Ethical Review: TOP TEN LISTS

I'm overwhelmed by a glut of confusing top ten lists of everything from fims to people to books to just random things arranged together that don't even belong in the same place. We're inundated by so many top tens in so many places that I'm sure we're only a breath away from seeing a top ten list of top ten lists.

They have become their own entertainment genre. TRL (Total Request Live) on MTV is perhaps one of the big culprits in TV media. Now we see them daily on E!, VH1, and elsewhere. It's a great way of getting a snippet of this and that. It has, at times, turned me on to things I might have otherwise overlooked. A VH1 Top 100 Greatest Albums of All Time was dangerous; I started buying a lot of them. But it got me back into Van Morrison, which I guess is a good thing.

But still. Knowing the sequence of the Top 100 Films of All Time does not substitute for actually having seen the films. I am making my way through the American Film Institute's Top 100 of this and that, and it has brought me a lot of joy. I now have a new favorite film: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. This morning I was tempted to buy Esquire Magazine's Top 75 Most Influential Men in the World or whatever, and I said to myself STOP! This is all an attempt to get me to buy something. As though buying the magazine will bring me into accord with the world. As though it will confirm my membership in a club of Men Easily Influenced By Dumbass Magazines.

These are bite-sized subsitutes for actual knowledge. One does not have knowledge of a thing until one sees it for oneself. This fast-food entertainment happy meal which can sum up Ben Hur (number 100) in a few minutes could never actually replace the experience of seeing it. I could conceivably go to a dinner party and talk about the historical significance of a film without actually having seen it for myself. Flimsy knowledge is easy to come by these days, but we must never fool ourselves. We are full of shit if we think that we know something about art or culture from having seen it ranked in a countdown on TV.

What is dangerous is that these condensed lists of things can lead us into condensed thinking patterns. We value art by the ranking it has been given, not taking into account the skew or the bias within the list or the selection process. The lists are compiled in a fairly whitebread kind of way. The top choices are always fairly obvious. The white mainstream buying culture takes the surprise out of these countdowns. The top choices are safe, and the sales that will result are enmormous.

Priorities are out of whack in our culture. We value personality and savvy over substance in our elections, in our news, in our education, and in our day to day choices. We make choices based on convenience, and these lists only make our choices easier; it takes the burden off of us to place our own value on what we consider good or bad.

We drive when we should walk. We take pharmaceuticals when we should change our diet. We watch TV when we should be reading. We value what we are told to value, and we shun what we are told to shun. We associate ourselves with people and institutions, based on social reasons, political reasons, or any reason that we might consider the right reason. But these are not always the right reasons. The ethical choice is based on outcomes. Doing and choosing the right thing, the right path, the right values, these things all must be carefully considered. If you are what you consume, then you need not buy into commonly held perceptions of what is good and bad, right or wrong.