than become a victim of terrorism, because such events are magnified under the lens of the media, we have begun to see a terrorist on every corner.
We have to start sending out the message that we won't listen to such forms of communication - communicating terror will not cow us, that is the message we have to send out to extremist groups that would want to impose their beliefs on others. If they have a valid view, then it needs to be communicated properly for it to gain validity.
No where is this more clear than in the current crisis which faces Syria. Fears are growing of a new foreign-fed arms face in that country after European Union countries agreed they could give weapons to rebels and Russia responded by revealing it is selling the governing regime sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles. Each development could significantly raise the fire-power in the two-year civil war that has already killed more than 70,000 people and sent hundreds of thousands fleeing the country.
It also comes as the United States and Russia are preparing for a major peace conference in Geneva that diplomats have called the best chance yet to end the bloodshed in Syria, even as the sabre-rattling is growing louder and many fear we will be pulled into yet another foreign bloodbath. Therefore, we need to chose our method of communication, and choose well, for it impacts on the message itself.
Everything in the world, everything invented, everything done is a form of communication. We can communicate with a gun as we can communicate with a speech - it just depends which one we give more weight to as a community. And the growing political and sectarian tension on our own streets - as well as across the world - is communicating to us in volumes about the current situation of our society, and the almost parallel universe of violence that is growing in our cities.
When I read about a mosque praised for serving tea and biscuits to EDL supporters after the far-right group arranged a demonstration there, I feel that this is our future. Violence destroys the enjoyment of everything, and it was a day that people tackled anger and hatred with peace and warmth to come out as winners. Rather than take advantage of moments of fear and terror to spread hatred and animosity, which would only further bigotry and segregation, people reached out with open hands and open hearts.
Therefore, it is important we choose wisely about how we communicate back, and what methods we use to take the form of that communication. Using labels for people in the media and in our minds like "gay" or "Muslim" only make matters worse, these identifiers have now become loaded with value judgements that are highly misrepresentative of the uniqueness of the individual - but worse than that, we give people something to identify with rather than with humanity as a whole, and ourselves a unique individual within it.
It is true humans are tribal by nature, we all want to belong to some group - but why can't that group be the entire human race? Why should something as skin pigmentation divide us? Or even something deeper than skin, as in our thoughts and beliefs?
Can we not create a society where we can freely communicate differing beliefs without having to kill, where we provide better channels for those disgruntled people wishing to voice their concern and any injustices believed to have been done either in their name or to them directly?
I have often been accused of being to idealist, but I believe that I am a pragmatist, because if we don't manage to create a society where we can air our grievances without taking sides, then nature will pull the plug on us.
Read more in this series: -1 -2 -4 -5 -6
Yours in love,
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