This week's Economist details how hate groups are using the internet for dark purposes. Read The Brave New World of e-hatred.
Excerpt below...
"What is much more disturbing is the way in which skilled young surfers—the very people whom the internet might have liberated from the shackles of state-sponsored ideologies—are using the wonders of electronics to stoke hatred between countries, races or religions. Sometimes these cyber-zealots seem to be acting at their governments’ behest—but often they are working on their own, determined to outdo their political masters in propagating dislike of some unspeakable foe."
, by Kwame Anthony Appiah
, by Lawrence Harrison and Samuel Huntington
, by Bradley Thayer
, by Amartya Sen
, by Franklin Foer
, by Amartya Sen
, by George Soros
, by E.O. Wilson
, by Carl Coon
, by Peter Singer
, by Immanuel Kant
, by Emery Reves
, by Samuel Huntington
, by Jeffrey Sachs
, by Jeremy Rifkin
, by Fareed Zakaria
, by Strobe Talbott
, by Ian Bremmer
, by Fareed Zakaria
, by Ronald Glossop
2 comments:
So who's the cosmo-internet police? By the means of cosmopolitanism, there should be a consensus among users to catch the bad guys. Afterall, we all share the same set of basic morals, being humans and whatnot.
Hello frogoodle,
Well, there is no cosmo-internet police force, frogoodle. In 2008, we are not all cosmopolites, and there is no current agreement on a universal moral code. I don't expect there to be anything approaching a universal moral code any time soon, but we have developed international law, we've made the beginnings of progress in agreements on international trade, the Europeans have developed a structure for integration, etc. Furthermore, I think there is a preponderance of agreement that the ideas of hate expressed by the bad actors discussed in the article violate a moral code, and that if these ideas were put into action there is even more agreement in the world that they should be punished.
The bad actors that the Economist article highlights seem to get stuck at a certain level of human empathy, but it's probably true of most people to some extent. I'm sure they love their family and kin, and they extend that circle of affinity to their ethnic group or nation. What they fail to do, it seems to me, is acknowledge that the person they hate is also human. As we know, the hatred often goes both ways.
Ethnic hatred isn't new, and as the world integrates, there will be more opportunities for friction between cultural or ethnic groups. At the same time, there should be more opportunities to educate ourselves about each other and develop personal relations and international structures that make it easier to function peacefully.
As you may have noticed, you're the first commenter on this blog. (This blog is only a couple of days old.) For that I thank you, even though I'm pretty sure you're not a big fan of cosmopolitanism :) What I'm after is something broader than cosmopolitanism, I'm not sure what form I want the world to take exactly, I just know what I want is peaceful integration. I'm thinking...10,000 years. There are some hopeful signs. Anyway, I've spent way too much mental energy on this reply (this is not a complaint, just that this the first comment, and the first one will be the hardest, but hopefully in the future it will be physically impossible to respond to all the wonderful comments.) You're the first, so you get a personal response.
Thanks frogoodle,
The Boundless Cosmopolitan
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