Stepping up to the mark

There has to be an answer to the current violence London and around the world. It is not going to go away in a hurry and I believe we all have a part to play in sorting it.

I have gone through various reactions recently. Apprehension after the first bombs in London mixed with fascination at people who can have such strong religious or ideological beliefs that they can override the normally strong instinct for self preservation.

I then felt resigned to more years of worrying about bombs on the underground. I have lived with the threat from the IRA for the last twenty years and you get used to it - life has to go on.

With the second set of bungled attacks my mood switched to anger and defiance - who do they think they are putting innocent lives at risk - lives from all backgrounds and "faiths" including their own.

But we can't afford to get angry. Our response to this situation matters SO much. How we react will determine whether we manage to turn things around and preserve the very fragile but immensely valuable tolerant, mixed, vibrant society we have in the British Isles, or descend into some paranoid, violent, controlled nightmare from which we struggle to emerge for years.

So what to do about it?

Let's face it all the rhetoric about war on terror is so "old world". There has to be a new way of working together to deal with this. An interconnected way, an internet way, a peaceful way.

Much has been written about how Al Qaeda work in sophisticated, networked ways and make use of the internet to build loose, non-heirarchical, and devastating capability.

Some of us bang on about the internet's power to route around damage, to bring people together and to accelerate evolution.

I personally believe that mankind has does have the ability to live together without knocking lumps off each other if we reject ideas of separation, scarcity and difference and seek to understand each other and preach tolerance.

There has to be a way of pulling all this together.

Someone once said to me of the blogosphere that you can't have this many bright people talking together with such intensity about meaningful subjects without something really incredible coming out of it. Maybe this is the time to start putting this to the test?

We have enormous energy and inventiveness going into tools like Friendster or Orkut but what if we spent less time on setting up social networking tools targeted at getting inside each other's knickers or selling drugs and more time on working out ways to create real networks, just like Al Queda are meant to have done - only this time in support of finding peace, understanding and a way of living together.

We have to engage with those people in our midst who hate us enough to blow themselves and others up. We can't fight wars with them. We can't kill them all. There has to be another way.

These are just rambling thoughts at the moment but as someone who supposedly has some modest influence in this new connected, internet world and who believes passionately in its potential to do good I have to take responsibility for building the future.

We all do.

Comments

[Gary Turner]

I agree and have no answers. Yet.

And I can already imagine that some people in London have already rotated their webcams to face the street outside.

But any venture would need to insulate itself from being seen as or, worse, assumed by other right wing extremists for questionable ends.

What we don't want is a grass roots 'digilante' version of Flickr.

Services like Flickr work if it's pictures of your pet dog lying on its back in the sun you're posting up, not your own subjective opinion of the 'foreign looking bloke with a rucksack' you saw on the street fumbling with a map of the tube.

But there must be a solution out there somewhere.

[Bernie Goldbach]

From an academic's perspective, I think there's a need to celebrate diversity, to understand the grating side of globalism and to unpack the imperialistic nature of strong economies. I'm thinking about changing the direction of my blogging so I focus on these kinds of themes when writing about interesting things. If I had a body of work along these lines, it would be easier to direct student activity into the same areas.

But I've just started thinking about whether this is a meaningful response to the random violence of the 21st century.

[Euan]

I think I agree Bernie (see the comments thread on Dave's post) but could you explain "the grating side of globalism" more?

[Bernie Goldbach]

High Street fashion on the streets of Jeddah grates many of the locals. McDonald's arches in French cities grate against proud cafe owners. American sitcoms grate against Irish ministers charged with maintaining native culture. All those things come with a marketing bow wave that washes over the populace and redirects their behaviour.

You cannot stop the relentless pace of globalism but I believe that there are rigid conservatives who view all these things as part of an evil influence that must be rebuffed, sometimes with bomb blasts.

I take third level students down a path of reading, discussion and reflection so they're aware that the multimedia messages they create could incite mullahs as well as excite consumers. I'm no expert, but perhaps these kinds of discussions could lead to a better understanding the mindset of some suicide bombers.

[Jon Husband]

I think (and hope) that more and more people in many countries are coming to similar forms of thinking .. we are all interdependent AND also there are many diferent belief sets, worldviews and cultures to accommodate ... and no good reasons for us to want one to dominate over the others ... while at the same time we should strive to encourage all to be respectful of fundamental issues of the rights of individuals .. women as well as men, poor as well as rich, brown as well as pink, etc.

Dave Pollard has a similar and well thought-out, well-written post on the issues that you have advanced.

Perhaps the quickening we are all watching unfold will have a large and widespread catalytic effect on a sorely-needed change in mindsets ?

[Euan]

Good points Bernie and ones I totally agree with. When I mentioned globalization in my comment to Dave's post I did not mean "Americanisation" but the increasingly interlinked, interdendent aspirations that create common ground rather than division.

[Euan]

Jon - thanks for the pointer to Dave's post. It was worth making the effort to read. As to your last paragraph - this was my hope of the world's reaction after 9/11. Let's hope we manage better this time.