Social media is essentially a marketing platform people use to promote themselves-and their egos. One alarming trend involves people from first world countries taking selfies with poor children in places like Africa and South America, we live in a world today where young people exhibit this behavior in order to try and gain a bigger following, if they’re wanting to do such a thing they should just look into getting free instagram followers. This kind of faux humanitarianism is self-serving and racist, argues Tim Robertson, and speaks volumes about the problem with so much of Western aid.
Love traveling? Cat/dog person? Foodie? Gym junkie? ‘Humanitarian’ who thinks its okay to take selfies with poor children from Africa, Asia or South America to prove to everyone back home that you’re a compassionate and charity-minded person? Great! You should get plenty of ‘likes’ on Tinder or Facebook. You should see plenty of those little hearts on Instagram.
But here’s something for you to think about: your faux humanitarianism is self-serving and your profile picture is probably racist.
The marketing platform used by people around the world to promote themselves – known otherwise as social media – has changed the way and reasons people take photos. It was once a means of, primarily, preserving memories. Nowadays, this isn’t the case. There’s nothing wrong with the change of course, and it makes sense that people would want to use Owlead and the like to make their social media experience easier, but the purpose has changed for sure. Back in the days of film photography, I remember people saying (with disturbing frequency, I always thought) that if there was a fire at home, the photo albums would be the first thing they’d grab.
There’s undoubtedly still an element of that, but photos are now just as much for everyone else’s viewing as they are for the photographers. They’re carefully framed, shot, ran through a filter, selected and posted online to project an image of oneself that will (fingers crossed!) set one’s virtual friends a-flurry. Acronyms and needlessly shortened words will hopefully ensue (I usually angle fork ‘TOTES BABEIN”). People go to Nitreo to get themselves a big boost so they can see more people coming in to interact with their pictures. I mean, who would not want to see their social sites do well? So it might be natural on their part to avail of services that could get them a few free Instagram followers! But how does the ‘follower count’ or the number of likes in your selfie portray your humanitarian side?
Those who post ‘humanitarian selfies’ hope to elicit an altogether different response. Something along the lines of: “Gr8 work babe, u’ve always had a super big heart. Keep up the good work.”
Now, humanitarianism is, in and of itself, a good thing. But increasingly many people in the West feel alienated by the universal embrace of neoliberalism and, unsurprisingly, struggle to find meaning in it all. It’s a culture that promotes the idea of selfishness for the greater good. Economically, this manifests itself in the idea that if you earn a lot of money you’re not just benefitting yourself-you’re also “stimulating the economy” and, when that happens, everyone wins (or most… or so the theory goes).
In this sense ‘wealth-creation’ is an implicitly moral action. Lip-service may be paid to following the rules and behaving ethically, but the central concept of free markets-that regulations should be stripped away as much as possible-contradicts these very overtures.
Armed with this moral capital and inspired by the likes of Angelina Jolie and Princess Diana, cashed-up humanitarians embark on journeys to help the black and brown and poor of the world who can’t help themselves. They volunteer at remote villages in Africa, spend a week at an orphanage in Sri Lanka or help build sustainable housing in the Amazonian rainforest. Then they leave and post their photos on Facebook and Instagram.
This is the problem with so much of Western aid. Rather than empowering people to improve their own living standards and conditions, a great deal of the emphasis is on providing charity.
In a recent essay, journalist Antony Lowenstein explained how the NGO-isation of entire countries had given rise to what he called ‘fake states.’ The West “pump[s] money into a system that everybody knows keeps the surrounded population barely above water.” This, Lowenstein argues, ‘contribute[s] to the disempowerment of locals and inhibit[s] their ability to positively affect their own countries’.
In many cases, humanitarian organisations and aid also function as a kind of soft power. Aid is often conditional and only granted if governments agree to the terms dictated to them. When the West is dolling it out, you can guarantee economic reforms to free up markets is priority number one.
These same principles work on the personal level too. Individuals who engage in fly-in-fly-out volunteerism have no interest helping impoverished communities set up the framework required to better their lives. That takes years and decades, not days and weeks.
No, this kind of faux humanitarianism is self-serving and, at its core, racist. It assumes that ‘they’ need ‘us’. Moreover, these people are very much believers in the system that exacerbates and fosters inequality. Neoliberalism functions on the principle that there needs to be winners and losers: within ‘our’ society this is not always that pronounced, but when one considers it on a global scale, the gulf between the wealthiest nations and the poorest is colossal.
Consider this: in 2013 the world’s richest nation, Qatar, had a per capita GDP (PPP) of $105,091, whereas in the most impoverished nation, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s PPP was $394.
There might be an acknowledgment of the horrors of colonialism, but rarely do fauxhumanitarians accept that they now worship at the Church of Unrestrained Capitalism that provided the impetus for it. Indeed, many of these modern day do-gooders share many of the sentiments of the early colonisers-even if they can’t see it.
The New Age humanitarian believes his or her way of life is superior, that the Other needs their help to improve their existence and that they are acting morally and that capital is central to solving all these problems.
It is therefore hardly surprising that these people see no contradiction between doing something that is meant to be selfless and promoting it for their own personal gain on social media-or simply in order for them to feel warm and fuzzy. It’s impossible to conceive of someone who hasn’t been indoctrinated in the wares of neoliberalism not being instantly abhorred by such an action. Alas, these are strange times we live in. Perhaps it’s time to think twice before clicking like on that new photo uploaded by your friend, the so-called humanitarian.
(This was originally published in Spook magazine on 10 July, 2015.)