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Date Posted: 13:26:55 04/14/07 Sat
Author: Antônio Sette Câmara
Subject: TASK 1, Group 1,

ANTÔNIO DE OLIVEIRA SETTE CÂMARA - 2005027892
ESSAY EXERCISE I - Theme: Language and Culture

WHAT DO WE REALLY KNOW?

“The first victim of the war is truth” (Rudyard Kipling)

With so much media reporting on, for example, the war in Iraq, one might think that reading a newspaper or watching the news on TV would suffice to know what is going on around the world and what it’s all about.

But that’s naïve. The fact is that there is too much raw data and information on so-called “facts”, but very little knowledge is shared on the real causes behind this and other wars, which are seldom, if ever, really stated with clarity. We have too much data at hand, but lack a proper grasp of the underlying issues at stake.

Just think of the not-so-distant past of World War II, when printed and radio news on the conflict was widely available. How many people knew about the pogroms, the extermination of Jews, the abuses by the Japanese in China and Korea and other massacres that were then taking place?

Speaking of current international affairs, how many have an in-depth understanding of the global implications of, say, the Patriot Act and other legislation restricting civil liberties passed by the US after the 9-11 terror attacks? What is the level of awareness of the general public about the current massacres in Rwanda, Somalia or Zimbabwe, in Africa?

Uncomfortable facts get suppressed from the overall media, which is actually controlled by a small number of conglomerates and tycoons, politically dependent on the “powers that be”. Conformism and peer pressure prevent many of us from questioning further and keep us from establishing new connections between facts apparently disparate. Life goes on, and, after all, who’s got the time, the interest or resources to pursue the truth?
As another wise man, Socrates, used to say around the V Century b.C., we “not only don’t know but, what is worse, we don’t know that we don’t know”.

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