A Moral Rupture

by Thomas Scarborough

Virtually all of our assumptions with regard to ethics are based on theories in which we see no rupture between past, present, and future, but some kind of continuity. 

If we are with Aristotle, we hold out happiness as the goal, and assume that, as this was true for Aristotle, so it is for me, and forever will be. Or if we are with Moore, we believe that our moral sense is informed by intuition, always was, and will be in the future. If we are religiously minded, we assume that God himself has told us how to live, which was and is eternal and unchanging. 

I propose, instead, that ethics is not in fact constant, and at the present time we are witnessing a fundamental moral rupture. This is based upon a distinct ethical theory, which runs like this: 

As we look upon the world, we arrange the world in our understanding. Depending on how we have so arranged it, we act in this world. A concise way of putting this is that our behaviour is controlled by mental models. Since no one person so arranges the world in quite the same way as the next, our ethics are in many cases strikingly different. 

In past ages, people arranged the world in their minds in such a way that this was largely in keeping with their personal experience of the world. They based it on the people they met, the environment which surrounded them, and so on. Of course, people had access also to parchments, listened to orators, or explored new ideas, so that various influences came to bear upon them. Mostly, however, they interacted with a real world. 

In more recent history, the age of mass communications descended upon us. We invented the printing press, the postal system, then radio, and TV. And certainly, increased travel exposed us all to broader ideas. However, we still understood our world largely in terms of personal experience. Our personal experience, too, informed our interpretation of events and opinions further afield, and we had the leisure to ponder them, and often make sport of them. 

Since the turn of the century, however, we have increasingly been involved in instant, two-way communications, and in many cases dispersed communications, where many people are included at the same time. The result is that, for the first time in history, many (and some say most) of our interactions and reactions are electronic. 

One could list any number of implications. In terms of this post, our arrangement of the world in our understanding is changing. In fact, change is not the word. There is a rupture. The basis on which we arrange the world is not at all what it was. 

• Images of the world swamp our experience of it.
• The consequences of our views dissipate in the aether.
• Feedback to our words and actions often eludes us, and
• Ideology is little tempered by direct observation.

If we accept that mental models drive our behaviour, all older notions of ethics are uprooted. It may only become clear to us just how in the decades to come. Marshall McLuhan wrote in 1962, in his landmark The Gutenberg Galaxy, "There can only be disaster arising from unawareness of the causalities and effects inherent in our technologies."

Soap Operas in Africa

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

Posters for Kenyan and South African Soap Operas

Who are the influencers in Africa? The politicians? Preachers? Educators? Revolutionaries?

There are some we may seldom think of: the producers of Africa’s soap operas. According to Discovery Networks, the average TV viewer in South Africa watches a massive 4.5 hours a day – a large part of which is taken up with soap operas. Statistics show that South Africa’s top five soap operas have about five billion views a year.  It is, according to journalist Tiema Muindi, ‘habitual viewing’.

Now before any person or group can influence another, there need to be certain conditions in place. It is generally agreed that people are motivated – not only motivated, but induced to act – when they hold up a picture of the world to the world itself, and there find a difference or disjoint. Psychologist Richard Gregory describes it as finding the ‘unexpected’, and the philosopher Willard Quine adds: the expected which fails to happen.

I look from my kitchen window, to see my little girl with her face down in the grass. This is not what I expected to see – and I spring into action. Or I did not expect to see a woman assaulted on the street, or a child malnourished. Again, I spring into action. To put it simply, psychologists say that our behaviour is controlled by mental models – and this, said the philosopher Plato, spells danger. Show people things which change their expectations, and you distract and destabilise all of society. Or so he thought.

It would be important to know, therefore, whether Africa’s soap operas give Africa a picture of the world which is different to the world itself. We are all aware of the shock-factor of soap operas in general: conflicts, intrigue, and the breaking of cultural taboos. Yet in Africa, there is something that would seem to loom larger than any of this. We see it in virtually all of the soap opera posters – which are the 'door', so to speak, to the soap operas themselves. It is affluence. Designer dresses, tailored suits, expensive smartphones, sumptuous settings, and more.

We may open this door and enter in. Here we find, again, affluence. Meals in fine restaurants, fitted kitchens, fast cars, expensive whisky, and so on – not to speak of the expensive pursuits of the characters themselves.

Yet in the real world which is Africa, a vast number of people live in poverty.  By some statistics, 33% in Nigeria, 42% in Kenya, and 55% in South Africa. In reality, one sees shacks made with wood and iron and empty agricultural sacks – overcrowded trains, dusty streets, and children playing with wire toys. Given this context, how might the soap operas influence Africa? There are various possibilities:

• They do not significantly shape a continent’s views and expectations – they are merely soap operas, after all. This seems unlikely.

• They may lead people to believe that Africa really looks the way that it is presented in the soap operas. May we then blame the wealthier classes, for failing to recognise or understand the desperate struggles of the poor?

• The soap operas may dull the senses and desires of the masses – leading them to feel that they are absorbed by the fantasy world they see, to become one with it, as it were.

• They may lead viewers to expect the life that they see on TV. And what happens then? Do viewers make these values their own highest good – old colonial values, one might add? Or do they grieve within, to see that they fall so far short of the dream? Or are they motivated to strive for more?

One may ask, too: what would it do to people’s expectations, if they were to view more realistic soap operas? Would these conscientise societies more effectively as to their real plight? Would they lead people to be more realistic in their plans and strategies – with their feet now firmly planted on the ground? Or would they lower their expectations, or degrade them?

Few seem to have given it much thought. Both academic research and popular articles are very thin on the ground. A rare paper on How Do Soap Operas Affect the Poor? Experiences of Turkish Women, by Turkish academics Aras Ozgun et al, concludes that ‘we need to understand the issue from the perspectives of the vulnerable’. There are troubling signs. In particular, in most cases in their study, soap operas led to ‘self-imposed alienation’ amongst the poor, including feelings of shame, anger, dissatisfaction, and powerlessness.