Every day, massive floods of information flow around us, inviting us to choose which samples to consume.
Those who publish this information claim to be telling us what is happening in the world, but in our wiser moments we remember to question whether they are offering us the truth.
From experience, we know that the loudest voices belong to persons and institutions whose enormous wealth lets them fill the pages of newspapers, or radio and television channels.
Their stories enhance their own image and increase their profits.
Truth and lies
The daily news may give us the basic facts about a plane crash or a court trial, but when it comes to the truth about why a war is being fought, or about global warming, we need to be more cautious.
In fact we can identify several areas where the mainstream media in our “western” nations consistently distort the truth about our world.
Lie number one
One basic lie which is quietly promoted is that “White” people are of more value – are more important – than “people of colour”.
More column-space and air-time is given to the death of a few “White” people than the death of hundreds or even thousands of Blacks, Asians or Palestinians.
Refugees from those populations are seen as a problem, usually treated callously.
They’re not usually treated as the victims of wars provoked by our “White” nations, or of famines resulting from the global warming caused by centuries of our industrial activity.
We assume that we have a right to plunder “Third World” resources, as we earlier took the land of non-Whites.
We even justify that theft, whether it happened in North America during colonisation, across Australia after 1788, in Africa during the 19th century, or in Palestine since 1948.
In the latter case, mainstream media mostly ignore or conceal the genocide which now is completing that land theft, and demonises those – such as tertiary students – who dare protest against it.
Lie number two
Another fundamental untruth almost completely overlooked is that the “growth” of every nation’s GDP cannot continue.
This is because every resource on earth – fresh water, iron, oil, gas, forests; even our capacity to capture sunlight – is limited.
Although some resources – coal – are more abundant than others, our civilisation will not survive unless we change to a world economy based on genuine re-cycling.
Lie number three
A third basic lie spread by (most) media is their denial of the rapidly approaching but unpredictable “tipping points” that will soon be triggered by the heating of our planet.
Resulting from several centuries of our burning fossil fuels and building cities, these tipping points may come in various ways.
They may involve the irreversible melting of ice-caps and glaciers; the sudden extinction of inter-dependent species – including rain forests; or the altered flow of ocean currents and jet-streams.
Although national leaders talk together regularly, and politicians make promises, none has so far had the will to stop the ruthless greed of fossil-fuel merchants.
They won’t even admit the elephant in the room, the disaster that is rapidly approaching.
The Holy Spirit
But at Pentecost we reflect on the Holy Spirit, which is mentioned hundreds of times in the pages of the New Testament.
This Spirit moves people to speak in prophesy – Zechariah, Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna, John the Baptist.
The Spirit overwhelmed the adult Jesus at his baptism, driving him out into the desert and then leading him on his mission.
By the Spirit’s power he healed people and drove out demons.
He told his followers that they can call on the Spirit within them when they were attacked for speaking the truth.
John’s later gospel calls it the Spirit of Truth (14:17, 15:26, 16:13), and reflects how we can each receive this divine Spirit.
At our present time of grave world crisis, it must be obvious to anyone believing in God, that God’s Spirit is not the exclusive property of any one faith tradition or clergy.
On the contrary, we each need urgently to call on this tremendous gift within us, using the Divine power it gives to unite our human family and to heal our fragile planet.
- First published in Finding the Treasure
- Peter Murnane O.P. is a Melbourne-based Dominican Friar, author and political activist. (Originally, CathNews was in error, saying Peter was New Zealand based.)