Total Eclipse

For the past day or so I’ve been scouring the net for information on the current grim meathook state of affairs. I’ve been reading both Israeli and Lebanese independant blogs and webzines. I find it fascinating. Some Lebanese blogs have been getting comments in the hundreds. Surpringly, for the most part, discourse has been heated, but overall friendly and polite. People seem to be reaching out to understand those on the other side of the fence. Or maybe the net has matured into a cultured, civilized form of discourse, rather than the old flames from #israel on EFnet IRC or usenet. Well, let’s not get carried away.

Consider this; This bizzare reciprocal life-during-wartime discourse is a wholly new form of communication.

This is something that was literally unheard of in ancient conflicts, up to and including the modern age. Anyone even contemplating such contact would be ostracized.
And yet here we are, children of the information age, and what do we do when we have something in common to discuss? Open a bleeding forum, that’s what.
This is really amazing to me. We are literally putting faces on our enemies. Making them human. Human faces, because in this day and age, human faces are digital ones anyway.
People have been forwarding psychological warfare sites, and exchanging reports of bombardments on both sides. Exchanging condolences, and rhetorics, and wishes for a brighter future.
So much conflict starts from mistrust and misunderstanding, and political leaders thrive on this.
But the information age twists things around. Even The News is BOTTOM-UP now. Nobody believes the big media scum anymore. The power is in our hands.

We, right here, right now, are building our future. The better we understand our neighbours, their motives, their desires, their frail humanity, the harder it will be for us to homogenize them and damn them all to hell.

This is The Bright Future, this is The Art of Peace in the Age of Digital Reproduction.

So go on, reach out and touch someone.

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