Media priorities have been under the spotlight in recent weeks. The blood and gore in Thai Rath-style tabloids never fail to catch the eye. Sex scandals with a hint of perversion are always good for a scoop; or failing that how about some cute photos of a Panda cub to divert the masses.

The bottom line though is that the media gives us pretty much what we want. And apparently what most of us want is to escape, through cheap thrills and titillation, fantasy and sick voyeurism. As long as we are spoon-fed a diet of trivia, we don't have to face some of the more uncomfortable, starker realities.

A surging flood of visual data batters the senses daily, so that processing it all productively is impossible. We take refuge in the superficial, barricade ourselves within our comfort zones.

Politicians, economic interest groups with the power and influence of small nations, are complicit in this dumbing down. I wonder if we're still capable of the great revolutionary movements of a just a few decades ago. It would mean missing a few episodes of our favourite soap.

And in the meantime we carry on lapping up photos of panda cubs and David Carradine. If it's taken you thirty seconds to skim through this blog, then another ten children will have died from the consequences of poverty. We spend 1.4 trillion USD on arms annually. Then there's cosmetics, and pet food, and.. and...

This is no virtual reality game, there won't be an escape button to press, once climate change becomes unstoppable. Someone 'twittered' today that he heard a couple of farangs complaining about the Thais using too many plastic bags. Yet it seems to have escaped the notice of the American tourists concerned that they had just flown halfway across the world for their vacation in the Land of Smiles. A mammoth-sized carbon footprint that would take a boat-load of plastic bags to fill.

We have developed a social conscience that seems to be limited to putting our rubbish into the right recycling bins, as if somehow that's going to make a significant difference. It's all a big con, to sell us the feel good factor. The real problems carry on snowballing while we switch on to Britain's Got Talent, weep over Susan Boyle, and coo over sweet little panda cubs.

I suppose ignorance is some excuse for those who rarely leave their environment, except perhaps for a carbon copy foreign version in the Costa del Sol, Tenerife, Cyprus, spending a fortnight arguing over sun loungers with the Germans. The expats (Pattaya version excluded) living in developing nations such as Thailand can't get away with it so easily. We see the kind of desperation that so many people, living hand to mouth, experience daily throughout their lives. And far, far worse in the likes of Burma (above photo).

Just thinking aloud. Perhaps we expat bloggers could be doing more to raise consciousness on certain issues, however uncomfortable they may be?