The Ethics of Art & Media

Ethics of Art & Media

    In a life totally vanquished by specialization and subjugated by capitalism it becomes incredibly apparent that education is no longer a way to create ethical individuals but rather computed machines the sole goal of which is to fit in an unjust race to serve who ever have the higher bid to supply money and thus wealth, comfort and social stability on the expense of valid and genuine reformations this Earth of ours and Humanity in its most vital drive along the ladder of evolution are in utmost need to and greatly desperate for. In their true axis, specialization and capitalism are heading an inane race against Time in its most forgiving and down to earth concept and they represent the power house which fuels Fear, apathy and immorality. There were times when a disciple would seek a master thousands miles away simply for his reputation as a good teacher who could indisputably enrich higher states of mind and soul.  Nowadays students question continuously the credibility of their future line of education in complete accordance with profitability, social prestige and sustainability of money and comfort. No longer they would attend educational centers due to ethical values that might participate in the welfare of the evolutionary cycle; that theme is far from being comprehended in a world where “who we are is what we own!” Media on the other side is becoming such a powerful tool and mishandling it in the American way is simply leading to cheating History and the truth in general.

     Happiness, in the world of common men, is that item which is inversely proportional to the awareness of the world's misery. And yet, through penetrating that awareness and the honest attempts to wash away such misery, one could attain a different kind of happiness. That of the Enlightened! And how many enlightened men, universities and schools around the globe do produce? Almost None. “That” work, which shall not lift up the spirit, shall only drag her down! There exist no mid tones in this field and that is why most of all graduates around the world, especially what we call first world are simply miserable. The axis of evolution and its different orbits became simply a direct projection of the common man's needs. Not what we could morally enhance and develop in him, but what we could materially “cultivate” within him: his pure animal instincts, his brutal lust after power and his basic savage desires.

The highest point of a healthy intellectual revolution is the final arrival to a tangible understanding that the images of the world are multiple illusions and that there is nothing real in them except human stubbornness and obstinacy. That stubbornness which insists, as it did for thousands of years, upon dressing the world as we “know” the world at this very moment through media, contemporary history or even our own physical eyes. What lies behind that thick veil which forever engulfed our perception is an ocean of awareness forever to be drowned in and never to reach its shores of salvation and understanding except at those of madness. There stands the terrifying face of what should be truly real! If we could still breathe and hold an intact head upon our shoulders in its domain, then we are apt never to see anything or anyone as it “is”, but what it was, what stands behind and what contributes in its final image. Time and history become thus very irrelevant to its structure and apt to be tools to penetrate further through the veils of illusion to lay down different colours, perspectives and fragments of a bigger picture of the Truth. We shall no longer see a child laughing, but his parents. No longer a tree, but the soil beneath. No longer a country but its leaders. No longer a terrorist but his faith. No longer would we be able to hear the voice of media but that of Morals and ethics slaughtered at its feet. No longer what we hear but what we should listen to. No longer what we touch but what we should sense. That kind of awareness could only be achieved throw a dynamic complexity of all variants of knowledge encapsulated and captured within the flux of one major; what I would call Evolutionary Awareness and Sustainability!

     One can import fruits, thought a malicious idea, but one cannot import civilisation. A nation cannot import the generated outcome of another nation when the former had pinched every manoeuvre, pattern, idea, challenge, need, desire, fear and comprehension of totally different factors related to their own environment, culture, language, habits and history, intimately and vehemently dressed each inch of their country and their behaviour with it. The importing Nation, such as Egypt and Thailand, instantly turn to donkeys and monkeys while the exporting one, such as U.S and England turn to zoo keepers and pimps! And that is the true colour of our world now and the heart of what we call globalisation: Donkeys, monkeys, zoo keepers and pimps. And yet every one is happy as long as they make money to shop in Rome, drink coca cola and eat at McDonalds.

     The same way that civilisations cannot be exported simply because they are the net and genuine result of a cultural necessitation strictly and heavily blended and moulded with environmental factors and social needs after reformations, so is education. It cannot be exported and it cannot jump the cliff of cultural differences simply because we might open schools and universities in that culture based on a system of first world programs and schemas while the citizens of that country are still loitering around their own primitive codes and primordial cultural chains of values. Thus the predicaments of publicly and repeatedly exposing and propounding the masses’ beliefs, targets and ambitions, the fact that it would take firmer roots and embodiments within the archetypal social norms where the few, the very few remaining of all educators, teachers and reformers, the elite, are constantly struggling to improve, transcend and elevate and yet those feeble efforts of theirs, against those colossal ones of the masses would ultimately fail to render any considerate and concrete changes within the overall values, what we aim to be the foundation, the spring and the basis of ideal values to be spread around the world entire; the Archetypal Reference! If the masses would continue, as they are already, to triumph and prevail, then a time would come and a powerful locked vicious circle would take place and there would be no remedy, no heeling and no hope to bend the evil arms of globalisation, indifference and apathy away from our awaited Utopia on earth (if any to take place) no matter how many universities we build and how many new curriculum we invent. A vicious circle of new kind of teachers and professors already culminating at this point to a dangerous peak where such responsibilities and tasks became no longer in accordance with values and spiritual reformations but strictly with a common and vulgar dispassionate attitude after a job like all other jobs. The outcome of their so called “teachings” is simple treachery  and beyond imagining and new generations in their hectic frenzy after greed, money and power are already swarming the globe and spreading out such teachings not only to the simple and ignorant sect of communities around the world but as well to their off springs and so on.

     Governments are no longer a credible tool for the true welfare of the society and politicians are mere gears the sole function of which is to maintain a gruesome and hideous balance between a mutiny from a past situation overdue in its present course from one side and the sealed, frightening changes that could strip large sects of the society from all decent living standards in an unexpected future from the other side. It is all about money and absolutely nothing else. Where is the role of universities - not only bringing solutions or remedy but in guiding governments and producing new versions of moral politicians that could link the economical orbit to that of the spiritual one? Evolution is not a predetermined and preceded path upon which humanity could only slide involuntary, automatically and thus defeated, it has no ultimatum but to accept its end fall … No … but through moulding solid and hard social and anthropological facts into the furnace of what should be rather a target than what it seems to be a reality it might then achieve its destined end in transforming our world into a better one.

Ammar Keylani

Reformer/film maker/photographer/writer/lecturer