I Want To Raise Awareness About Not Raising Awareness Anymore
There’s a lot said nowadays about “awareness” and “raising awareness” as if this is the best way to solve the world’s problems.
The background on the awareness movement stems from the fact that at some point protesty, do-gooder type folks started to feel a little ineffective wearing their “End World Hunger!” or “Fight Racism!” slogan shirts when after many years of demanding that hunger be ended and performing a vast gang initiation style beating on Racism, both things still existed.
So they went back to the drawing board and asked the question:
What is something that we can do that has no quantifiable way of being measured yet still makes us look like noble social warriors?
The answer was awareness.
It started with the yellow bracelets. Then the ribbons. Then the bumper stickers.
This bumper sticker is a personal favorite of mine, and in the town I live in (Santa Monica, California) they practically give it to you with your welcome to the neighborhood package along with generous coupons to local retailers and a free sample of dish soap:
I suppose in this day and age with the problems between certain religions this is a nice sentiment. However, the funny thing about this bumper sticker is I think what they’re really trying to say is this:
I argue that awareness is a bad thing and I have some psychological theory on my side.
There was a incident in New York City several years ago where a woman was being raped in broad daylight in front of a crowd of several people.
Nobody did anything, thinking that somebody else would or should do something.
Psychologists argue that if only one or two people saw this crime they probably would have intervened but because there were several people their responsibility to help the victim was dispersed among them and they had less responsibility to help.
They call this dispersion of responsibility.
Similarly traumatic for me in my life is when my friends and I are planning a barbecue and nobody wants to bring the expensive items such as beer or liquor assuming that someone else will. What ends up happening is we all converge and then we’re like:
Wait, none of you assholes brought any beer? And who brought all these 89 cent hot dog buns?
With that in mind, if you guys know of some bad shit going on somewhere, don’t tell me about it, just sort it out!
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Tagged with awareness, bracelets, bumper stickers, coexist, darfur, dispersion of responsibility, ribbons
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I prefer this version of the “Free Tibet” t-shirt:
http://www.zazzle.com/free_tibet_tshirt-235739933027564684
Note the fine print.
ha ha.. excellent
Are you familiar with the work of Jim Goad? Check him out at http://www.jimgoad.net.
thanks pete, great site..