A team of anthropologists once travelled far across the outback to live alongside an aboriginal group that had experienced little contact with the European settlers. The visitors found their hosts not only peaceable but also welcoming; life among them was for the most part joyous and uncomplicated, and mutual aid was taken for granted as the basis of social relations.
A few months into their stay, the anthropologists received a delivery of additional equipment, including a radio with which they were able to tune in news reports from their civilisation. The locals listened with interest, asking for assistance when the newscasters used unfamiliar words. One of the first stories told of a town that had been devastated by a flood.
The entire settlement immediately erupted in activity: bags were packed, tents disassembled, supplies collected. The anthropologists, startled, inquired what was happening. They were answered in the tone one adopts when explaining something obvious to a small child: "We've got to go help those unfortunate people!"
The visitors pleased with their friends: "But that village is thousands of miles away, across mountains and deserts and wastelands! You could never make it there--and by the time you arrived, if you ever did, the survivors would all be gone and the village with them." At long last, they were able to persuade their hosts to stay put.
This series of events repeated itself over the following days as further news bulletins announced disastrous fires, famines, storms, explosions, massacres, and wars around the world. Each time, the troubled aborigines prepared to break camp and hurry to the assistance of the stricken people; each time, with great difficulty, the anthropologists talked them out of it.
Finally, an entire news program passed without any response, and then another, and another. The anthropologists congratulated themselves: at last they had impressed upon their protégés what it meant to live in a global village. Over the weeks that followed, they noted further changes in their hosts. Many who had been lively and outgoing grew increasingly sullen and listless. They sat around, listening to radio reports of calamities from Dover to Peking, rarely lifting a finger to help one another or themselves.
~ An excerpt from a definition of 'Media' in Rolling Thunder, an anarchist journal of dangerous living.
It's a troublesome question. How much attention should I pay to events outside of my sphere of influence? I've heard many a time the excuse of 'there are more important things', referring to war or famine or similar. Should I be devoting my life to such massive causes? There's no doubt that they're massive, but the fact is that I make next to no difference. Even the anti-war movement, composed of a huge number of people, had a dubious effect at stopping actual wars. Goverments will go to war whether I like it or not, as long as there are governments. What's more, there are full-time positions in anti-war for... not very many people. We all have more time than we can give to huge causes. Could you possibly spend more time making a difference to global issues than you do watching the news? How about TV in general? It's possible, but very few of us do, and I'm personally unsure about how good an idea that would be.
Us Westerners are frequently pretty arrogant, whether out of a sense of guilt or not. There are some villages that don't even have electricity! We must give it to them, quick! So they can be as enlightened as we are through the medium of television! Of course, that's not the logic, but it's the effect. Should we really send huge numbers of ourselves overseas to help the unwashed masses? Sure, perhaps in large-scale natural disaster type things where it's useful to have extra manual labour, but perhaps all we should do is grunt work, because the people already there know far more about what they need than we do.
There's a bit in The Communist Manifesto (*ducks*) where Marx/Engels talks about how the Bourgeoisie are merciless in spreading their culture. They, we, are not satisfied until every corner of the globe is 'civilised'. It's basically a deep gentrification of the whole world.
I'm getting off the topic, and that's kind of the point. We're so busy looking outwards we don't look at ourselves. Rehabilitate children soldiers? Great, I'm all for it, donate money, whatever. But who designed, made, and sold the guns? We can't simply patch up the problems, we need to look at the causes too. Where are the charities that are explicitly intended to fuck with arms manufacturers?
And even then, I'm still looking outwards. What about the problems in my own garden? This is where the bourgeoisie guilt starts to kick in. How dare I think of my own surroundings before all those people who are probably dying in somewhere I forget?!
It's probably a rather dangerous thing to assume that you can quantify suffering. Is it worse to be well fed but beaten by your parents or to not have enough to eat in a tight-knit microsociety? Is it worse to be able to eat but choose to starve or to not have the choice? Is it worse to die of AIDS in the UK or in Africa? These are questions without any real answers. To assume we can make charts of suffering statistics is perhaps unhelpful.
Is it better to work and give some money to charity or to not work and give none? How much damage does my personal participation in capitalism do? How much do I have to give to charity to offset that?
There's no real answer. I'm just trying to complicate the question enough that no one can say its one and deny the other. To an extent we have to have global solidarity to counteract global capitalism/states, but to forsake our locality for that is a mistake.
I probably should have left this entry at the quote. Anyway...
This album deserves mentioning if only for the frightening effect it had on me at the time. It's the first album I remember that completely obliterated my interest in all other music for a period of around two weeks. I've never been a snob when it comes to rap... actually that's a lie, in the past two years I've not been a snob when it comes to rap, but if I was then this would have totally smashed it. It's difficult to choose favourites from this album because, barring two, they're all brilliant tracks.
I was very excited when this was finally released, after what seemed like an eternity of we're-still-working-on-it. 
AKA 'pop-music car-wreck', AKA Greg Gillis, AKA best pop musician of all time purely by merit of being awesome. If you didn't know, he makes music composed entirely of 
When this album initially came out it got a mediocre reception from me. That's the difficult thing about really liking an artist. You expect their next album to be more'o'thesame, and aren't quite pleased when it's not. I came back to it about three months later and absolutely adored it. The final track on the album, Vertigo (If It's A Crime), is a masterpiece, and is an absolute joy to listen to, over and over and over again.
This was another album I was very excited about. It took some listening, but I finally broke it. It's currently racked a combined 214 track listens, which is no small feat. Yoni hasn't gotten any less odd, the samples aren't any less awesome, and the music isn't any less inventive (what's that in the first track? Chains? Cheery-a cheery-e cheery-i cheery-o cheery-youuueouuu! Wonderful :D)
This new release excited me no end. This was one of the first bands I ever got into! Everyone's onto them now 'cause'f the popularity of Grizzly Bear, but I liked them way back before it was cool, you bastards! Anyway, it took me a while to get into it, and I had to stop examining it for a bit, but it's got a sure thumbs up in my book now. Different sound to their first album, but very very nice.