Summary
The wobbly mobile phone footage and someone calling out "you ain't no Muslim bruv" has given us a powerful rallying cry. It was filmed by a bystander as police restrained a man who's since been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. What it doesn't show is how one very brave man fought to try and disarm the attacker, while people stood around filming it all on their phones. Mobile phone footage has now become a staple of our news and not so private lives. Which one of us hasn't clicked on a link and experienced a vicarious thrill from watching the latest talked about clip of death, disaster or embarrassment? It is undeniably useful too, but what are the moral consequences of videoing and displaying everything in public? Does looking through the prism of a phone camera create a kind of moral distance that atrophies human capacities like empathy, compassion and self--reflection? The instinct to say 'I was there' is immensely strong, but earlier this year there were a number of cases bystanders filming distressed people as they threatened to jump to their deaths. Are we trying to give life meaning by creating a permanent record of it, instead of by thinking more deeply about it and living life in the moment? Is the craze for selfies just a harmless piece of fun or are we gradually being infected with a narcissistic personality disorder? Or is the drive to record everything and to make our lives public, part of what makes us human? And mobile phone footage is just today's equivalent of ancient cave paintings of hunting scenes? Live our life on film - the Moral Maze. Combative, provocative and engaging debate chaired by Michael Buerk with Matthew Taylor, Giles Fraser, Anne McElvoy and Claire Fox. Witnesses are Madeleine Bunting, Jane Finnis, James Temperton and Justine Hardy.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a programme from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:03.9 | Good evening. The knife attack this week in Leightonston Tube Station is symptomatic of the way we live now. |
| 0:09.2 | Not so much the man going berserk yelling, this is for Syria, or even for the co-religionist |
| 0:14.4 | onlooker who called out, You Ain't No Muslim brough, phrase of the week, though, it's become. |
| 0:19.3 | Now, it was how when one man took the attacker on and got slashed across the throat for his pains, |
| 0:24.7 | almost everybody else stood back and filmed it on their mobile phones. |
| 0:28.8 | There were so many opportunities, a lonely hero said, where someone could have grabbed him, |
| 0:34.2 | but they were too busy recording it all for social media. |
| 0:38.4 | This is the selfie generation. We upload 17 million pictures of ourselves onto the internet every week. I was in |
| 0:44.9 | Pompeii last month watching the crowd surge in when the site opened, nearly all of them with their |
| 0:49.2 | mobiles on selfie sticks at the high port, not taking pictures of perhaps the most extraordinary ruins on |
| 0:55.0 | earth, but of themselves. Is this narcissism gone mad? Why is the experience no longer enough, |
| 1:01.5 | or even the point anymore? Why is nothing real or worthwhile unless it's been recorded and shared |
| 1:06.6 | online? What are the consequences of objectifying our lives in this way of making the hitherto private |
| 1:12.9 | available worldwide? What does it do to empathy, compassion, insight? Maybe it's just a generation |
| 1:19.1 | thing. Maybe technology is giving life an extra layer of meaning. Maybe it's liberating, democratic, |
| 1:25.3 | and empowering, and what, for goodness sake, is wrong with being connected and informed. |
| 1:30.4 | Me and my phone, does it give life meaning or separate us from reality? |
| 1:34.5 | That's our moral maze tonight. |
| 1:35.7 | Our panel, Anne McHlevoy, senior editor at The Economist, Claire Fox from the Institute of Ideas, |
| 1:40.3 | the chief executive of the RSA, Matthew Taylor, and the Anglican priest and polemicist, Giles, Fraser. Giles, your interself is, aren't you, don't deny it? I've seen it. I've seen you. Is that just because you're cool? No, it's not because I'm cool. No, I do, I have done it before, and I also sort of feel guilty about it. And I think there is a a problem actually. I think, you know, for thousands of years, |
| 2:01.2 | of thousands of years ago, Plato was worried about that human beings are trapped in a world of appearances. And I think the modern equivalent of the sort of flickering representations on the back of Plato's cave, other photos will be taken on mobile phones. I think it distances us from reality. Anne McCle. I think people who have been concerned about cultures of self-representation and narcissism, |
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