Beware the existential threat we face from the dark side of technology

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.  The adage has been around for years---millennia if we care to trace it back to the garden of Eden and God's dietary advice.  To modern people it has always seemed little more than a trite cliché and not particularly relevant--until now, that is--until the Computer Age.  The rapidly deteriorating situation we see all around us today could not be more dangerous, and it is a direct result of a little knowledge in the hands of a lot of naïve, ill-informed young people.  It also has a name: Technology.  And when technology becomes the golden calf, worshipped as a God by naïve, ill-informed young people by the millions, it becomes, for all us, a WMD--a weapon of mass destruction.

Been following the news lately?  It is not good.  Bombings in public places.  Kidnappings, beheadings and burnings alive of people in cages.  Drones over Paris and high school football stadiums.  Hormone-driven teens from the U.S., Europe and elsewhere chasing their dreams of lust, romance and derring-do into the clutches of alluring, treacherous terrorists.  Hackers shutting down critical systems and endangering peoples lives everywhere.  All of these things are the direct result of young computer-savvy kids, Millennials mainly, who thought they knew it all when they proceeded to upset all the apple carts and then go merrily on their way.  These are the same kids who grew up learning by way of violent video games how to employ their new-found anti-Christ--technology--to wreak mass destruction, and the art of sharing those skills via social media.  Now a bit older and more bored, they are being easily lured into playing real-life killing games by predatory, radicalized cult-leaders who know exactly how to manipulate naïve, ill-informed young people.

ISIS and al-Qaida are the two biggest facets of a movement which is metastasizing at an alarming rate.  Those groups are opportunistic, moving like blazing wildfire into failed states throughout the Middle East and Africa, or anywhere they see a power vacuum waiting to be filled.  But why are these countries "failed"...and who made them that way?   Let's review the recent history.

It began in Iraq when our coalition removed that nation's stable government, killing Saddam Hussein and replacing him with...nothing.    Then came the so-called Arab Spring when more of those naïve, ill-informed young people, chatting it up with one another on social media, mistakenly concluded that they were ready for freedom and democracy, overthrew the stable governments of Gadhafi, Mubarak, and al-Assad, and replaced them with...nothing.  Those power vacuums, now being eagerly filled by bloodthirsty, opportunistic psychopaths pretending to be religious, would never have occurred in the first place had it not been for social media and the dark side of technology.  Yet, those who worship at the feet of that golden calf remain in denial, refusing to imagine that their little bit of knowledge could have led us directly into the jaws of the most dangerous situation the world has ever seen.

I have said it before that human civilization has very likely rolled up and over the pinnacle of the waning Renaissance--the Computer Age being the last stage--and is now poised to begin the long, frightening descent toward another Dark Age, where innovation ends and deterioration starts.  And we have one thing to blame: a little knowledge and a lot of technological fire-power in the hands of the naïve, ill-informed, bored, and treacherous.  That is the real WMD.

It is time to be afraid!



 

Is it patriotic to love the country as it is, or as we envision that it could be?

In case you missed it, Rudy Giuliani is catching flak for his comments this week questioning the President's love, or hate, for America.  This is not new, of course.  There is a fringe element that has been saying these same things for eight years, from the very moment they first laid eyes on Barack Obama.  But there is a reasonable voice out there as well, suggesting we think about it logically for a moment. How can anyone profess to know who loves the country and who does not?  And what does that mean? We all love some things about it, but have concerns about other parts of it.

I think I love America.  You probably think you love America.  Conservatives insist that they love America, and so do progressives.  The President and the First Lady must love America or else why would they have chosen to dedicate their lives to public service at the highest level?  To get to the answers, we have to dig deeper and ask the even harder questions:

Do we love America as it is, or as we would like for it to be?  When we see the flaws in America--too much liberalism or libertarianism, too much aggression and bigotry, too much disregard for tradition, or too much income inequality--and we choose to speak out, does that make us less patriotic...or more patriotic?

Who is the real American patriot?  The one who sees things as they could be and asks 'Why not?"? Or the one who doesn't care?

Those whose religion is being hijacked need to be the ones to pick a label for the hijackers

"We are not at war with Islam; we are at war with the people who have perverted Islam". That from President Obama today sounds like a new and significant change in administration policy.  For perhaps the first time, they are on the record as calling this a war. But the childish back-and-forth over what to call the enemy marches on, the President demonstrating that he is still as timid as ever when it comes to risking upsetting the political correctness faction of his party by making any direct reference to Islam.

It may seem like mere semantics, but it really does matter.  We have to have some way of intelligently discussing the people with whom we are at war, and that calls for a mutually agreed upon glossary of terms. The White House has a penchant for the innocuous "violent extremist". But, no, that doesn't get it. That could include everyone from Timothy McVeigh to the IRA to the Manson family to the Somali pirates to the Mexican cartels. We have to be more specific and come up with a label for this one particular group, one that clearly describes them as they really are: a bloodthirsty cult made up of a handful of radicalized quasi-Muslim leaders and an army of thousands of unprincipled ne'er-do-wells and street gangsters blindly following along for the thrill of the kill. How do you describe that in two words or less?

Maybe that is a call our Middle Eastern coalition partners should make.  After all, their religion is the one having its name and reputation slandered.  Their neighborhood is the war zone.  Their citizens are overwhelmingly the ones being terrorized.  And it is becoming pretty obvious that this is their war to lead.  Maybe it should be up to the Jordanians, the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Kurds and the others to decide how they wish to refer to this common enemy. If they can come up with a description that omits reference to their religion, that should be good enough for the rest of us. We should respect that decision and add that terminology to our lexicon.

Finally, the war against Isis is beginning to have a Muslim face

It's time for the whole world, every nation and every culture, to unite behind the Jordanians in an all-out counter-assault against those criminal marauders, unleashing all the power we can collectively muster. But it has to be the Muslims leading the way.  It is their fight.  It is the name of their religion that is being dragged through the mud, and it is mostly their innocent people who are being killed.  It needs to be the Jordanians, the Saudis, and the other Islamic nations on the front line with their boots on the ground...with the U.S. and the rest of the coalition lurking behind to provide funding and support.

There is nothing remotely religious about those scumbags...so this is not a holy war. But, for anyone who has ever wondered what WWIII will look like, this could be it.

This blog is about to take on some new energy

Hello everyone.  This place has laid dormant for much too long.  I started it back in 2008 but I never had a chance to take it anywhere exciting.  Now that I have more time, I have decided to delete the old stuff and give it a whole new life.  This is where I plan to share my thoughts and ideas with those of you who have a passion, as I do, for making our little corner of the universe a more pleasant and beautiful experience.

Is it political?  Often, yes.  Is it religious?  It might be at times.  Is it fun?  I hope so. Is it about attitude adjustment?  Bingo! It absolutely is!  But what do you say we let it evolve and see what happens, shall we?  If you happen across something on here that grabs you, log in via Google and let us hear what you think.  Or, to see what else I am up to, click the dove above...and follow the links.

May each of you have a wonderful spring and a fruitful and awesome 2015!

Reed