Awareness

Excellent point. One of my concerns in general, and regarding activism/worldchanging in particular, is how we can ease the path towards desirable action through structuring how we present information. From the basic level of incomprehensible bank forms to the big thinking I was doing around the Make Poverty History campaign in the UK, this has been a recurring theme. Capitalism has refined extremely sophisticated techniques to lead us into spending and consumption, but there is nothing like it in a more positive sphere, not that I can see.

See also: public health campaigns, trying to get people to look after their health better.

We shall talk more of this :-)

Yeah, what you said.

Exactly.

This is one of the reasons I don't blog or talk much about politics. Lets state the obvious. Bearing witness to a problem is not a solution. Doing something about it, or providing others tools with which to do something about, is. It's far too easy to be NATO - no action, talk only.

This is great. It relates directly to something I've been thinking about a lot lately: we should moan less, and do more.

Starvation in Africa is bad, but the lack of fresh drinking water is worse in the sense of being more immediate. It also seems like it should be simpler to solve.

Is there a way to mass-produce water pumps (because there is presumably still water under the ground) and water purification/filtration systems? That seems to be the simplest solution. Even better -- is there a way we can design these things so that people in this situation can easily construct out of materials they already have at hand?

Poverty is bad, but side-steppable to a certain extent if we deal with resources more directly. If someone has access to health care, shelter, fresh food and clean water, a lack of money is an insignificant problem.

Just my 2c.

Lifestraw seems an awesome cheap water purification system.
http://www.index2005.dk/Members/dafude/bodyObject
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003388.html

Actually, once more, I will plug www.worldchanging.com as a starting place for those interested in looking at solutions.

Worldchanging is a pretty great site. Suggestion: maybe you should plug it more directly 'cause I haven't noticed it in your blog apart from a random link or two.

worldchanging is in the sidebar of undulatingungulate under information sources.
i plugged it directly in my livejournal back in the day, and in general on many occasions.

OK, cool. I should probably look at that sidebar every once in a while.

While taking your point, and wanting to go away and think about it before attempting to respond in depth, I would note that awareness is a precondition to asking the question "what can we do about it?"
Not everyone is at the same state of awareness/understanding. Thus, until everyone is asking what can we do about it and is willing to actually do something about it, raising awareness still has some useful function. But yes. There is more to do.

(There's an interesting book called Compassion Fatigue, which argues that the way various crises are presented in the media leads to a feeling of hopelessness about them, precisely because they focus on the negative and go for sensationalism and emotional responses rather than explaining the issue and what can be done.)

"Not everyone is at the same state of awareness/understanding." What concerns me here is the possible assumption that, with the right level of
awareness/understanding, the same mindset for action will be reached. (I emphasise *possible* assumption, in case I am attributing an argument to you that you aren't making - it's a general assumption that I am reminded of).

Anyway, the first thing that is occluded is the role of ideology: it is a poor assumption that if someone (let's call 'em "the Other", just to load the dice...) disagrees as to the nature of the problem/ the course of action (especially when their ideological investments in this are explicit), that it is because they don't understand the issue.

[-footnote: I want to emphasise that the Other I am referring to need not be a "Capitalist", "Reactionary" or "Right Winger" (terms which are of course
ideologically loaded by those both for and against, not least that in most "Anti-Capitalist" discourse, "Capitalism" refers to one subset of the capital model - or one model among a multitude - an area where far greater awareness and understanding is needed if one is to adopt an effective anti-capitalist politics).-]

The next part of my argument is that the nature of the action often informs the raising of awareness: this is not only applicable to "compassion" and its fatigue - in fact, it is possible to use "fatigue" in order to circumvent ideological positions, and eliminate freedom of thought. By drawing attention to a given issue of awareness, one may be presupposing the action to be taken; the action to be taken then informs what issue is raised to awareness. By leaving the action to be taken unnamed, the Other is rendered powerless (as discussed in the original post and its responses). The failure to go beyond drawing attention to the problem is not just "sensationalism" and "[not] explaining the issue and what can be done" - by highlighting the problem first, and delaying/occluding the action/solution one wants to prescribe, one can force one's action/solution on the Other.

An exemplary case in this is Radio Rhema, which is alleged to deliberately attempt to cultivate a state of depression or dissatisfaction in its listeners, in order that the course of action (beginning with Christian affiliation) appear clear to them. If this seems cynical, bear in mind that to Rhema, this course of action would seem to be the right one - and to
disagree would be to lack the right state of awareness/understanding of the issue.

However, having given Rhema as my exemplar, I'd like to suggest that, again, this is not limited to any end of the ideological spectrum. It is also critically easy to force the Other into adopting one's own ideological position without one's own awareness that what one is engaged in is coercive, or part of an apparatus of power.

Since "compassion fatigue" has been mentioned, and with it, "the media" (assumed to be "mass", or "popular"), it's worth pointing out that any such argument also extends to the "indie media" and other forms of alternative news/media sources. There may be ideological differences between the Fox network and any given grassroots indepdendent political blog, but they usually share similar machinery of power (that is, as power exercised over the ideological compass of the Other).

Picking up on the most recent Ethelaardvark points, to say "this is the problem and here is the solution" may prove as fatiguing as "this is the problem". It's the difference between teaching people how to think or teaching them what to think - a comparison that may seem facile until you realise how much when we endeavour to teach people how to think, we unwittingly only teach them what to.

A final point, possibly straying around the topic, is that sometimes one is not the aware or understanding one, sometimes it's the Other - and if one doesn't know this, it can affect one's role as either the raiser of awareness and understanding or taker of action, and can affect the ability of the Other to act etc etc...

Apologies for the probable lack of plain English. I wanted to get this sent while it was fresh...

Andrew.

Oh yeah, and one more thing I just wanted to add is that when I'm talking about raising awareness of how to respond to issues, I mean providing people with possible options and tools for responding to issues so they feel empowered to do something rather than telling people 'here's the problem and here's the response you should make to it' because that's just as bad in its own way too.

Although I suppose in some cases (such as seatbelts) the latter argument has its place....

Ok, now I'm rambling, and possible detracting from the point of the original post. Although I'd be interested in people's responses on this one too.

Hmm.

Is that empowerment or the illusion of empowerment?
(ie) How is this:

"I want options for how to respond to an issue"
"Well, you could try option A, option B, or option C."

different in logical form from:

"I want a cola."
"Well, you could try Coke, Pepsi, or the stuff the Warehouse has."

Brutalising the metaphor, my thinking on empowerment is "Here's a straw. Go to it."

Of course, I may be misunderstanding your point. And I'm not sure this was terribly useful anyway. :)

Re: Hmm.

Assuming we're either giving people options or telling them what to do, if we're telling people what to do, the corollary to your argument is:

'I want a cola'
'Have a coke'

In the example you have given, the options provided come with no information or context. Just because you're giving people options rather than telling them what to do doesn't mean that you don't provide a context enabling a decision between possible options, or provide guidance on how to achieve those options.

interesting article on similar themes
http://www.alternet.org/story/33896/