The attention span of the world, or at least that of the West, is frighteningly short. Wacko Jacko's handcuffs are barely off, and the media is already moving on to other stories. Following his acquittal yesterday, the BBC published 15 stories related to the trial. The number had been steadily increasing over the last week; today, they only published two.
The problem runs much deeper than our brief fixation with the lives of our most scandalous celebrities. Remember the 1989-1992 period where all we could talk about was saving the rainforest? Do you think rainforest destruction has stopped, or even slowed for that matter? Of course not, so why doesn't anybody talk about it anymore?
Save the Whales. Overpopulation. Feed the Children. The disappearing ozone. All major global problems that weren't able to hold our attention for long. I suspect that all this talk of climate change will disappear in the next few years as the next global threat manifests itself.
Ponder for a moment the consequences this has for the organisations that are built to combat these problems. I remember seeing Sally Struthers on TV almost every night urging me to feed the kids for only 70 cents a day when I was little. It was even less than that cup of coffee I have every morning. Remember? E! should skip the "Where are they now?" on Sally and do it for the Feed the Children movement instead.
These organisations are still out there, but they're getting old and operating with a lot less money than they used to. AIDS service organisations are reaching the end of their second decade, and the funding is dwindling. The passionate activists that founded them are finally retiring or moving on, and pardon the pun, fresh blood is a rare commodity.
I'm not proposing a solution, I don't think it's as easy as that. Sure, I could blame the media for making such a huge fuss and then leaving as quickly as they came for the next big story, but that's not the only problem. What about the self-centred egoism and individualism that guides Western thought? Is that it? Or a feeling of collective hopelessness that we will never actually change each other? Destructive capitalist interests? It is any and all of these, but I'm not going to change them. Unless improving our collective attention span becomes the next global battle, neither will anybody else. But people are trying.
I only offer a pat on the back for the people that vehemently stick to these movements long after they are popular. There are still people out there committed to fighting the good fight one global threat at a time. Thank you.
Flown by mariposa at 10:42 AM on June 15, 2005
Saving the planet was popular after Exxon Valdez. But the way in which we were supposed to save the planet was by...consuming more. Buy a cloth bag make from RECYCLED cloth! Get a credit card that gives 1% of your purchases to environmental charities! Nowhere did people talk about how to decrease our dependence on oil, plastics, trees, THINGS--or if it was discussed, it wasn't in popular discourse. Now we go along consuming and more and more products are already made of recycled goods...so maybe there was a slight impact but let's remember that the message is often BUY! CONSUME! USE!
