In his essay ‘Child’s Play’ (Island 59), McKenzie Wark opens with a magnificent quote from Montaigne: ‘What should we say then of that noble and generous Epicurean pleasure that prides itself on nourishing virtue tenderly in its bosom and letting it frolic there, giving it disgrace, fever, poverty, death and torture as toys to play with?’ An echo of the same thought is found in Christopher Smart’s delirious glorification of his cat Jeoffrey in the poem ‘Jubilate Agno’. Jeoffrey not only ‘counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes’, bul ‘he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon’. In the 1990s, the exercise of benevolence has become a commodified virtue, accompanied by a repugnant streak of self-reflection. What jarred in the doctor’s speech was the word pride. Confronted with the appalling human misery, he was still able to enjoy the spectacle of his own compassion.

Greenpeace provide another example of this self­regarding righteousness, although here whales and dol­phins are offered as the instruments upon which benevo­lence is lo be practised. A letter sent to supporters during their Safe Seas Appeal concludes in the following terms:

Please don’t wait for our beaches to become littered with more dead dolphins and whales before you decide to help. Give as much as you can now, using the Safe Seas Appeal donation form enclosed. And when you show your children [reproductive heterosexual bias, I’m afraid] whales and dolphins in years to come, you can be proud you had something to do with keeping them healthy, strong and alive.

In other words, you can buy yourself a stake in the pride. No commitment, no significant impact on the lifestyle you’re entitled to, and, most importantly, no sacrifices to make.

No longer a question of personal ethics, compassion becomes another consumer choice. On television, in amongst the ads for cars, two-for-one special offers and pet food, the frequent Rwanda appeals provide an extraordinary juxtaposition which we accept with perverse equanimity.

The same phenomenon is just as evident in the press, illustrated by a recent double-page spread in the Good Weekend. On the left-hand page, a cadaverous woman languishing in bubble-bath surrounded by Elizabeth Arden Red Door beauty products. ‘Green with Envy’ reads the headline for the chromatically inspired copy. On the right-hand page, a different headline (‘Forget me not’) and a very different (although entirely familiar, i.e. coded) image: a stark, black and white photo of a malnourished child. No crisis of taste, no ideological dilemma. We are – at least, if we are female – invited to donate generously to the starving multitude AND to purchase the voluptuous Body Pack, valued at $80 and yours for only $59.

With specific reference to the media blitzes on Bosnia and Somalia, Wark writes of what he calls ‘a conscience industry of global proportions’ in which a form of barter occurs: in return for graphic images direct from the world’s trouble spots, the compassionate West sends food and medicine. These are the most obvious material – and media – aspects of the exchange, but they do not in themselves account for Australia’s consuming desire for such acts of generosity. For this reason, it is necessary lo explore the moral economy satisfied by these displays. The question to ask is, How do we do it? How do we balance our µpassions and compassion, our saviourist mania against the unsavoury forces of our selfishness?

The secret of the juggling act is, of course, a desperate desire to see ourselves as being Good People (despite all evidence to the contrary) and this in turn is facilitated by our tendency to equate all actions with investment. Rwanda and whales are merely two items of a novel consciousness-capital which allows one to purchase – regardless of the morality of one’s actual way of life – a peace of mind which otherwise eludes material acquisitiveness. And in a hypocritical age – alas, not critical enough – an industry devoted to the production of a salve that not only soothes the Ego but inflates its moral pride is almost too good to be true.