Good evening, Steve! Steven Thompson wrote to Lowell C. Savage...
> With the use of the Internet, future generations will obtain a better > understanding of other peoples and cultures. We will work together without > prejudice or religious conflict. I would absolutely love to embrace this concept of the Internet and the increasing level of sophistication in telecommunications bringing the world closer together, but I must confess, I view that as a little bit utopian. Such technology, as we have seen countless times, is often used to divide and conquer. The 9/11 hijackers used this technology frequently not only to plan their attacks, but their parent organizations used it, and use it still, to raise money and fund other world-wide operations against western, and primarily US interests at home and abroad. Even the beheadings of Americans caught in the clasp of terrorist use such technology, in cohoots with islamic media sites, to air the beheadings of their hostages worldwide. The internet is not some benevolent mechanism designed to bring all the earth together in peace and harmony. It is simply technology that can be used in various ways at the behest of the user, either for abuse, or perhaps profit, or for whatever intended reason the user has in mind. Technology often has wonderful benefits to all mankind. Atomic energy can heat and light homes and provide a power source to run factories and create products and jobs. It can also be used to kill and destroy the human race in a global nuclear war. I find it also questionable that the Internet and telecommunication advances will accomplish bringing the human race together, discounting such things as culture and religion. Although it is true that Indian and Pakistanis learn western and US culture, language, and procedures to gain employment in outsourced customer-relations jobs for large US corporate interests, this is a far cry from suggesting that these employees are embracing such a cultural orientation -- simply put, they want a better paying job, and must learn the skills for getting the job. Going back to pre-9/11 days, the hijackers and their organizational support groups certainly did much the same things as the Indians and Pakistanis learning western culture to get good paying jobs. They learned how to better articulate their english language skills, America's cultural mannerisms, and so forth, and even fit right into large US communities and apparently didn't draw any attention to themselves. At the same time that this is certainly true, it is also true they were here to destroy this culture, religion and all the capitalistic and materialistic orientation that they had to learn to pull of the hijackings in the first place! I appreciate your optimism in technology doing all these wonderful things, but I believe you leave out a lot here in your assessment, in particular the human propensity for greed, hate, or better put, the dark side of the human species. You can call that original sin, innate evil, or whatever you wish. Human history if full of such idealism of bringing everyone under the same tent. Previous civilizations have idealized this and thereby justified their territorial expansion. Ancient empires came close at times to realizing at least some of that, such as the Greek and Roman empires; but even the British Empire, in its heyday, came close in a lot of respects to bringing standardization to world commerce and left a legacy, often a good one, on legal systems throughout the empire. > As ruthless dictators fall, capitalism is > sure to spread. Why? How does that follow? It can also be said, and historically justified in many cases, that when one dictator falls, another one or two rise to fill their space. Capitalism, in and of itself has been around for hundreds of years. The above British Empire was probably the pre-Communist era's best vehicle for promoting capitalism on a world-wide scale. As the British Empire was collapsing, capitalism was mostly replaced throughout the former empire to a hoard of dictators throughout Africa particularly, but certainly also in the Middle East as both France and Britain withdrew. In the British case at least, some good examples did emerge, such as Democracy in India, Malaysia, Singapore, but even in that region, Burma was the arch typical example of expelling both capitalism and Democracy. So it's a mixed bag to suggest that capitalism can bring any such thing as free societies throughout the planet with everyone finding a way to get along with everyone else. > Through capitalism one will hope that prior tensions between > all peoples will diminish. Historically, that has never proven to be true on a global scale, or even close to that. Again, I wish I could be proven wrong, but I have a strong inclination that human greed, corruption and increasingly the widening scope of world government will put a huge damper on any possibility of easing tensions on such a scale as you suggest. Hope I'm wrong. Kindest regards, Frank _______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list Libnw@immosys.com List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
