The modern communication age might be a modern evil, to good, but it also serves as a modern evil to evil.
I just can't get myself to watch the zot movie on TV came the plaintive cry across my Facebook page.
The message vibrated at my elbow through my Blackberry as I sat with family wrapped in the warmth of a fire in my lounge while the cold licked impotently at the door.
My family and I settled down to watch Invictus.
How appropriate then that Nelson Mandela’s role in the 1995 RWC should be playing out in front of me at the precise moment racism reared its head on my Facebook page.
The role of technology in modern communication is evolving at a pace that outstrips our common sense.
I deeply suspect that humanity has no clue how modern communication technology exposes the soft political underbelly and that the world’s leaders are being caught asleep as a dragon awakes.
A dragon that is so powerful it is capable of unseating Dictators more surgically and swiftly than a multitude of guided missiles.
There is a deluge of protest against oppression and yet in the deluge against oppression by all sides there is an unwavering determination to oppress.
There is a pervasive fear of Government, people in Government are in disagreement with Government, yet they appear to remain silent. There is a perception of persecution for dissention.
Ideas are trampled, any ideas, to the extent that nothing, seems to make sense and a pervasive partisan intolerance to idea, pervades cyber space.
The internet is a quagmire of rhetoric and propaganda. It is flooded with political gamesmanship and agenda, so much so that groups or individuals seem to gravitate toward stereotype.
Any dissention seems to instantly, be reduced to racial ideology, irrespective of merit from all sides, creating a perception of absolute and massive polarisation.
There is an overriding sense that, on practically every platform, public opinion is being driven by the State, with an all out attack on a free press.
There are literally millions of comments and complaints, that there isn’t any accountability, with convicted murderers even arguing just because you're convicted in a court room, doesn't mean you're guilty of something.
Cyber space is awash with Government being accused of lies, massive lies, repeated over and over again by our leaders, from the arms deal, HIV&Aids denial to the ArcelorMittal deal and so on.
Government is accused of not doing what it said it would do, or what it said it intended to do.
In an instant cyber space brought me polarization, in the triumph of Invictus and intolerant zot.
Are we to assume, that our leadership are simply grossly incompetent and clueless, to this chaos?
I think not, I think our leaders are infinitely more astute than what we give them credit for.
It is their strategies that are failing that they can’t grasp. It is their studies in the Science of Politics and who they choose to admire and follow, that has brought us to where we are.
Napoleon said after all, “Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress and that men are moved by two levers only: fear and self interest.”
Napoleon also said “four hostile newspapers are more to be feared, than a thousand bayonets and in politics... never retreat, never retract... never, admit a mistake.
It was Josef Stalin who said “Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?”
It was Josef Stalin who said “Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?”
Hitler said “The broad masses of a population are more amenable, to the appeal of rhetoric , than to any other force and make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually, they will believe it.
It was Saddam Hussein who said “politics is when you say you are going to do one thing while intending to do another. Then you do, neither what you said, nor what you intended.”
Charles Manson, “Just because you're convicted in a court room, doesn't mean you're guilty of something.”
Finally Joseph Goebbels, “It is the absolute right of the State, to supervise the formation of public opinion”.
Sound familiar? It should.
Modern communication technology has come to reflect in its purest form, everything that defines the human race and serves up a meal, best consumed sans napkin and with bare hands and, which in all its vulgarity exposes the bone.
Our leadership doesn’t seem to be cognisant of the fact that their heroes, the ones they studied, they learned from and admire and choose to emulate, are exposed.
They seem oblivious to the fact, that while they may attack us, with clubs and guns and faster than the speed of sound, we, the people, are capable of rallying to defend ourselves at the speed of light.
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