Reductionism, the Media and Globalisation

As much as I dislike the American involvement in Iraq and the published premise for entering that war, I cannot think of another viable solution to the then accelerating scourge of global terrorism. The key to adequately understanding this issue and why the opinions that you read, watch and listen to are mostly misguided, is to understand what “global” means.

The global world in which we live, do business and raise our children, is a system. Systems are difficult to understand but they are evidently impossible to understand for those trained to simplify and reduce all news and information to an eighth grade vocabulary and intellectual sophistication. Systems—especially global ones—are not explainable on that level. The world press needs to either grow up or to stop commenting on issues that are out of their league.

The spark that set off this rant came from this discussion about the Iraq war, comparing it to a 1950s invasion by Great Britain to put down a rebellion in Malaya. The details are unimportant. What is important is the reductionist approach used to compare and contrast these two incidents. They aren't the same and the world is greatly more complicated now than it was 50 years ago.

The world is a very complex place. The assumption, taken by too many people, that the world is an aggregate of sovereign nations who trade with one another through roll-up dock doors and bullet proof cashier windows is not only simplistic, it is stupid. Pollution, economics, politics and yes, terror, move freely across these imaginary lines that we call international borders. Three months ago, I posted a similar rant about a similarly reductionist opinion posted by a conservative journalist-turned-blogger so it's time to pay compliments to a liberal one.

Any attempt by me to explain the political situation in the Middle East would only show my ignorance of it. However, I will say that the killing and destruction of property is not the problem but the result of the problem. The main engine of hate is reductionist propaganda that has been pumped into the minds of children since they were old enough to understand language—on all sides of the conflict. Neither international conferences nor payoffs from richer nations will stop the propaganda pumps. And the propaganda pumps are fed and maintained by the political systems that use them to maintain power. So, the real question is not about sovereignty but how to shut off the pumps. The next step, after shutting off the propaganda, is to help the victims recover and build a better political system that can withstand future power abuse.

So what does any of this have to do with religion and common faith? Well, religion has been the main conduit for propaganda for at least 4,000 years. We are all affected and infected by it to some extent. And we are all, each one of us, responsible for learning truth so we can avoid passing religious propaganda on to new generations. Engaging in simplistic arguments that attempt to put an intellectual face on mere personal opinion is not helpful. And those skilled in the art of mass communications bear a larger responsibility for their words.

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