WHERE’S THE GOOD LIFE?
(Part 1 of 2)
HOW THE WRITER KNOWS ABOUT THIS
At the beginning of this century, I was involved in making a series of 13 films called SAVOURING THE WORLD. I travelled to 13 countries, always filming in one carefully researched and chosen area, knowing that seaside food would differ from mountain food, that metropolitan food would differ from village food, and so on. During these journeys, accompanied by my wife/producer and a translator/guide, I began to see similarities between people in a region with each other, but also with others from other regions and countries. What I witnessed and in part filmed was fear about individuals being able to continue making a living out of their traditions of farming, selling, cooking and being able to maintain their living in their family’s homeland.
Afterwards these disturbing observations needed thinking about, if for no other reason than for me to discover what the source was and what could be my response in terms of other films or photo-stories.
The first series was essentially a celebration of those 13 regional foods and the customs and traditions which had built up around them. The series was successful and sold to more than 40 countries (but not the UK).
The second series, SAVOURING EUROPE, made between 2003 – 2005 represented the fears I had encountered above. It explained them in part by adopting concepts I encountered in reading a slew of books, academic papers, news reports and especially economist’s evolving ideas.
These helped me to understand and name the things I had borne witness to. I began to comprehend how this newly named phenomenon, Neoliberalism had taken over western capitalism and our democracies; how they replaced critical thinking with their simplistic chants about the value of individualism over communal collaboration, about how materialism was superior to the deeper needs of the human soul, how fame and fortune were the ideals for young people to strive for, rather than taking part in their communities to make a better life for all; how mendacity was superior to kindness for proving one’s masculinity, and so on into concepts like ‘unfreedom’, ‘wage slavery’, ‘cultural canons’ and ‘false consciousness’.
This second series, SAVOURING EUROPE, revealing one of the key ideas about these changes in each episode, sold to 14 territories (but not to the UK). The sales agent explained to us that many more orders for the second series were made by various channel’s buyers around the world, but had their purchases blocked by their commercial departments, who said the advertisers would not support the programs .
Yes financially distressing but more: so clearly revealing how the media is controlled and how it can easily they will stop one’s work from being seen if it touches upon systemic truths. So you see, what follows is very much a result of what I have read and studied and what I have actually witnessed in my life, only what follows is about what I believe to be more profound inner realities, deeper than but shaped by the mendacious Neoliberal social forces around us.
CONFRONTING THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING
In working with young people
and speaking with and sometimes interviewing older people,
I have come to recognize a few distressing common conditions.
Many people are disillusioned with life and by society.
There is a pervasive sense of purposelessness,
in which life seems to offer few enhancing, joyful or meaningful experiences,
and in particular, experiences which are sufficiently joined up
to offer a meaningful direction in their lives.
NEOLIBERALS TURN ALL ACTIVITIES INTO A FINANCIAL EXCHANGES
As an example, the new financial nature of higher education
diminished the value of the student.
When institutions are primarily concerned
with extracting as much money as possible from students,
while being unresponsive to students needs and wants,
with professors and administrators being remote,
a sense is built into these faulty relationship
that students are only meaningful to the educational establishment
(particularly to their administrators and accountants)
for their financial contributions,
which leads to what the novelist Milan Kundera called the title of his famous novel,
THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING,
in which individual identity is buried under bureaucratic, computerised numbering,
in which Ms Jones is f5728,
leaving Ms Jones, or f5728, becoming anonymised.
If you have read this far, please read Part 2 next week.