MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
 
 
February 2, 2003
 
MEDIA ALERT: FULL SPECTRUM DISSENT - PART 2
 
Enlightened Self-Interest
 
 
Introduction - Killing Hope
 
In Part 1 we proposed that much modern individual suffering is inherent
neither to ourselves as individuals, nor to the human condition, but is
often rooted in a dominant political-economic system which subordinates
human and environmental well-being to profit.
 
The result is that we tend to be exposed to ideas about ourselves and
society that satisfy the needs of mass consumer culture, but not our 
needs
as human beings. Noam Chomsky brilliantly describes the targeting of
fundamental aspects of our belief system:
 
"It is necessary to destroy hope, idealism, solidarity, and concern for 
the
poor and oppressed, to replace these dangerous feelings by self-centred
egoism, a pervasive cynicism that holds that all change is for the 
worse, so
that one should simply accept the state capitalist order with its 
inherent
inequities and oppression as the best that can be achieved. In fact, a 
great
international propaganda campaign is underway to convince
people -particularly young people - that this not only is what they 
should
feel but that it is what they do feel, and that if somehow they do not 
adopt
this set of values then they are strange relics of a terrible era that 
has
fortunately passed away." (Chomsky. Quoted in C.P. Otero, ed., Radical
Priorities, Black Rose Books, 1981, pp.19-20)
 
The promotion of cynical selfishness, egotism and indifference to 
others is
indeed so pervasive that they seem almost inevitable - we are trained 
to
talk nicely of idealism and hope, but also to be 'practical', 
recognising
the 'harsh reality' as seen in 'the cold light of day'. Subjected to a 
flood
of media images depicting the lives of 'the beautiful people' awash 
with
self-indulgent pleasures, it never occurs to us that selfishness and 
egotism
might +not+ in fact be credible paths to happiness, but might instead 
come
at an appalling cost - to the environment and Third World, but also to 
us as
individuals. To gain a true understanding of these costs, we believe, 
is to
gain the motivation to rebel.
 
 
On Seeing A Wretched Man - The Curious Qualities of Kindness
 
Given everything that has been said so far, it seems clear that if we 
are to
find more humanly productive answers, we will by definition need to
investigate areas of human thought that are marginalised, ignored, or 
deemed
'absurd' by mainstream culture, just as brilliant dissident political
thought is marginalised and dismissed as 'angry', 'anti-American' and
'blinkered'.
 
There are by now good reasons for believing that traditional cultures 
have
often achieved levels of psychological and social well-being that far 
exceed
our own. When the linguist Helena Norberg-Hodge began living amongst 
the
villagers of Ladakh in Northern India, for example, she was bewildered 
by
the fact that everyone smiled so much:
 
"At first I couldn't believe that the Ladakhis could be as happy as 
they
appeared. It took me a long time to accept that the smiles I saw were 
real.
Then, in my second year there, while at a wedding, I sat back and 
observed
the guests enjoying themselves. Suddenly I heard myself saying, 'Aha, 
they
really are that happy'."
 
According to Norberg-Hodge, the Ladakhis' well-being is rooted in their
belief system, which is characterised by extraordinary levels of 
kindness
and compassion, and the marked absence of hatred, egotism and grasping
possessiveness.
 
We need to be clear that Ladakhi presumptions about happiness are very
different, in fact in some respects diametrically opposed, to Western 
views.
A clue to the dramatic nature of the difference is indicated by the 5th
century Indian sage Buddhaghosa, whose compassionate philosophy also 
lies at
the heart of Ladakhi culture. Buddhaghosa described how human happiness
actually consists, not in vigorously striving to satisfy our personal
desires, but in strengthening our concern for others. This could be
achieved, for example, he argued, by generating compassion repeatedly 
and
intensively in response to real or imagined suffering:
 
"On seeing a wretched man, unlucky, unfortunate, in every way a fit 
object
for compassion, unsightly, reduced to utter misery with hands and feet 
cut
off, sitting in the shelter for the helpless with a pot placed before 
him,
moaning... compassion should be felt for him in this way: 'This being 
has
indeed been reduced to misery; if only he could be freed from his
suffering!'"
 
Alternatively, from the 19th century Patrul Rinpoche suggests:
 
"Think of someone in immense torment - a person cast into the deepest
dungeon awaiting execution, or an animal standing before the butcher 
about
to be slaughtered. Feel love towards that being as if it were your own
mother or child."
 
It is then recommended that we repeatedly imagine, not merely that this
unfortunate person or animal has been released from suffering, but that 
we
ourselves have released them.
 
These startling recommendations - light-years removed from the 
strategies
for achieving happiness promoted nightly on TV - are based on the idea 
that
repeated reflection on suffering, and on ourselves relieving that 
suffering,
has the effect of strengthening our concern for others. And this, in 
turn,
it is argued, has the effect of strengthening conditions of mind that 
are
conducive to happiness - kindness, compassion, generosity, patience,
equanimity and affection - while weakening conditions of mind that are
conducive to depression and despair - greed, hatred, self-obsession,
jealousy, boredom and dissatisfaction.
 
Ultimately, it is argued, personal happiness, and the happiness of 
those
around us, is best achieved by reducing excessive concern for ourselves 
and
by replacing it with sincere concern and action for the benefit of 
others.
Notice that this concern is +not+ recommended as some kind of worthy, 
stoic
self-sacrifice, but is claimed to involve a very real increase in 
everyone's
happiness, our own included.
 
If this sounds merely outlandish, consider the set of experiments 
recently
conducted at the E.M. Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and
Behaviour at the University of Wisconsin. Richard Davidson, director of 
the
Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience, studied brain activity found in 
a
European-born Buddhist monk, Oser, who has spent three decades in the
Himalayas meditating on compassion in ways similar to those described 
above.
 
Davidson's research had previously found that people who have high 
levels of
brain activity in the left prefrontal cortex of the brain 
simultaneously
report positive, happy states of mind, such as zeal, enthusiasm, joy, 
vigour
and mental buoyancy. On the other hand, Davidson found that high levels 
of
activity in a parallel site on the other side of the brain - in the 
right
prefrontal areas - correlate with reports of distressing emotions such 
as
sadness, anxiety and worry. People suffering from clinical depression 
and
extreme anxiety, for example, have the highest levels of activation in 
these
right prefrontal areas.
 
Oser was asked to meditate intensively on compassion and then to relax 
after
sixty seconds while being monitored by an fMRI magnetic imaging 
machine. In
his book Destructive Emotions, psychologist Daniel Goleman describes 
the
results:
 
"While Oser was generating a state of compassion during meditation, he
showed a remarkable leftward shift in this parameter of prefrontal 
function,
one that was extraordinarily unlikely to occur by chance alone. In 
short,
Oser's brain shift during compassion seemed to reflect an +extremely+
pleasant mood. The very act of concern for others' well-being, it 
seems,
creates a greater sense of well-being within oneself." (Goleman, 
Disturbing
Emotions - And How We Can Overcome Them, Bloomsbury, 2003, p.12)
 
In another experiment, Davidson monitored the base-line state of left
prefrontal cortex activity indicating normal everyday mood in 175 
American
individuals. Subsequently, Davidson also monitored the base-line state 
of a
'geshe', an abbot, from one of the leading Buddhist monasteries in 
India.
Although the geshe is a monk-practitioner who does meditate, he has not
spent long periods of time alone meditating intensively in retreats in 
the
way of Oser. Nevertheless, the results were remarkable. Davidson 
reports:
 
"Something very interesting and exciting emerged from this. We recorded 
the
brain activity of the geshe and were able to compare his brain activity 
to
the other individuals who participated in experiments in my laboratory 
over
the last couple of years... The geshe had the most extreme positive 
value
out of the entire hundred and seventy-five that we had ever tested at 
that
point." (Ibid, p.339)
 
Davidson describes the geshe as "an outlier" on the graph - his reading 
was
"three standard deviations to the left", far beyond the rest of the 
bell
curve for positive emotion.
 
Although the relationship between concern for others and well-being has 
long
been all but ignored by Western science, recent studies do point to a
connection.
 
Reviewing evidence of a link between altruism and health, Herbert 
Benson,
Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, concludes:
 
"One of the healthiest things you can do for yourself is to volunteer 
to
help your community, backing away from too much self-worry and 
fretting.
Focusing our attention away from our own problems by helping others, we 
can
experience physical benefits... Altruism may help you to live longer.
Extending yourself to interact with others is associated with 
longevity."
 
In a study of heart disease in 600 men, Dr. Larry Scherwitz found that
people who were more self-obsessed had more severe coronary disease 
than
their less self-involved counterparts. Scherwitz studied patients
hospitalised for suspected heart disease or after a heart attack by
monitoring how often they used 'I', 'me', 'my', 'mine', or 'myself' 
during a
structured interview. He found evidence, which he considered
incontrovertible, that patients with more severe disease were more
self-focused, less concerned with others. This is Scherwitz's 
prescription
for health:
 
"Be more giving, listen with regard when others talk. Give your time 
and
energy to others, let others have their way; do things for reasons 
other
than furthering your own needs."
 
In a 30-year study of 427 married women, researchers at Cornell 
University
were able to conclude that regardless of number of children, marital 
status,
occupation, education, or social class, women who engaged in volunteer 
work
to help other people at least once a week lived longer. Likewise, in a
survey of thousands of volunteers across the United States, Allan Luks
discovered that people who helped other people consistently reported 
better
health than peers in their age group. Many also said that their health
markedly improved when they began volunteer work. Other studies have
repeatedly shown that compassion and affection for others have a 
measurable
impact on human immune system efficiency (see Goleman, Disturbing 
Emotions).
 
A study of 700 elderly adults by C.E. Depner and Ingersoll-Dayton found 
that
presence or absence of concern for others had a decisive effect on the
ageing process. They found that "the effects of ageing had more to do 
with
what they contributed +to+ their social support network than what they
received from it".
 
The point of our mentioning these studies is not at all to promote 
Buddhism,
or 'religion' of any kind (indeed these are not specifically religious
issues at all). It is to raise the possibility that there may well be
approaches to achieving individual and social well-being - long 
understood
and practised in many traditional cultures - that have been filtered 
out of
our culture along with so many other ideas that conflict with corporate
goals. These approaches could prove vital in generating resistance to
unrestrained greed and violence, and in working towards a more rational 
and
compassionate society.
 
We raise this possibility, also, on the basis of a small degree of 
personal
experience. In the past, we at Media Lens have held jobs in large
multinational corporations. Like most people our goals were to do 
varied and
interesting work, to achieve status and 'success' through promotion 
and,
above all perhaps, to achieve a high standard of living. In short, our 
lives
were centred around fundamentally selfish aims with little or no 
thought,
and even less action, for the plight and suffering of others.
 
Our experience of self-centred work was one of almost unrelieved 
boredom and
stress - the work turned out to be of no intrinsic interest at all, but 
was
simply a means to the end of material acquisition. It seems to us that 
when
life is oriented around money and status, it becomes a pointless, 
depressing
dead end, a kind of emotional wasteland. The contrast to our experience 
of
the unpaid human rights and environmental work we have done since - for
example, this Media Lens project - could not be more dramatic. To even
partially replace self-centred concerns with concern for others, we 
believe,
is a decision of enormous human significance, which has beneficial
consequences that far outweigh any trivial financial loss.
 
We need to be clear that the ultimate root of many of our problems is 
that
very many people care a great deal about themselves and their immediate
families, but very little about anyone else. This is the basis of much
unthinking obedience, passive complicity, and enthusiastic 
participation in
state-corporate destructiveness. This self-centred concern, in turn, is
rooted in the deeply entrenched - but, we believe, false - conviction 
that
personal happiness is best achieved by applying maximum effort to 
securing
the needs of ourselves and our immediate families, such that we have 
little
inclination to attend to the needs of others deemed irrelevant - people 
who
often pay an appalling price for our actions. We often rightly focus on 
the
logic and function of state-corporate systems, but we need to remember 
that
states and corporations are in the end mere abstractions - they are 
made up
of, and run by, real people.
 
 
Full Human Dissent
 
Compassion and concern for others are of course implicit in much 
dissident
thought - relief of human suffering is quite obviously what motivates 
many
writers and activists. But explicit focus on the importance of such 
concern
as an antidote to individual human misery, and to the many problems 
rooted
in the unrestrained greed of corporate capitalism, is almost nowhere to 
be
found in contemporary radical thought, just as it is rarely found in
mainstream scientific and other thought.
 
Is it possible that the dissident critique of the propaganda system is
itself victim of one aspect of that propaganda - the aspect that 
dismisses
non-Western systems of thought as 'primitive', 'irrational' 'religion'?
American writer Alan Wallace observes:
 
"For centuries we in the West have wondered whether intelligent life 
exists
elsewhere in the universe. If there are highly advanced, intelligent 
beings
out there, what might they have to teach us? Along similar lines we can 
ask:
is there intelligent life on our planet outside of our Euro-American
civilisation? Of course that sounds like a dumb question, but it's 
still
worth asking, since there persists an attitude in our society that we 
know
more about everything than any previous generation and more than any 
other
'less developed' society today."
 
The propaganda system's habit of dividing the world into specialised
compartments to be studied in isolation also appears to afflict 
dissident
thought - we forever discuss politics in isolation from psychological 
and
philosophical truths. We discuss what we imagine to be 'cold, hard 
facts' in
isolation from the impact of personal feelings, values and motivations. 
But
why +do+ some people care passionately about human and animal 
suffering,
while other people are totally indifferent? Is it possible to increase 
the
depth and extent of concern for others in society?
 
The result of the failure to ask these questions is a disempowered,
emotionally incomplete form of dissent; one which is less able to draw 
on
what appears to be the strongest rationale of all for helping others - 
the
fact that it is a form of "enlightened self-interest" from which we 
also
benefit. The promise of compassionate dissent is that it provides an
extremely powerful, and in fact ever-deepening, motivation for media
activism, peace activism, human and animal rights activism, and
environmental activism, in the understanding that compassionate thought 
and
action are also profoundly conducive to our +own+ well-being. By 
contrast,
we believe, dissent rooted in anger, hatred, and even violence, is
self-defeating, self-destructive and futile.
 
This idea perhaps flies in the face of a certain tradition of stoic
self-righteousness among leftists - attempting to help others does 
often
involve costs, risks and painful self-sacrifice (often, in the Third 
World,
to an appalling degree) - any personal advantages won as a result of 
helping
others are perhaps seen as an indulgence in the face of so much misery. 
But
if awareness of these benefits makes it easier for more people to be
motivated to help others, then it is surely anything but an indulgence.
 
We need political dissent, but we also need personal, emotional,
philosophical - that is, fully human - dissent. Erich Fromm noted how 
in our
culture - dissident culture very much included - we are taught to 
repress
many of our best qualities:
 
"We repress not only what is bad, but also what is good, because it 
does not
fit the character of society... We live in a society that is directed 
toward
success and profit and not one that is founded on love. Thus, the 
person who
acts out of a sense of love excludes himself from social thinking; he
becomes an outsider."
 
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