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| Sunday, 23 January 2005 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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From contempt to amity Solemn Thoughts by Wendell Solomons In this time of post-tsunami relief and rehabilitation, we could note a sentiment that Sri Lanka's President evoked on July 23rd last year. "... If all of us can collectively put behind us all the little pettiness that has bound us in shackles, free ourselves from those many and numerous hatreds, jealousies, that make of us little men and women". Sri Lanka has to clear a path ahead through thickets of ingrained contempt for society. The thickets appeared after decades-long social-engineering and example handed down from altitudes of high administrative power. Margaret Thatcher's vivid claim is disturbing: "There's no such thing as society; there are only individuals and families". The promotion of this fad required that media adjust the base of calculation towards petty opportunism. With that shallow base, conceit, self-idolatry and delusions of grandeur take over, as Margaret Thatcher later claims bears out: "I think I have become a bit of an institution - you know, the sort of thing people expect to see around the place". The gradual escalation of 'anything-goes' individualism was to lead over time, even in the rich West, to chastisement for malpractice or even the collapse of Arthur Anderson, Enron, WorldCom, and Goldman-Sachs. The danger of a prolonged drift aroused a warning from famed NY financier George Soros. He said that without a firmly-held system of ethical beliefs, corporations would be trapped in a self-defeating game (such a society would be mired down in mutual looting...) Pettiness syndrome and media Out in Sri Lanka after the Tsunami disaster, thousands of people need relief and rehabilitation. We need to work together to shorten the hardship. We know only too well that the time has come for media owners to cease propagating the pettiness syndrome. On the day of the Tsunami, December 26th, FM disk jockeys were relaying Western pop music late into the wee hours of the morning. The disco fare came out like a bizarre call - "The world is dying - not I". Waking up in broad daylight, the owners of FM stations tried to pull back their programming. Yet, behaviours have still not left the theatre of the absurd. On Tuesday 11th , 2005, a presenter on FM radio broadcast his wit on the airways: "Love the person you love and forget the world". Plato once exclaimed, "O for a myth that everyone would believe!" Beyond the many versions of the 'I am invincible' myth that you will be hearing on FM and seeing on TV, just ponder about the ownership of private media. You will find it wise for public-owned media to set an example for the new country that must be built after more than two decades of broadcasting of the myth - the virtue of selfishness (that phrase is the title of a book Ayn Rand wrote in the U.S. for programming human society). The jealousies that Sri Lanka's President mentioned above are an accompaniment to the neo-pagan selfishness of Rand's, "This god ... is I'.Public media also consist of flesh and blood people. One documented and established way to combat unnecessary, jealous empire-building within is the simple mechanism the Japanese chose when they began to rebuild after World War 2. Today, the top managers of companies such as Matsushita still meet once a week to jointly coordinate efforts and resources. Alternative ethic The alterative ethic needs no founding ... The South Asian ethic of Buddhism in Sri Lanka contains the concepts of Karuna, Mettha, Muditha and Upekkha. Muditha expresses appreciative joy for the success of others. Siddhartha Gautama chose that way to move the impediment of burning coals of envy away from one's breast. The concepts are called Brahminic institutes (or Vihara) and as such reflect doctrines essential to Hinduism too. The West Asian ethics of Christianity and Islam came later to the island. Both faiths share the Mosaic Commandments, which taboo covetousness and envy. Also, the gateway Commandments leave no room for self-idolatry. These traditions are available for the country to use in a re-creation of the amity of the serene island, for which Arabic adopted Pali language roots to say - Serendip. |
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