| Media Matters |
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| Written by Len Sherman | |
| Thursday, 08 May 2008 | |
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We have all heard, again and again, how the web will bring us together, erasing political, societal, and cultural barriers, effortlessly eliminating artificial walls organized by those mysterious and inherently dark (read government and corporate) powers that seek to control and direct human behavior. And perhaps all that will come to pass, whether based on the old Marxist dream of universal adequate quantity or the Star Trek future of limitless abundance.
But maybe it won’t be so. Maybe freedom won’t be so free after all. Maybe the destruction of all the old conventions, all the old ideas and faiths and beliefs will not lead to endless peace and prosperity. Maybe when you break apart the glue that has bound us together in so many ways we are left not with freedom but with nothing. Power brings responsibility, and it is unclear whether anyone or any entity has stepped forward to assume or even comprehend the responsibility that this new world demands. And so we come to the web, which is great at transcending the traditional forms of authority and power. Surely that can be a good thing, considering that a lot of our institutions and concepts haven’t always worked so brilliantly, as demonstrated by an endless succession of injustice, inequality and delusion, as exemplified by war, waste, corruption, environmental abuse, to name a few. At the same time, there is no doubt that we’ve built the most remarkable if frequently awkward and inefficient network for constructing a viable way of life that has the greatest chance to lead to an even happier world than humanity could ever conceive. Regardless, whether we like it or not, the web will change everything, because the web is speeding the end of the basic compact by which life has been organized for more than three centuries. In 1684, the Treaty of Westphalia defined the primacy of the nation-state over the church and any other methodologies for organizing society. From that day forward, whether democratic or tyrannical, republican or fascist, the idea of the nation-state remained sacrosanct, even in the eyes of its most bitter enemies. Even when we destroyed Nazi Germany, we did not pour salt into its earth as Rome did to Carthage, but rather rebuilt the state in a more benign, favorable image. When we conquered Afghanistan, we endeavored, perhaps against logic, to maintain its borders and keep it a functioning state. The Soviet Union collapsed, but Russia endures, seeking to rebuild its empire. The United Nations, NATO, the State Department, and an inexhaustible list of international organizations, are all based upon the notion that every state, no matter how small or large, possesses its own special, inviolable significance. Still, despite the exponentially expanding evidence of this new reality, brought about in part by the integration of the Internet into almost every aspect of life, despite that we live in a world where novel and terrible forces are being unleashed seemingly daily, virtually all governments hold fast to the old political/governmental/philosophic paradigms. Instead of finding fresh strategies and tactics to understand and deal with events and ideas, we confront our opponents with outdated, clunky mechanisms and notions. There’s a saying that generals are always fighting the last war, and so we face our next war, in the manner of the soldiers of the British Army wearing their bright red uniforms and maintaining their precise marching orders as they met the guerrillas of the American Revolution. It comes down to this: Instead of recognizing that a lone terrorist with a suitcase bomb is more dangerous to our security than the entire Russian military, that the goals of a transnational oil corporation can be more destructive to our economy than anything France or Singapore decides, that the words and images put out by Al Jazeera can be more devastating to our image and support overseas than any proclamation Iran or China issues, we still cling to the old forms and structures and bureaucracies. Individually, and in small and not so small groups, the sanctity and propriety of government and state is being continually eaten away, too often replaced by nothing but dust. Understand the basic dilemma. A nation is not a casual construction, but rather, in perhaps romantic terms, at its soul, a myth we all agree to. All the other material factors, social, political and economic, are tied together by the underlying belief and value system to which all citizens voluntarily and consciously subscribe. It is no accident that Americans call those who led the Revolution our Founding Fathers, a stirringly intimate, personal identification. They are all our fathers, whether our families were here in 1776 or arrived last week, because we are all equally American, all possessing legitimate claim to our collective history and glory. We have no royal titles to hand down, no familial privileges or special rights; all Americans originate from the same mythic parentage, from the beginning, from the ribs of our political Adams, our Founding Fathers. We are bound together by generational layers of facts and fiction, of ideals and laws, traditions and principals, even sounds and smells, the gathering together of the infinite pieces that make not only a person that singular person and no other, but also render a nation a distinct entity. And we maintain this uniqueness, this unity of thought and feeling, by gaining more information and pictures and words from similar sources, whether they be schoolbooks, the evening news, or movies, or simply by speaking a common language. But these shared experiences are disappearing, in large part because of the new media, including the web. The days of literally half the populace reading Thomas Paine’s call to revolution in Common Sense, or millions of radios tuned to hear Edward R. Murrow’s broadcast during the Battle of Britain, or a nation watching Walter Cronkite on television report the assassination of John Kennedy, are long gone. Whether the audience interpreted the message in the same way was secondary to the point is that the people, the nation, had a common base from which to talk and consider. By splintering the sources of information into literally thousands of directions and means, more often than not driven by opinion, faith, prejudice or politics, we are eroding, even erasing that base. In this very real way, we are taking apart the national idea, we are breaking apart the national myth by no longer absorbing the same music, listening to the same words. We are losing the basis by which we understand one another, whether we always agree or not. In this new day, conspiracy theories abound, sectional imperatives take precedence, distrust and isolation is more important than compromise and harmony. In this new day, how can any nation, great or small, riven by factionalism and separatism and different interests and dreams and values, possibly rise to whatever mortal challenge the future surely will bring? So there we are. That is our challenge. Can the web make this a better world, brought closer together in the truly consequential ways, or is it merely a selfish medium, allowing each of us to get what we want, however petty, at that very second, without any other thought or concern? Is it a new form of intangible wealth that builds a better world, or is it a nothing other than a means of nurturing our most egocentric instincts? |
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