Recently the propagation for social conscience in leisure and entertainment has been stepped up locally. We see social conscience in our coffee; if you don't know, Starbucks actually buys their coffee beans directly from poor coffee farmers, thus not short-changing them of their profits earned.
Then there is the reduce the plastic bags campaign going on in Singapore, to the dismay of many Singaporeans. And the motorola red movement, which funds the AIDs campaign, I think. Body Shop is also another social conscience movement, against animal testing, supporting community trade etc etc.
All these implementations are creating awareness about the world but in subtle ways. And I think we do need to be more considerate about the things going on in the world, inequality, environmental damage, exploitation etc. Personally, I only find these issues confined to the news broadcast and newspapers. Which I confess I don't really read nor watch. When I pick the papers, I read the Life! section, which is on entertainment, TV guide and comics. When I pick the remote control for the TV, I watch MTV, starworld, anything but BBC or CNN or CNA.
It is only when I started studying more about sociological and political movements in Sociology, I understood better of the reality I have been running away/ deluding myself from by entrenching myself in my own comfort bubble, shop, watch tv, trying to keep up the latest bod and look etc.
Maybe it is a form of escapism, cos in the media and entertainment world, everything is fine and perfect. You see more than perfect models, they live in the best houses and enjoy the best entertainment, they have the best relationships and the best families. And we forget that in this world, a huge portion of peoples's lives are far from perfect. In fact it is not even livable. But we don't want to let our conscience get the better of us so we cut off from knowing about this and further delude ourselves into the "perfect" lives as emulated from the media. At least, that's what I would do to elavate my conscience for the destitute.
But, as such social conscience creeps into the media, with celebrity ambassadors sharing on TV about their community work, on war and politics, it brought me back to reality. We either become politically active by understanding the inequalities of the world, human rights, and be concerned of political movements in our own country or other countries, or we become apolitical and not be bothered about all these issues which ultimately will implicate us, and just carry on aimlessly playing our computer games, watching our soppy drama serials.
I feel that we need more social conscience embedded into our lifestyle and commodities, so that whilst we indulge in our own form of entertainment- as fortunate as we are to be able to enjoy such wealthy lifestyles- these little tags and pieces of information attached to the coffee we drink, the products we buy, the music we hear, will remind us to be socially considerate and not be too individualistic. Not to just care for ourselves but also give a thought to those we might indirectly exploit when we purchase a piece of commodity, which might come from factories made up of exploited women or children.
But I'm glad that Singapore is on its way to allowing more companies and products with a brand of social conscience. Even better still, maybe one day our own local companies will come up with a social conscience branding. Man, even Linkin Park has put in some form of social conscience into their new album, What I've Done. The new mtv in some ways invoke our guilty conscience... Cool...
