I’m going to take a moment to talk about someone very special. Let’s call them ‘BS’. BS lives in the woodlands of Canada, but BS is not Canadian, either by blood or nationality. BS has no set nationality, BS is 1/4 Native American, 1/4 African, 1/4 Asian and 1/4 Maori. BS can be male or female, depending on what day of the week it is, as thus identifies simply as BS. BS does not ever touch or use legal tender, having constructed a dwelling made entirely from clean, renewable resources. BS subsists entirely on food sources that are similarly renewable, BS doesn’t eat meat or cultivate land. Using a series of impartial proxies, BS has found a way to send out revolutionary incentives to the rest of the world, messages that do not benefit BS or anyone else, but merely spread an incentive for change. Perhaps most impressively of all, BS has found a way to manipulate the fabric of reality in such a way that all people across the globe perceive BS as having the same religious views as them. BS is the single most inoffensive, unbiased, squeaky clean human in history. Now, this might shock you, but I’m afraid I made BS up on the spot. Literally just now. BS is an acronym for bullshit. Sorry about that.
Imagine, for a brief, ridiculous moment that BS did exist, how would people react to him/her? It’s a stretch, but I would hazard a guess that more than a few people would find fault with BS’s message, or rather, create ways to find fault with BS personally. Numerous voices have been squawking across the UK and else at various volumes about a need for real, tangible change or even a revolution. Inevitably, when these people do start speaking, they are almost immediately met with criticism. The thing is, the lion’s share of that criticism usually isn’t directed at the message, but rather at them themselves. Russell Brand is the most obvious recent example. Since his divisive interview with Jeremy Paxman in which he (arguably) questioned the effectiveness of voting, he has been engaging in various activities ostensibly geared towards bringing change about. He has been met with adversity on all fronts for this, but most of it has been based around his income, his living arrangements and his personality.
Brand is perhaps an easier target for this than most, with his semi-successful stint in Hollywood, his legions of fans and that time he nearly upset Manuel. Another recent prominent campaigner for change is Malala Yousafzai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for championing better standards for education for girls in the Middle East. She was also shot by a member of the Taliban and continued to work towards this goal even afterwards. What could you possibly say against her? Well apparently she’s hoarding all her Nobel money and she betrayed her home nation by moving to the UK. I’d love to be able to tell you that I made both of those statements up but unfortunately I found them in comment sections.
It extends beyond individuals though. You’d have thought that with the internet being what it is, any article or statement which gets posted online would become a breeding ground for intelligent discussion and debate. I saw an article yesterday about Seaworld’s recent financial losses, brought on by the negative publicity surrounding the treatment of their orcas. One commenter attacked both the article and pretty much anyone who even went near it, stating that they shouldn’t push an opinion based on the information presented in one film (Blackfish, presumably) and should do their own research. Said commenter presented no research of their own to the contrary and had in fact just attacked a large contingent of people they didn’t know, for things they had no proof these people had done, over a news article with no bias. I’d love to be able to say this was a singular anomaly, but I see it all the time.
Keyboard warriors like that certainly don’t speak for the majority, but their ill-informed, intellectually offensive voices raise a significant point: we appear to have entered an age where debating an issue basically boils down to ignoring it and diverting attention elsewhere. Now it seems like this sort of thing is being given a legitimate platform, that Jo character who wrote a factually inaccurate, narrow minded open letter to Brand is a prime example. Donny Miller once said that ‘in the age of information, ignorance is a choice’. At this stage it almost seems more like a cause. If people are going to routinely question the personalities, backgrounds and taste in trousers of everyone who stands up and makes a statement, they’re going to be doing it until the end of time. Stop waiting for BS, he/she doesn’t exist. Sorry again for misleading you like that. The most heavily weighted campaign that emerged from the Kony 2012 thing was an all-out attack against the guy who started it, accusing him of misinformation and a whole heap of other things. People were really pissed off. Seems like the whole child soldiers deal should have perhaps pissed people off more, but I guess nobody gets caught masturbating in the street if you go that route.
In many ways the time is absolutely ideal for change to come about. Brand is still doing very well when you compare him to other prominent figures who’ve publicly advocated change for the common people, nobody’s tried to kill him. The trouble is that the notion of never taking anything at face value, legitimate as that notion is, has been twisted and misappropriated until you find yourself walking into a forest only to find scores of people staring intently at the bark. Even if, for argument’s sake, someone like Russell Brand does have some kind of ulterior motive behind his campaigning, it doesn’t alter the fact that the issues being raised are genuine. Take the environment, environmental campaigners come under fire for damaging Peruvian architectural wonders or making 28 Days Later happen, sure, but conserving the environment is still important, since we sort of live in it. You can deride the people on the front lines for their mistakes and inadequacies all you want, they will never be perfect, but all that anger and all that spittle will be wasted, and all you’re really doing is perpetuating the status quo. BS would be ashamed.
Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site.
