Talk merely for consumption [Archives:2007/1057/Opinion]
Dr. Samia Al-Aghbari
Talk has become useless in our era, though there are various channels and areas of talk all over the world. People do not read or hear words. They started to seek an opportunity to spend their leisure even if it is immoral.
Why does speech become futile and does not change anything rather makes it worse and more complicated? I'm perplexed. It is a marvelous contradiction while we are in the information epoch, opening skies, and the power of liberalism ideology. Isn't the availability of information and its wide range a guarantee to make talk more important and more able to influence?
The main reason that makes the word lose its real meaning and essence is the power of market economy. This is because everything has become valued by money and talk is one of them. For instance, you find hundreds of books containing thousands of pages sold to students at universities and institutes. But while scanning these books, you find nothing as valuable as their size. You may find a book having automatically transmitted information without any addition or comments mentioned, nor is it translated from a foreign language.
For some people, it appears that there are a huge number of information coming through channels and media especially satellites and internet. In my opinion, I think the problem does not lie in the quantity of information available but in the information variety and comprehension in different areas, as well as meeting all the needs of the social categories, particularly the lower ones in any community.
More importantly, there must be some kind of balance between the amount of information published and the different opinions, because the repetition of the information will be boring to the extent that the audiences do not keep up with the media. Moreover, if the information available in the local, regional, and international areas does not give anything new but repeat the same thing using different styles, then it is necessary to have deep analyses and interpretations for this information. Unfortunately, talk has become now merely for consumption that makes us nauseate and feel dizzy. It rather makes minds and thoughts passive.
The talk, consumed during day and night, seems to spoil our energies and powers and paralyze our innovative and creative thoughts. This is basically because our peoples used to receive not to produce. So, we are now mentally passive and physically inert at the same time.
It is the state of our Arab nations that compelled to discuss this matter, as information, event and facts in these nations have become futile and merely for public consumption. For instance, news stories about the situations in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Somalia , Sudan, Afghanistan and any other countries never add something new to the minds of Muslims and Arabs.
I have much sympathy with presspersons and reporters who handle such news stories and on whom their profession impose the handling of news in such a way. I also sympathize with those having an access to information and news stories produced by presspersons and their media institutions as they are always eager to hear something new.
The repetition of news from day to day and from year to year without anything new made these news routine and boring. The primary reason behind this is the redundancy of the same ideas and information but in slightly different forms. In addition, there is the lack of a real and effective social action to make a slight change in the situation. The educated people, where they are government officials or opposition leaders, are also repeating the same consumed talk for long decades and have neither desire nor real will to renew and change the way they think.
Monopolizing talks by certain individuals and the lack of equal opportunities to different social groups so as to express themselves by words is another primary reason behind repletion of the same talk, merely for pubic consumption. We usually find the same people invited to participate in various social and cultural functions without any substitutes, even if these people are not specialized in the major which is the topic of discussion. So we find them repeating the same statements and sterile information, which they produced and highlighted on more than one occasion.
Dr. Samia Al-Aghbari is an active female Yemeni journalist working in Al-Sahwa newspaper and contributes to other media.
Source: Al-Thawra State-run Daily.
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