Free Tibet?

Uri Averney wrote an excellent article for Counterpunch.org that wonderfully articulates the difficulty I have with the global "Free Tibet!" campaign.

[W]hat is really bugging me is the hypocrisy of the world media. They storm and thunder about Tibet. In thousands of editorials and talk-shows they heap curses and invective on the evil China. It seems as if the Tibetans are the only people on earth whose right to independence is being denied by brutal force, that if only Beijing would take its dirty hands off the saffron-robed monks, everything would be alright in this, the best of all possible worlds.

Tibet offers an attractive combination of exoticism, morality and the plucky status of an underdog sparkplug to the world media. It's a narrative almost tailor-made for Western bourgeois liberalism: we convince ourselves that they want what we have, and it's our moral obligation to help them achieve it. Free Tibet! Free World!

Forget the fact that there are threatened peoples in our own country that want what we have. Hell, they'd settle for clean water. As Canadians, our first duty should be to ensure that we do not oppress people at home or abroad. Any pretension otherwise is moral blindness. As progressives and anti-imperialists, we should question any attempt to render China's sin bigger than our own. Or, failing that, why the mote of Tibet is bigger than the beam of East Congo or Chechnya.

With that in mind, it seems to me that what's really going on here is not that Tibet wants what we have, but that they have what we wish we had. Or rather, the Tibetan myth Western media has constructed—one based on peace, non-violence, abstinence and asceticism—purchases our largesse. As long as Tibet eschews consumerism and consumption, our destructive lifestyle can proceed apace. The irony is of course, that as we "free" such ethical impossibilities from themselves as reward for affirming our pretense, we threaten to eradicate the myths on which we rely. It's a dilemma Jack Gladney discovered almost a quarter century ago:

"You don't believe in heaven? A nun?"
"If you don't, why should I?"
"If you did, maybe I would."
"If I did, you would not have to."
"All the old muddles and quirks," I said. "Faith, religion, life everlasting. The great old human gullibilities. Are you saying you don't take them seriously? Your dedication is a pretense?"
"Our pretense is a dedication. Someone must appear to believe. Our lives are no less serious than if we professed real faith, real belief. As belief shrinks from the world, people find it necessary than ever that someone believe. Wild-eyed men in caves. Nuns in black. Monks who do not speak. We are left to believe. Fools, children. Those who have abandoned belief must still believe in us. They are sure that they are right not to believe bu they know belief must not fade completely. Hell is when no one believes. There must always be believers. Fools, idiots, those who hear voices, those who speak in tongues. We are your lunatics. We surrender our lives to make your nonbelief possible. You are sure that you are right but you don't want everyone to think as you do. There is no truth without fools. We are your fools, your madwomen, rising at dawn to pray, lighting candles, asking statues for good health, long life."
"You've had long life. Maybe it works."
She rattled out a laugh, showing teeth so old they were nearly transparent.
"Soon no more. You will lose your believers."

—Don Delillo, White Noise (1985)

h/t to unionist at babble