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Adbusters latest issue focusses (in part) on the way in which communication has been mixed with commercialism, and challenges readers to think again about the way in which our mental environment shapes our personal and planetary health. Here's the intro to the section, which makes thought-provoking reading...
"Let's convince ourselves and family, our neighbours and our classmates that the mental environment is as precious, and as vulnerable, as the lushest stretch of rainforest. Let's get people thinking about their mental health in the same way that they think about their physical health - two sides of the same tarnished coin. Get households banishing TV pollution at the same time they banish toxic detergents. Get parents watching their children's commercial intake as closely as they watch their sugar intake. Challenge students to say no to corporate curricula with the same fervour they say no to oil spills. Let's train people with mood disorders to reduce their mental burden, in the same way that people with allergies reduce their chemical burdens. Let's turn psychologists into mental ecologists, pioneers of a new and vital social science. In other words, let's detox before there's no turning back."
When one compares this call with the attitude of the desert fathers, who chose to withdraw into the desert to understand themselves and God away from the cultural stream that dragged them along, one can recognise that it is not altogether dissimilar.
It is now widely recognised that what we call 'news' is largely propaganda - an ideology being pushed at us. Less so, but to an increasing degree, we realise that all media does this to a greater or lesser degree. We are constantly bombarded with images and messages (is this why there is an increase in ADHD?) Is 'detox' a call for a modern form of asceticism?
Posted by gary at January 10, 2006 10:47 PM
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