Go Back To Where You Came From may have hit the big time in Australia as a well as abroad, becoming the rage for a short time as an interesting twitter of trilling debate. But with time the attention span of the entertainment throng will wane and topic will diminish to urbane.
Bauman says modern awareness of the phenomenon of time has been "cut" into episodes. Each episode artfully scripted by someone to have beginning and an end. "Beware," he warns, as we become segmented without pre-history or future. "Take care," he chides as we slide into a space with little or no logical connection between the episodes, - of life. Bauman, 1994
Are there to be consequences for a global world, sliding into a reality where time has been sliced, diced and spliced into flitting successions of coincidental, contingent randomosities of inconsequential episodicities?
The 'medium is the message’ is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan in a didactic endeavour to point out that the qualities of the media used to convey a message are more seminal than the content of the overt communication. (McLuhan)
Message of Modern Times was Photographic Paper
A Bauman hails that the message of the times in the 1900's was photographic paper. Alas, its equivalent for the 2000's is video-tape. Photographic paper was direct and honest because it could be used once only, leaving no second chance. The honest medium once used, retained the traces of lineage and history for a long time to come – in practical terms, forever.
Reminding readers of the family album, the sociologist remembers names attached to archival displays, "all counting and to be reckoned with, all adding their stones to the castle of the slowly accumulating family tradition," (Bauman, 1994) Family albums were created so that families could and would remember both good times and bad, for better or worse, forever…
Social Amnesia in a Reusable Society
Consider now the video-tape and then ponder on digital storage. The tape is made to be erased, and re-used, and re-used again. In this way it is possible to record whatever may seem interesting or amusing at the moment, but to keep it no longer than the interest lasts – after all, "interest is bound to wane."
In the age of photographic paper deeds and things mattered and because they were treasured they tended to last and have consequences. The years tied together and affected each other. People believed that their own actions (or inaction) mattered and that they could have impact.
Cleansing of Collective Responsibility
The video-tape exudes the message that all things exist on and of themselves. It seems as though a subconscious message is implied by the medium and that the "message" is erasure. It is as though an erasure of the tape is also a cleansing of collective responsibility. Once erased from the tape hot topics can be dropped from the mind. Change the channel, change the topic: drop the rock! Reacting with shock to a revelation of injustice can be thought to replace the need for action in response to the deed.
Emmanuel Levinas: Greatest Ethical Philosopher
Morality means being-for (not merely being-aside or even being with) the Other. To take a moral stance means to assume responsibility for the Other. In Australia, the other is often thought of as Boat People for Bauman they are characterised as "Wasted Lives."
Levinas calls for people to take seriously their responsibility for the well-being of the Other. Rather than passively watching and twitting, he exhorts thinking people to make an active effort to preserve and enhance "life". He says that even if others do, or can do, something about world matters; this does not cancel my responsibility for doing what can be done by me.
Considering the compellingly complicity and deceptive duplicity within which Australians are intertwined - one cannot imagine a point at which Australians can say with any sort of moral right: ‘I have done my share, and here my responsibility ends.’
However the news for the average Australian is not all bad. There is much we can do to turn the situation of National Australian shame and disgrace into an opportunity for positive action.
- Teachers: teach better (teach tolerance and act justly when dealing with claimants in the class room)
- Families: value more (appreciate the gifts that these people can bring to our country)
- Politicians: confront ignorance (get rid of the Go Back We're Full bumper stickers - they are so tacky anyway)
- Communities: get to know the other - (stop talking about them and start talking to and with them)
I Do For You Today - I Might Be In Need Tomorrow
Novelty is a word that characterises modern times. Our lives are simply not as predictable as they once were.
The luxuary of relatively stable, repetitive patterns of life that enable, and favour, long-term predictions, planning and the composition of Sartrean 'life projects' are giving way (or have given way) to a condition of permanent revolution. (Bauman, 2003)
Bauman says that because revolution has become human society's normal state, epic canvasses risk being torn into pieces even before they are completed. Politicised message canvases may be rendered obsolete before the paints dries. Attention waning even before it has waxed on completion of an oeuvre. No ovation for the obfuscation intended to stand between the audience and the consequences of the behaviour that half hearted canvases describe.
Little wonder that artists today prefer installations, patched together only for the duration of the gallery exposition, to solid works meant to be preserved in the museums of the future in order to illuminate, and to be judged by, the generations yet to be born...(Bauman.2003)
Resources:
- Bauman, Z. (1994). Alone Again Ethics After Certainty. London: Demos
- Bauman, Z. (2003). City of Fears . City of Hopes. London: Goldsmiths College, University of London.
- McLuhan, Marshall (1964) Understanding Media, Routledge, London.
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