In Defense of Moderation

 

    Ironically, it's almost harder to be "heard and seen " these days, precisely because to be "heard and seen" is so easy and instantaneous.  To compete for the fickle and short attention spans in the social media world, successful recognition requires a formula that offers a jarring contrast to everything else out there.  It's not enough to generate a few hits, you have to captivate viscerally with crass spectacle, prank or parody. Otherwise you risk being an undistinguishable grain of sand in the glut of social media.  If you don't rely on shock appeal or up-to-the-minute grab bag gimmickry, then your understatement will go unnoticed. The noisier and more extreme, the more hits -- the more attention -- you're going to generate.
   The practice of an unfussy, quiet "moderation" in personal conduct and public affairs that was once an embedded virtue in western society (I mean Canadian here more so,) has sadly, been consigned to the heap  of bygones. It can't survive anymore in a social media environment that revels in garish and immature excess.
   Our entire culture has been saturated with the boomer ethos of pushing limits and seizing the cheapest and most pleasureable thrill. By it's very nature, it creates this perpetual cycle of dissatisfaction that comes from a craving for another even stronger fix. We are an entire culture of addicts of some kind or other. If you consider addiction as having a severe, almost uncontrollable, compulsion for stimulation then our collective, technology-addled nerve centre is so jacked into the need for instant Twitter or Facebook updates or a slavish obsession with smartphones that we are almost oblivious to anything in our immediate surround. We only know one cognitive reference it seems, and that is in the acceleration mode.  In the unfiltered noise of mass media we are subjected to a "hyper-ness" and "extreme-this or extreme-that." We are gripped by a restless need to boost our collective excitement levels a notch higher, for example, through watching extreme sports or in some cases participating in them.  Extremes carry a glamour and danger and promise to take us to the edge of a peril most of us are cushioned from in this modern life. We aren't simply bored, we're spiritually and intellectually malnourished. Overrun by idiotic entertainment distracting us with the trivial and absurd with a spastic parade of fragmented thoughts and images -- darting and weaving throughout our synapses like signals that fade into the subconscious later to be resurface and get passed along as more unprocessed cultural debris.
     How did we arrive at such a zenith?
   It started in the sixties with the mass youth rebellion and the full scale social revolution that broke with the old traditions in a way that still resonates today.  The liberal experimentations of that era brought "social' and "self" consciousness to the fore.  The former, as a result, grew into a more inclusive and pluralistic construct.  The latter, ultimately translated into  the guilt-free, hyper-individualism which distorted the initial ideals of self-actualization to justify myopic greed.
   And now the 21st century has been a stage for the culture wars. The two contending extremes  of neo-liberalism with its sociopathic gospel of unrestrained markets and the erosion of state power, versus a left liberalism with its factionalism of identity politics and its compulsion toward legislating behaviour and attitudes.  The polarization widens between these two extremes. The right, especially in the U.S.  (but also in Canada to an increasing extent) becomes more vocal, more impudent, more childish and much more ready to thwart the democratic process in order to achieve its ends. While the left, - especially the cultural left  -- seems convinced that the highest priority on the progressive agenda is calling out bigoted attitudes towards same-sex marriage and often shows shades of totalitarian zeal with its legislative "creep." Bridging this  unfriendly divide, is a culture that is growing more incoherent, lost in a manic touch-pad over-consumption of Red Bull and rape porn.
    Moderation can't win in this cultural environment that multiplies loud and primal extremes and drowns out rationality and reflection -- yet it needs its defenders more than ever.
 

      This is a cartoon I did about Taiwan's growing economic dependency on China and how China is silently absorbing Taiwan through free trade rather than through military invasion. Although both situations are not easily comparable, China's motive of 'irredentism' appears quite similar to   Russia's vis-a-vis the Ukraine.  Whereas Putin has been forceful and bombastic and gained harsh international condemnation through his military and geopolitcal designs over the region, China's strategy is much more stealthy and aims to coopt Taiwan under the international radar. Having spent four years in Taiwan and been a staff cartoonist for an English paper there, I became very immeresed in the local politics of the island.
  For the last few weeks, students in Taiwan have been occupying the legislature in protest against a piece of legislation that seeks to eliminate trade barriers with China. To provoke even further opposition and distrust, the Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, has enthusiastically rammed through this policy without any real public consultation.
    The fear is, that this would allow Chinese (PRC) companies to invest in Taiwan resulting in increased Taiwanese economic dependency on China and potentially threatening supplant local enterprises that really are lifeblood of Taiwan's cultural identity. Still, others have argued that Taiwanese companies have shown little national loyalty over the last decade-and-a-half, and have instead, abandoned Taiwan in droves to set up operations in Mainland China, where they can enjoy cheaper labour costs and almost zero regulations. The logic flows -- why shouldn't Chinese businesses be allowed to return some of that investment to Taiwan?  The debate is nuanced but from what I gather, the pro-democracy elements in Taiwan are not quick to embrace this "investment and jobs" argument over the potential of surrendering democratic freedoms for totalitarian, one-party rule.  The world should be alerted to this as a test model of the future -- ruthless capitalism sans democracy.