Can Facebook Save the World?

Okay...stop laughing. This is a serious, nay, deadly serious topic! I'm talking WORLD PEACE here. I'm talking PLANETARY SALVATION!

We don't ned to plunge into highbrow rhetoric of world starvation, domination, population explosions, globo-economic 3rd-world fiscal trade deficits, etc., etc., ad infinitum. To pretty much every 'normal' human being, that's all blah-blah stuff for the studious people that didn't sleep through their lectures. That talk is for your Michael Moore's and Alex Jones-types, not for me...not for us. I write crime novels about guys that steal stuff from other guys and the guys that had the stuff stolen from them, well, they get upset and shoot at the guys that stole from them... you get the idea. I'm not a politio-economic wordsmith, so, I'll leave that to the big boys.

But, this is a serious question: Can Facebook (because of it's poplurity, in this text I'm really using Facebook as a metaphor for the internet in general) save the World?

"What's a crime-writer writing about war for, anyways?" Well, according to a recent (albeit, arbitrary) poll I conducted, quite a few writers among us are rebelling against this idea that "writers shall be poor and beg pennies for their existence" and wanting to become writers so they can make money out of doing something they like and can do well. Notwithstanding the fact that a writers got to live, writers should, wholesale, be tackling issues like this. Whatever happened to the days when people wanted to change the world with art, the '60s...you know? I'm not saying let's get all political as was the norm back then, but let's not avoid confronting the fact that there's a lot more necessity for world peace now, than there was in the days of free love and paisley.

The Basics of War:
As far as I can tell, in a war, at the very least you've got to have two sides (or more. Look up 'Poland WWII' Wikipedia and you'll know what I'm talking about). They need to have some basic disagreement with one another. For example: Germany says, "Hey, Poland! We are invading you!" and, say Poland says, "No you're bloody well not!" One thing leads to another and you have a situation where either country has substituted diplomatic exchange for an exchange of weapons. Other countries join in, the conflict expands and the confrontation can become a global one: WWI, WWII, etc.

Generally, however, wars begin much earlier with politicians failing dismally in their art of diplomacy, for example: Germany says, "Hey, Mr. Poland, we're interested in invading your country and using your resources for our own, and then, possibly staging an invasion of all of Western Europe from your land." And Poland saying, "Well, Mr. Germany, thanks for including us in your reasoning. But, on this occasion we shall have to decline" (As far as examples go, this is a little ludicrous, but then so is war). Now, when this cannot be worked out with diplomacy, to cut a long story short, then you can have a war...basically. (Relax you students of international law and politics, it's obviously fragile as far as examples go, but it's not the point of the text so, please read on.)

Yesterday, the good Mr. President George Bush said words to the effect of: "People of Iran, do not be afraid. It is not you we have a problem with, it's your government. We want to get rid of your government for your own good." Mr. President Bush, however, overlooked a very key point: the government of any nation is there because of the people, good bad or indifferent. If the people really didn't like it, they would remove it.

"But," Mr. Bush may argue, "they are 'oppressed'. How can they possibly do that? We can only save them by invading their country, overthrowing their government and taking control of their economy!"

Well, it's easy, they, like, all rise up as one and, like, take over. Proof of this is that no government in the history of the universe has survived by opressing its people. The people always rise up and the governments always come undone. Another idiocy that humanity (and Mr. Bush is included in this sweeping comment) has overlooked is the fact that an oppressive government, forced from office by armed uprising, tends to be replaced by another oppressive regime. You can bust out the history books for proof of that; and there are always exceptions to any rule. The worrysome thing is that, historically speaking, aggressive countries have always failed to create and maintain peace in the countries they invade (witness Poland 1939-'45, China 1933-'45 and to present, Vietnam 1845-'73, all the countries invaded by Napoleon, etc, etc.). Based on this, it's a fine line the Coalition of the Willing is walking in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, this is not new news.



So, going back to it all: for any armed conflict of any size you must at least have two parties throwing bombs, bullets etc. at one another. That's a rough, but fair description of a war. Of course, there are complexities, like (and almost every armed conflit fulfills this criterion) a third side antagonising both warring parties into armed conflict for their own profit. But, these are the basics.

Now, Facebook (or really any internet-based mass-communication system) threatens this in a big way. See, it is 'people', not the government, that actually do the 'fighting and dying' part of any war. Now, the closer those people are in terms of communication, the harder it'll be for the government to incite the violence necessary to facillitate actually killing other human beings, i.e war.

In a war, there's also a very key ingredient that is added to the equation before the violence can begin: difference. I'm not the first to discover this by any stretch of my imagination, but it is a fact. In any war, one warring party must be utterly convinced that the other warring party is very different in everyway to them. Men, being fundamentally a social creature, would find it very dificult to take a knife or gun to another human being if they had not been first indoctrinated into believing (falsely) that their enemy is different, insane, animal-like, has lower morals, etc, when compared to their own ideals.

In the times of great conflicts last century, it was purported that the Germans killed kittens on French doorsteps, that the Japanese were a bloodthirsty race. It came as a shock, then, to Australian soldiers fighting the battles of Kokoda, that they were puzzled to feel empathy, or even sadness when they opened up the wallets of Japanese soldiers they'd killed and saw photos of the dead man's family, wife, kids. They weren't that different after all.

A more modern example is, of course, the treatment of Islam by western media. To quote an old phrase, don't beleive what you see on TV; Muslims love Jesus Christ just as any good Catholic does.

The internet has the potential to prove false the lies purported as being excuses to go to war. War is a massive distraction to the real issues that are affecting our planet, therefore, anything that would disabuse us of the distraction would be a good thing. The fact that Mr. Bush directed his comments at the Iranian government would suggest his advisors and speech writers are becoming savvy to the same fact - the Iranians may also be using the internet, may have American friends, too. You can't go to war with your friend, only your enemy.

But, the internet is a vehicle for anyone and everyone. It is being put to good use by the enemies of peace and the purportors of global violence, too. It a method of spreading, like a weed, falshoods and lies. The belief of one can become the belief of millions in several minutes. So, always take with a grain of salt anything you read on the net.

What About the Writer?
Obiously, this is a forum for writers. So, where does the written linguist fit in to this equation? Well, that's for you to decide. But, I will tell you this, if you're writing with the purpose of buying a house, living the lax life where you can work your own hours, spend time with the kids while earning a passive income from the sales of your books, think again. Sure, you can do this. I'm sure many a writer does, too (or at least dreams of it). But, this is not your purpose. In the words of Arthur O'Shaughnessy, "We are the movers and shakers of the world forever, it seems" and this is the responsibility with which we are charged now and well into the future.

If we're not banging the drum (however annoyingly to the common onlooker), stretching ourselves by means of time and wherewithal, working the fingerprints off our fingers by punching away at a keyboard, then, what are we doing? If we're doing other than this, than pushing the boundary of what is accepted and considered 'normal', than we too have been decieved into thinking that 'things are okay' and that 'we needn't worry because everything will work out just fine'. We don't want to be mild successes in the working worlds, as soon as we chose to be artists, we chose a pretty well trodden road, littered with the bodies of the fallen who trod before us. What an adventure we chose.

I don't want to be the wowser, but unless we are activively doing something about it...it won't be 'fine'. It'll be pretty damn crap, actually.

So, please make use of this thing, the internet and combine it with your skill with the written word. Start a blog and go nuts writing what you think - soon, people will start reading it. Technically, that's publishing, too. Don't hold onto your precious thoughts for, although they may be precious, they are neeed, whatever their gramatic quality.

It's rediculously corny, but, I'll say it: become friends with the world!