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| 11 January 1998 | Sunday | 12 Ramazan 1418 |
The globalization of sin
The following essay is in response to Mr. Karamatullah Ghori's article "Who says Pakistan is under siege from global teleculture" published in the DAWN Magazine (December 21, 1997).
The author's claim that "there is no such thing as a global culture" is a naive and shallow assertion that reveals, to put it mildly, a lack of perceptiveness regarding the contemporary state of affairs. If culture is defined in terms of "shared perceptions, practices and ideals" then it should be abundantly obvious to any objective observer that, in our times, the entire globe has virtually been engulfed by the mist of Godless materialism. A mist which today dominates the perceptions, practices, and ideals of the overwhelming majority of human beings. The global culture - characterized by a single-minded pursuit of wealth, power, and pleasure, with an almost total disregard for spiritual and other-worldly aims - has become so pervasive that it transcends geographical and political boundaries as well as religious affiliations and linguistic or ethnic divisions. Indeed, if a person born in Pakistan and raised as a Muslim views the world through the West's eyes, has purely materialistic values and ambitions, and lives a life-style virtually indistinguishable from that of a Westerner, then what greater proof is needed to show that a global culture not only exists but has become truly ubiquitous?
Materialism is the philosophical outlook that has taken shape during the last few centuries in Europe - in the "modern" as compared to the "mediaeval" age - and which has now diffused throughout the world. The dawn of modernity in Europe was characterized by the shift of allegiance from God to man, from faith in revelation to that in science, and from reliance on religious authority to freedom of thought. These constituents of the modern mind emerged during the Renaissance, were empowered by the Scientific Revolution, and then disseminated all over the world through colonialism.
As a result of the present domination of Godless materialism, the derogatory and intellectually-arrogant attitude towards religion - previously limited to the outer fringes of society - gained the upper hand for the first time in human history. Consequently, religion came to be viewed as the opium of the people, religious experience as nothing more than a mental aberration, and the concept of God as a mere substitute for a father figure.
In "modern" and "scientific" circles, the avowed position with respect to religion and religious assertions was one of cautious agnosticism. The de facto result, however, has been a negation of God, the soul, and the life hereafter. Consequently, attention shifted from God to the material universe, from spiritual enlightenment to sensual gratification and physical well-being, and from salvation in the hereafter to success and prosperity right here and right now.
Then Darwinism arrived: the mechanistic interpretation of biological evolution relegated the human being to the level of a mere beast who came to be viewed as, in the words of Desmond Morris, "a remarkable, ingenious, brilliant animal - no less and no more." When materialism took over all aspects of private and public life, it began to manifest itself in such phenomena as secularism, consumerism, and hedonism, each of which has led to catastrophic and disastrous consequences for the human race.
In every society, there is a small minority of intelligent and powerful individuals who enjoy a position of leadership vis-a-vis its values, ideals, trends, and policies. We are living in the age of Godless materialism because this is the creed of the powerful elite of our times, with very few exceptions. This elite is able to exert an immense amount of influence over the thoughts and behaviour of the masses, one of the most effective means of which is the mass media, especially television. Today, the mass media is being used by the elite to propagate, reinforce, and maintain the global culture of Godless materialism. The rapid technological advancement in the field of mass communications is further expanding their zone of influence, as a result of which even the remote villages of the Third World are no longer immune to the sickness of materialism.
Ours is the age of deception, magic, and illusion. Things are rarely what they are made to appear before us. The famous aphorism by Joseph Goebbels that "a lie becomes truth when we repeat it a hundred times" is nowhere more factual than in the popular mass media. As any person belonging to the advertising industry can affirm, images that are repeatedly seen, especially in a relaxed state, get deeply ingrained in the viewer's memory from where they profoundly affect the manner in which he or she feels, thinks, and behaves.
We need to realize that, in today's world, television is the most powerful medium for changing the thoughts and conduct of entire populations. To put it crudely, television brainwashes on a mass scale. It is the world's greatest mind-bender. Indeed, arguments presented in books, magazines, or newspapers can be challenged and refuted, but when the same ideas are injected into immature and unsuspecting minds through television images, in the guise of entertainment and fun, then it becomes practically impossible to resist them.
The key to enjoying any tele-drama is suspension of disbelief. The viewer must withhold his or her faculty of critical analysis in order to enjoy television's images and sounds. Consequently, one cannot enjoy television and not get influenced, at the same time, by the world-view and values that the producers are trying to promote. Indeed, traditional morality can be destroyed, or at least weakened, by the subtle and even subliminal message hidden in apparently innocent television programmes.
Mr. Ghori is clearly mistaken in his assumption that television depicts reality as it exists. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Television is, in fact, an instrument which is used by a small minority to convert the viewers to its own way of thinking and behaving. Neil Postman, chairman of the Department of Culture and Communication at New York University, and author of Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985), says that since television is the command centre of American public life, it gives legitimacy to ideas.
Neil Postman argues that every culture controls the people who are subjugated to it, the only difference is that each culture does this in a different way. He defines the word "control" as the process by which the culture organizes the behaviour of the people, provides them with interests, and turn their attention to certain arenas of human affairs. The primary means of control in the U.S. (and increasingly in the rest of the world too) is television. (See Neil Postman's interview "Prelude to Vegas," available on the web at http://www.channel-zero.com/issue l /postmanl .html).
Mr. Ghori finds the idea of a conspiracy to influence the values and norms of viewers a preposterous one. But is it really that far-fetched? It is time for us to wake up and see what's happening in the world around us. Today, the international media has practically become a tool in the hands of a small financial aristocracy. There are about ten major corporations that are global in their scope, most of which are based in the United States. These corporations control the global media, which they use for further enhancing their power and profit.
Twenty years ago, Jerry Mander argued in his book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1977), that "Without such a single, monolithic instrument as television, the effective power and control of these huge corporations could not be harnessed as it presently is. Monolithic economic enterprise needs monolithic media to purvey its philosophy and to influence rapid change in consumption patterns. Without an instrument like television, capable of reaching everyone in the country at the same time and narrowing human needs to match the redesigned environment, the corporations themselves could not exist." This media-capital nexus for the promotion of consumerism has now become truly global.
More recently, Edward S. Herman and Robert W. McChesney, co- authors of The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism (1997), have argued that just as the world is being pushed towards a socio-economic model similar to that found in the United States, the world's media are also being pushed towards a model found in the United States. The American socio-economic model is one of market hegemony, minimal state provision, the supplanting of the citizen by the consumer, and a commercial media providing the entertainment-cum-advertising culture appropriate to the socio-economic model. The authors aver that the spread of the U.S. media model to the rest of the world is weakening public broadcasting systems and strengthening the commercial media in the rest of the world. Consequently, advertisers are increasingly in a position to shape media performance and standards. As a result, we should expect an increase in light entertainment, sex and violence on television, and a parallel decrease in hard news, investigative reporting, documentaries, and debates on public and community issues.
In view of the above facts, even a person of ordinary acumen can see that those who control the global media have a vested interest in promoting the consumer mentality. Television programmes are designed to carefully guide the viewers' attention away from all the serious issues, and to overwhelm their imaginations with sex, sports, and trivia. Those in charge of the global media want us to enjoy, laugh, and have fun, not to think, question, and challenge. Indeed, consumerism cannot survive without a preoccupation among the masses with enjoyment and pleasure-seeking. To promote a hedonistic mindset so as to create bigger markets for consumer products, the global media is using highly sophisticated methods to destroy traditional life-styles, religious norms, and moral values.
Unmindful of these harsh realities, Mr. Ghori mockingly derides the legitimate concern of many Pakistanis that the American teleculture is corrupting the morals of our younger generation. His belief that Bay Watch teaches the young generation "a sense of commitment to duty, devotion to social causes and unflinching determination to go to the aid of people in distress" is simply ridiculous. On the contrary, such programmes de-sensitize the viewers to nudity, eliminate their inhibition to revolt against their religious traditions, and brainwash them so that they no longer remain conscious of the fact that certain acts are sinful. Indeed, when a sin is made to appear as an ordinary and everyday event, the viewer begins to lose his or her aversion towards that particular form of behaviour. Consequently, the value structure of a people is gradually turned upside-down without their ever being aware of the change, to the extent that the forms of behaviour previously considered sinful and wrong now begin to appear as the normal standards of conduct.
We should seriously ponder as to what is really at stake when young people watch television shows with sexual or libidinous contents? What is wrong with watching "scantily clad or provocatively dressed" women? Why all the hue and cry about revealing a "lot of raw flesh"? Are these really, in the words of Mr. Ghori, "imaginary demons of darkness" and have no adverse or negative consequences? Why are the "politico-religious obscurantists" so worried about young people having fun in front of their television sets? In order to rationally address these questions, we need to proceed in a logical fashion.
First, we need to know why human beings have a sexual urge that is far more potent than that found in most lower animals. The reason for this is that mother nature wants us to live together, as families, clans, tribes, and societies, and not as isolated individuals. This is exactly the reason why men and women not only crave physical union, they also yearn for permanent relationships, love, commitment, and spiritual devotion. This is why the human infant is the most helpless and fragile creature in the entire animal kingdom, and also the most dependent on his parents' care and protection. Again, this is why human parents are more loving and caring than any other species.
Clearly, nature doesn't want men and women to come together just for the sake of their physical need, but she wants them to develop real and lasting love and companionship that would, on the one hand, ensure the survival and well-being of the helpless newborn and, on the other hand, become the basis of a stable family life which would, in turn, give rise to close-knit communities.
Secondly, on account of its remarkable intensity, human sexuality has a potential for getting out of control and becoming an end in itself. Thus, an essential prerequisite for establishing and maintaining a stable and healthy civilization is to restrain the sex impulse by special customs and social institutions, to allow its expression only within well-defined boundaries, and to strictly prohibit and check any transgression of those limits. Otherwise a chaotic expression of sex impulse will result, leading to the decay of the institution of family, degeneration of morals, rise in illegitimate birth rates, increase in the number of single mothers who are forced to provide for their children, and a culture of men exploiting women.
Thirdly, in view of the central importance of marriage and its constructive role vis-a-vis human civilization, we should appreciate the significance of closing all avenues that could lead, directly or indirectly, towards a relaxation of the restrictions on non-marital sexual activity. Such a relaxation is, of course, highly detrimental to the institutions of marriage and family, and, in turn, to the fabric of civilization itself. This is because all ways and means employed to intensify and heighten the human sex instinct result, sooner or later, in the free and unrestricted expression of sexuality.
It is easy to see, in this perspective, how various kinds of erotic images in the mass media contribute towards moral and social degeneration without serving any constructive purpose. The prevalence of such images, whether subtle or explicit, only accentuates the already potent effects of sex hormones, especially among the adolescents and young adults. The resulting preoccupation with sex consumes a lot of their time and energy, producing unnecessary frustrations. Over time, the images ingrained in the memory of the viewers change their very conceptions about right and wrong, and gradually result in drastic transformations in the social norms.
The moral decadence of Western society and the degeneration of the family clearly demonstrate that extremely adverse results can appear if a society remains tolerant or indifferent to the sexual images in the mass media. Although there are numerous other causes behind the rise of promiscuity in the West, the fact remains that it is the mass media, especially television, that has played a key role in promoting certain ideas and in legitimizing certain forms of behaviour. It is unfortunate that, in our morbid zeal of blindly imitating the social patterns of the West, we even ignore how a growing number of Western thinkers are getting alarmed at the consequences of sexual promiscuity, and how they are advising their own people to try and curb the unbridled use of salacious images in the mass media. Thus, Concerned Women of America, Morality in Media, and The American Family Association are only some of the non-profit organizations that are striving to bring back traditional family values and to purge television shows of prurient content. Many such activists point out that more and more sexual content is gradually being introduced in television shows according to a definite plan; the viewers are first de-sensitized to a certain level of images before the next, more daring, image is aired. Since the advertisers want to attract viewers in the age range 18 - 49, producers of prime time TV shows are trying to lure these viewers by means of sexual images and dialogue. Mr. Ghori has brought in the issue of sectarian violence and the behaviour of some men that makes religion "increasingly distasteful to the enlightened younger generation." It is certainly true that there is no shortage of people who give Islam a bad name. However, it should be obvious to Mr. Ghori that equating the repulsive behaviour of some extremists with the injunctions of Islam is itself a distasteful practice, typical of the Western media. If someone wants to indict Islam for the spread of sectarian bloodletting, or accuse Islam for the prevalence of injustice in Pakistani society, or blame Islam for the "culture of exploitation, plunder, and loot," then he should bring forth his proof. It is clear to all fair-minded observers, on the other hand, that although we don't get tired of paying lip-service to Islam, our behaviour can hardly be described as representing the authentic Islamic teachings. The fact of the matter is that our predicament is not caused by practising Islam. It is a direct consequence of our turning away from the guidance of the Qur'an and the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).
There is nothing wrong with studying the "modern" and "progressive" ideas that are coming from the West, and in adopting whatever is wholesome and beneficial in them. Exposing immature minds to alien ideas and values, however, is a risky business, especially when they are not well-grounded in the authentic Islamic tradition and, therefore, unable to distinguish right from wrong. The fact must never be overlooked that Islam has its own set of values and ideals which are often in clear conflict with those of the West. Indeed, Islam and Godless materialism are archenemies, and this is precisely the reason why Islam and Islamic revivalism are the prime targets of the global mass media. The growing domination of American teleculture, therefore, should be a cause of concern for all of us.
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