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To:
politics.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk Date: Monday 29 November 04 |
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Dear Peter (Mr
Preston),
I very much liked your comment in today's Guardian ("Television: a modest proposal"). It is encouraging to find someone else who at least recognises that TV is a BIG problem. You also indicate that it is too big to do much about. Your suggestions are amusing, but no more than that. Probably you didn't mean them to be. Like the motor car and aeroplane, used sensibly, TV is a remarkable invention which can hugely benefit and enrich human lives. Unfortunately - but inevitably, given a socio-economic order rooted in our "more animal than human " nature - the use of all these things is determined by the need (and greed) to make money (and jobs) out of them. There will soon be 7-9 billion people on our planet - with its limited resources and finite carrying capacity - all wanting motorcars and frequent air travel (i.e. the sort of lifestyle that any moderately well-off Englishman already has). Tragically, even rocket scientists don't seem to recognise where this must lead - perhaps because they are too busy designing rockets. Something is blinding us to what should be obvious ("Uncommon Sense vs the Insanities of Normality"). The same applies to TV. It has got completely out of hand - because of the need to make money (and jobs) out of it. In the case of the BBC it is a matter of justifying the license fee, which again boils down to money and jobs (many of them, of course, very high-status). All these problems cannot be solved within the context of our current socio-economic order, because its very structures (being rooted in our "more animal than human " nature) creates them. The solution (which human survival depends on) is the creation of an "alternative" socio-economic order, initially within and parallel to what exists at the moment, but based on our more "enlightened ", human nature. It was what Socialism originally was supposed to be about, before it got completely perverted (by the "more animal than human " nature that exists in all of us). Instead of attempting to overthrow, or even reform, the existing order, WE (those of us who recognise the situation and what their "enlightened " self-interests really are) should simply create an alternative (the crude beginning, which need to organise themselves into a coherent and distinctive alternative, moral economy) already exist: organic farming, fair trade, moral investment funds, recycling, renewable energy, ect). The KEY lies in our use of MONEY (another profoundly important invention that we have to learn to use responsibly), how we earn, spend and invest it. As the alternative grows WE will be able to transfer more and more of our activities and dependences to it from the existing order, which is fundamentally unsustainable, and thus doomed. More on my homepage at www.spaceship-earth.org Roger Hicks |
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