Culture of Contest Revisited

It was a rainy night in Johannesburg. There wasn't much to be done except sit in front of the telly and watch Survivor South Africa. I had lived here for several years and it had been great - don't get me wrong - but I had yet to be "bitten by the bug" as everyone kept telling me. That "African bug" that is supposed to bite you and make you never want to leave had somehow evaded me. While I was very fulfilled in the work I was doing, I felt equally capable of moving back to where public transportation actually worked, electricity was available consistently and I didn't have to have burglar bars on my windows.

But then it happened. I was stuffing my face with pop-corn, watching two "tribes" compete for immunity on some challenge. The picture was complete: the skimpy clothes, the sweaty, emaciated participants, the creepy bugs. As the contestants of one tribe lined up to embark on their challenge, the members of the opposing tribe made themselves comfortable and sat down to watch. And I prepared for what we've all been conditioned for: the fire, the jeering, the poison, the "boo"s...! I wondered who had set a trap for whom and who was going to laugh at whom. I was waiting for a fat dose of the stuff that reality TV is made of: adversarialism and intrigue.

It never came. As the first contestants embarked on their obstacle course ridden with things to shove down their throats, balance on and climb up, the opposing team did the unthinkable: they cheered.

"You can do it! Keep going! Watch out! Go, go, go!!!"

I looked at my husband and he looked at me.

"If they set their mind to it, they can do it", said a member of the opposing tribe enthusiastically in a sound-bite that was intercut with the challenge.

It was then and there that I knew the bug had finally bit me.

Yes, South Africa has always had this romantic notion of reconciliation and all things Nelson Mandela and yes, South Africa has achieved great things, but it's not a perfect country and I don't believe in assigning sainthood (or evil) to any nation or group of nations. Even after the abovementioned Survivor incident. However, it did make two things clear to me. First of all, human beings are not inherently selfish and secondly every nation or culture is “rich in gems of inestimable value”* and has to share these with the world. And as a filmmaker and media person, I must translate this into my work so that I can help contribute to the advancement of world civilization.

What that episode of Survivor did was show a glimpse of the potential we all have in us: the potential to rise above and beyond our own selfishness and to care about something bigger than ourselves. And it showed that we have something to learn from people all over the world, not only those in so-called “first world” countries. South Africans call it "ubuntu" - it's the notion of "I am because we are". Traditionally, in African culture you don't find that emphasis on "individualism", which you may find in what we broadly call "the West". But whether we are South African or American, Israeli or Iranian, we all have the potential within us to rise above our own individual interests. The problem, perhaps, is that our "culture" does not nurture this nobility.

I'm using the term "culture" in reference to the win/lose culture of contest that we are currently harnessing all over the world. Some will say it stems from imperialist nations and spreads to the rest of the world. But I think that while some will call it evil, historically this culture of contest has been valuable and has had its place in advancing our human interests. Until just before the industrial revolution, when our world was not yet the village it is now, this thinking helped us move forward. Nations and populations existed in relative isolation to each other. Our economies, our governments, our environment, our social affairs were not as interlinked as they are now. Philosophers like Thomas Hobbes proposed that humans were inherently selfish and that we’d have to harness this power to advance our affairs.

As a result we structured our lives around those notions. Democracy for example, or the notion of "by the people for the people", was interpreted as a contest of power, where interest groups began competing to win ascendancy. This was all good and dandy until one day our world went from being a series of more or less independent entities to all of a sudden becoming one interdependent global reality. Once the age of industrialization, mass communication, transportation, information and world trade was in full swing, our own interest no longer existed in isolation and our choices now affected others in ways they had never done before. Today, when one person makes a bad business decision in Hong Kong, it affects a local merchant on the island of Ascension. 

Many people are picking up on the need to address this new reality. In my short documentary, Beyond King of the Mountain, I tried to thematize this in terms of governance and how the way humans organize reflects their deepest assumptions about human nature:

While we are aware of our interdependence, we have not yet adjusted our "culture" or mindset to meet the needs of this rapidly unifying world. We still base our modus operandi on assumptions of self-interest that worked for us once upon a time. The challenge is to change this culture and that will be hard, because people are generally afraid of changing their culture.

Many people have a romantic notion of culture or their "roots" being something that they can refer back to, that gives them identity and a foundation. But culture is not static. Since the beginning of time, culture has been alive; advancing, shifting, cross-pollinating and moving forward. Those parts of culture that hold people back eventually fall away and those things that propel them forward, stay and evolve. It is in the very nature of culture to evolve. There is nothing to be afraid of. Humanity has been on a constant journey towards something better and now this quest is reaching global proportions. Globalization is not a recent phenomenon. It is a process that started at the beginning of time and is now palpable because of its scale. And it is because of the scale and our access to information that we think things have never been worse. The truth is, they have never been better!

Watching TV you’d never think that. Because much of our media focuses on the bad and magnifies it. And this contributes to us buying into the win/lose paradigm. Most of our media, our institutions and social structures are still operating on the assumption that humanity is essentially selfish and that the best way to organize our interests is to play King of the Mountain. And so we jeer and trip each other and run and fall and win and lose and manipulate and let out the worst of what's inside us, thinking that “that’s life”. As one of my friends puts it, we've chosen "selfishness" as the “MS DOS”, or the programming basis, for all that we do.

But is it serving our purpose? And how much longer can we keep playing this game before the loss of those who "lose" comes back to haunt those who win? How can we move beyond our king of the mountain mentality?

On the finale of the Celebrity Apprentice with Donald Trump, the "crack" in the system was very apparent:

Here was one contestant who had played the game the way it's “always been played” and had done everything right, maximizing profit at the expense of integrity, unity and the bigger picture and he was up against another contestant who had not performed as well, but who exuded a gentle, charming side. The audience was torn. Intuitively they wanted to vote for the "charmer", but they knew that the cut-throat contestant was the one who had ultimately won the game. But is this duality real or are we choosing to believe it? Is success an either/or situation? Is the best business-person the one who maximizes profits at the expense of other things or can it be someone who contributes to prosperity and wellbeing for society as a whole? Even if it means that he or she makes a little less than he or she could for themselves?

Maybe at this stage some readers will be asking themselves what my slant is. I'm not a leftist and I'm not a rightist. And that is the point I would like to make and the question I would like to ask: are we capable of living without "camps" and rather search for the truth wherever it may reside?

Which brings me to the second point. Namely that “truth” is found in every corner of our world and that unless we have voices coming out of all those places, big or small, rich or poor, how can we expect to have a full picture of “truth”? How can we afford to live without the South African notion of “ubuntu”? What can we learn from the fact that in the Persian language there is no distinction between “he” and “she”? What insights can the people of Madagascar share on our quest for peace in the Middle East?

I remember an exercise I did as a child. We all sat in a circle and looked at an object. Every person in the circle had their own perspective. I could only see the front, another kid could only see the side etc. But once we started describing what we saw to each other, we began getting a more complete picture of what the object looked like in its totality. I think reality works in the same why. Why limit ourselves to our own perspective and angle, why push our own agenda, when we can only benefit in accepting and embracing the perspectives of others? Why do we abase ourselves when we have so much greatness to rise towards?

My experiences in South Africa have contributed to a new perspective and a better understanding of what my role is as someone who produces media content. I might not know exactly what it means yet to make media that harnesses our mutualistic, cooperative and noble nature. We are so programmed to enjoy our culture of contest, that anything outside of this paradigm can feel flat and boring. But I think the first step is to become aware of our taste-buds and ask ourselves what side of our nature we are nurturing at any time and how we can re-train our palate and create compelling works that bring out the best in us – that harness compassion, nobility, unity and diversity.

citation

*Baha’u’llah (1817-1892)

Comments

Leyla my darling, you have outdone yourself! Am sharing "King..." with my parliamentarians and every politician I know. You are brilliant, and I love you. Keep up your remarkable work, great impact awaits!

Lovely Leyla, thank you! I've shared it across the FB sites - I know others will "feel" a synergy with this.