The Marlowsphere Blog (#106)
My last blog posited that we are moving in the direction of humanizing technology. That is, increasingly our communications systems in particular—the Internet, World Wide Web, telecommunications—are morphing into very human-like sensory characteristics, for example, increasing voice characteristics, increasing use of motion video on the Internet. In homes, businesses, and public spaces video screens have become flat (some are curved), and large.
I also posited that our communications systems have created a global marketplace for information and communications. We have inexorably become what Dr. Marshall McLuhan described in1964 as a “global village.” His use of those two words is correct. The planet has become global with respect to all manner of human activities. In one sense we have moved from villages, to city-states, to countries, and in the last century to regional economic entities, e.g., the Pacific Rim, the European Union, OPEC, the Organization of American States, the BRICS, and so on.
But the phrase also reflects the characteristics of a village of the past: people in the village are an entity unto themselves, sometimes dealing with outsiders, sometimes not, where men are dominant, and women are secondary. In today’s world the concept of a “village” is reflected in the fact that most if not all the new countries that have been admitted to the United Nations are based on “ethnic centers,” never mind geographic considerations. Further, current conflicts in the world are ethnically-based—that is, there are groups at war with each other based on perceived cultural differences. It is not about territory, especially, or even economic gain. It’s an extremist view—“we perceive who we are and if you’re not one of us, you must be killed.”
It is ironic that for all the technological advances in communications and the collaboration it fosters, there seems to be more groups coming into existence who are insular, exclusive and extremist.
Examples abound. The current Israel-Palestinian conflict in Gaza is about Hamas wanting to destroy Israel; it refuses to recognize Israel as a legitimate state. On the other hand, Israel exacerbates the perceptions by continuing to build settlements on land the Palestinians regard as theirs. They also perceive that the entire region is theirs, but the United Nations in 1948 voted otherwise. There has been conflict ever since. The conflict is exacerbated by Iran that is apparently supplying rockets to Hamas. Iran seems also bent on finding a way to destroy Israel.
In Iraq ISIS believes its Sharia interpretation of Islam is the only interpretation of the Koran and in that context feels no constraint in executing people who do not believe as they do and blowing things up—such as the resting place of the biblical Joseph.
In Syria newly elected (for the third time) President Assad thinks nothing of killing his own people who disagree with his self-centered, elitist policies. In Egypt the former, now deposed President Morsi thought nothing of inculcating his Brotherhood of Islam’s narrow-focused perception of the world. An ex-military general is now the new president. We’ll see how that works out.
In Africa, the Boko Haram, led by a man who was once interred in a mental institution, believe that everything in the west is bad. It thinks nothing of killing and kidnapping in the name of Islam.
In eastern Ukraine recently, Russian President Putin thought nothing of seizing the Crimean Peninsula and annexing it to Russia. He also supports the “Ukrainian militants” who similar to the abovementioned extremists think nothing of seizing buildings and killing those who do not feel the way they do about Russia.
In Chechnya rebels there continue to blow things up—including people—because they want a separate state based on their cultural heritage. The war in Bosnia at the end of the last century was also ethnically-based. Many died because each side saw their cultural heritage as the culture to follow. Ethnic cleansing followed.
Adolf Hitler used his Nazi propaganda machine to manipulate much of the German populace into perceiving that the Jews were at the root of their problems and that Jews were less than human. Starting with Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass) in November 1938, the Third Reich succeeded in exterminating six million Jews.
In China towards the end of Mao Zedong’s rule, the Cultural Revolution purged a generation of intellectuals and artists who were perceived as out of step with Mao’s dictates. Millions perished.
In the 16th century the Spanish Armada attacked England. Why? Because Spain was Catholic and Elizabeth I wasn’t. The Armada famously perished in the English Channel from a storm that came up just at the right moment.
Go back a millennia and you have the Crusades that pitted the righteousness of Christians against the righteousness of Muslim-based cultures. Go back another thousand years and you have the righteousness of the Roman Empire against the emergent righteous Christians, and so on.
Conclusion: toleration of other people’s cultural values and views is not a prominent human characteristic. To bring us back to the present, former Secretary of State Madelaine Albright recently said: “In a sentence, the world is a mess.” The problem in the early part of the 21st century is that the world means the world. Two thousand years ago the world was much smaller, but larger than the world of early agricultural communities of 10-12,000 years ago, and certainly much larger than the villages of pre-literate tribes before that.
The problem is conflicting cultural ethnic values and views are now supported and accelerated by contemporary transportation, information, and communications technologies. Information (whether factual or not) moves at the speed of light and this only expands its impact.
So, why hasn’t contemporary transportation, information, and communication technologies made the world a better place for all of us to enjoy? Why haven’t these technologies made us different? Why are human beings bent on pursuing conflict rather than peaceful co-existence?
Perhaps part of the answer is that human evolution takes a lot longer than technological development. After all, it took a couple of million years for homo sapiens to develop the 
capacity for language, but only a few thousand years to move from an agricultural world, to a world with accounting, then writing, then printing, then electronics, and now photonic and nano technologies.
We’ll probably have men and women living on planet Mars sooner than men and women will learn that cooperation and collaboration is more fruitful than armed conflict.
Please write to me at meiienterprises@aol.com if you have any comments on this or any other of my blogs.
Eugene Marlow, Ph.D.
September 1, 2014
© Eugene Marlow 2014