Thought Picnic: Big Brother contributing to the decline in human civilisation

An appeal to the savage

If reality television had an audience like me, that genre of entertainment would have long since died out like the dodo, never to be revived again, except for a retrospective on one of the darkest ages of humanity, where the surfeit of education and enlightenment, along with significant technological innovation, has made our behaviour resemble that of wild animals driven by nothing but survival instinct.

Readers of my blog are likely aware that I am hardly a fan of these unscripted interactions that caricature the worst of a few for the spectacle of the many. I have allowed myself the occasional glimpse into talent shows, experiencing some surprise or shock, especially from the unexpected gems that can bring tears of sadness or joy.

Our escape is not enviable

Everything I observe is usually through snippets and playback on YouTube, because something has crept into my social media feed, or it has been granted more importance in the news than is ever necessary, considering everything else happening in the world. Yet, these are seen as an escape or distraction, and somehow these fleeting shots of the dehumanisation of our civilisation have become hot topics of public engagement.

By now, you may have realised that one aspect of this reality television series encompasses every variation of the Big Brother shows, whether featuring celebrities or everyday people. At times, one might think that the money paid to celebrities to subject themselves to scrutiny, or the prize offered to public participants, lures them into this macabre theatre where humans are caged for titillation and entertainment. It is popular culture, sadly.

There is more to this—a quest for a spectrum of notoriety, alongside the cohesion or dispersal of virtue, expressed in word, deed, contest, chicanery, or some other unwholesome thing. People have gone on to forge careers from either fame or infamy displayed in these settings.

This theatre of the worst

In my view, Big Brother represents the absolute worst of everything; the house is, in fact, a cage. The 24-hour camera focuses on everyone, with edited versions of the sensational and controversial being spewed from a broadcast drainpipe, reeking of sickening human waste on our televisions.

It contains every element of an animal zoo, where curiosities taken from their natural habitat are brought to a location for our fascination. I have long since eschewed visiting zoological gardens or sea life centres that are nowhere near the sea.

I see in Big Brother a schemed setup that gathers many people with issues and problems better kept from view—opinions that should barely be invited into thought, fragile egos, those too easily offended, and others with rather forthright views considered too confrontational for the baseline of the insipid inclusivity that defies essential common sense.

Imagine placing a chicken, a fox, a cat, a mouse, a crocodile, a venomous snake, a mongoose, a lion, a deer, an elephant, a horse, and a hyena in the same cage and observing what occurs. Like prey and predator, the vulnerable and the inviolable, the aggressive and the docile, the fearful and the bold—every characteristic on display, all while the intervention against nature punishes each animal for acting out its known role.

Utterly thin-skinned lionhearts

Everyone knows that Big Brother does not present a paradise of easy coexistence, and this is where it gains its gawping audience, peering through the cages to observe examples of themselves portrayed by others. It is utterly, utterly loathsome, but then, each to their own.

The current Celebrity Big Brother, which features a range of forgettable has-beens, has invaded my timeline, leaving me to wonder how people fall apart at simple criticism of their abilities. The truth cannot be told about too many individuals who, due to their lack of communication and basic social skills, take offense at a look or a comment. The total absence of nuance or irony in a situation that participants have willingly subscribed to shows how ill-prepared they are for the kind of life many of us face.

Is that all he said? Or is that what they did? Then, there are many more questions along that line of thinking within the context of feigned political correctness, orchestrated niceness, and playing to the gallery.

Big Brother is both a reflection of a microcosm of the basest instincts of its participants and, for those of us engaged, either explicitly or by scant observation, we have become so civilised that we have lost all means of understanding what the advancement of civilisation truly means. Our brains are better stimulated by this tragedy of the jungle in a zoo of humans.

Pygmies in a zoo in Tintin's Congo

Congo on my mind

One event this week only makes us look at history, then see ourselves today and almost laugh at ourselves on matters too serious to be trivialised.

Now, I remember a few years ago when suffering unwarranted as if there can be warranted racial abuse; the man said he knew everything about blacks so I could not talk back at him; he being Belgian, I had to say - I am not from Belgian Congo (Once Belgian Congo and Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo) - Congo is not the black race.

But Congo (Congo-Brazzaville and the old Belgian Congo are read as the same here - referred to as The Congo) is back in the news for the wrong reasons today, we all remember the Adventures of Tintin, the memories of leafing through the "suffering sour tomatoes" swearing of Captain Haddock or the very "interesting" Thompson and Thomson detectives, well, cut to the chase.

Tintin in the Congo

Tintin in the Congo was published between 1930 and 1931, it was the second in the series of Tintin adventures where the opinion was it was racist and colonialist, portraying black people as monkeys and imbeciles.

The Centre for Racial Equality (CRE) made issue of what Hergé then later claimed "was only portraying the naïve views of the time", fair enough; as CRE asked for this particular comic to be removed from high street shops around Britain after a human-rights lawyer (David Enright) who saw it in the children's section of a Borders bookshop whilst shopping with his African wife and their kids complained.

What you need is controversy to boost the sales of an old Politically Incorrect book which should be read in its historical context and has no lien of contemporary life as we know it.

At least this should be the sensible view to take as you rush to the book store to get your copy - it is harmless commentary and comical entertainment, if not educational.

Pygmies in the Congo Zoo

The end of the story? Well, not really, travel to Congo for the Festival of Pan-African Music and see Tintin in the Congo come alive as it jumps off the pages, in something that could be only too surreal - Members of the pygmy community who arguably are the first inhabitants of Central Africa were invited to perform at the festival and then housed in a zoo.

Yes, fellow human-beings, members of the black race and citizens of the Republic of Congo who just happen to be of a shorter stature were housed in familiar surroundings similar to their forest dwellings - as the government statement says.

They were put in tents in a ZOO where as usual, people who appear to be different can be viewed as curiosities and this time photographed by tourists and visitors to the zoo.

What is so unfortunate about this matter is the fact that pygmies are not treated with any dignity by their fellow countrymen and this needs to be addressed from a national and international perspective even though prejudices die hard, there should be education that highlights the humanity of these famous people and legislation that imposes stiff penalties on the discrimination and denigration of the tribe.

Intolerable impressions

Beyond this is the impressionable situation presented to children who read about imbecile blacks in comics or see pygmies in the zoo, I do not know what to make of this, but this 76-year old comic is not as benign as it seems and it is probably best off the shelves.

Even though the comic juxtaposes smart white men with "dumb" black people, the underlying current is man's injustice and emasculation of other men be it between races or within the same race.

Basically, regardless of the historical context or setting of anything that portrays prejudice, we cannot allow the liberal/conservative divide to give oxygen to the prejudice, because what might be the past in one society might as well be contemporaneous in other societies and we have the responsibility to ensure that no part of the human race is treated with any less humanity than ourselves.

Gorilla in the midst

Who let the ape out?

This might appear crazy if not outrageous for speculation, but as parents and children visited Diergaarde Blijdorp Zoo in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, an alpha male gorilla that had been kept in an enclosure for one wonders how long scaled the fence, crossed a moat and went on a rampage successfully attacking and biting a woman and invading the restaurant refuge that people ran to for safety.

The gorilla was finally subdued with a sedation dart to the relief of many.

However, this represents an interesting lesson from the animal kingdom, we can enjoy the pleasures of zoos by seizing animals from their natural habitat and place then in fancy enclosures as we satisfy our curiosities with realities that are hardly viewed on the National Geographic Channel, but those specimens might just have wised up to the fact that this is just no more good fun for them.

Ass of you and me - Ass-u-me

There was the assumption that a moat representing the fear of water and inability to swim is an adequate deterrent - we now know better.

Animal enclosures utilise knowledge of fears, phobias and boundaries to offer comfortable views whilst keeping the contact between animals and human-beings at a minimum.

Governments make use of laws, the punishment of crime, the use of untrammelled police force and many other tools of sovereign purvey to marshal and encage people in some orderly sense of serious unease. As the Economist notes, the military or military-backed governments are often good at micro-managing the citizenry - basically they turn the country into an over-scaled barrack and everyone should fall in.

Paying with arse-wipes

Zimbabwe becomes another case in point as inflation hits 3,731.9%, this is outrageous, and it means one ply of one sheet of my nicely scented arse-wipe can get a lot more than $10,000 Zimbabwean and probably a lot more.

When I learnt of hyperinflation in Economics class, none of these kinds of figures ever featured, it is criminal to the extreme, and how can anyone continue to preside with any dignity on a state so savaged by irresponsible stewardship and megalomania?

It is time for the gorilla in the people to break free from the constraints of unnatural societal cohesion where freedoms are curtailed and rights are trampled upon, enough is enough, in all these places.

Meanwhile, the sedative dart to put a gorilla back in the cage to hit those leaders such that they should face justice maybe from raping the country or destroying the efficacy of democracy.

As the Economist notes again with poignancy, it is not the lack of money that keeps people poor, it is misgovernment; this should be the aim of the UN Millennium Development Goals, good government would lead to achieving the goals.

The gorillas in our midst should return to where they belong.

Lingering smells of the caged life

Noah's Arc Cologne

Considering how this blog began to form in my mind earlier today, it is a pleasant surprise that I find myself in olfactory proximity to much zoological defecation.

I boarded the Zoo Express shuttle which had seats that would make traditional church pews feel like comfortable feather-bedded loungers as we tried to set the record for the longest possible time to complete a journey to the zoo in tortoise-drawn carriages. No wonder, I saw no tortoises at the zoo, they had all conked out, the poor things.

The main notice within the zoo declared the place Cologne's Noah's Arc, well, I did not see any animals going in two-by-two and it was well and truly beached. Much as one can be entertained with wildlife from Australia, Madagascar and nether lands, the jury is out on the complete work of conservation since the flood wiping out animals is the human race and their effect on earth, than anything else.

Truly inspired names

In two hours, I had just about seen that almost extinct and endangered orange-nosed, red-breasted, yellow-beaked, black-handed, blue-bottomed, pink-toed, green-eyed, fluffy-haired, three-fingered picinini and everything else.

Somehow, the politically-incorrect names we once used to describe fellow human-beings are now lavished liberally on animals in the zoo.

I am sure when Adam in Genesis had the task of naming animals he must have done a better job.

Now, I have nothing against zoos but one might have to don a gas mask next time one visits a zoo.

That was a day out in Cologne. In the end, when I saw a big stop sign barring people from going down a path, one surmised, great fiery dragons be there - it is a zoo after all.

Pictures of the visit are in the Cologne Zoo Set on Flickr, I did not tour the whole zoo, so no elephants, seals or penguins.