HOPING FOR A GOOD ENDING TO AN UNSETTLING REVOLUTION. Four things individuals can do.

Tsipras, Greece, electronic revolution, internet, three things you can do

What a day after a week like June 12 to 19, 2015: 

•      Pope issues a teaching about “our ruined planet,”

                                                    

Grafitti del Papa Francisco en el museo de arte contemporáneo "Demeure du Chaos"

English: Residence of/in Chaos

author: thierry ehmann. License: creative commons via Wikimedia 

•            White teenager massacres black people in a prayer meeting in a South Carolina,
•          Brookings Institution announces that only a third of people under 35 even look at a newspaper once a week, and
•          Greek prime minister met with the president of Russia, perhaps to find a back exit out of Greece’s financial emergency while ordinary Greek pensioners ran out of grocery money.

All of these incidents imply bad news in my judgment, amplified and brought home to you and me by the electronic web. 

I'm trying to prepare myself for living in these revolutionary times by spotting the good aspects of the change all about us.

What change? It’s the electronic revolution. The global burst of electronic networks, webs and devices picks up every piece of news, carries billions of dollars of fund transfers every day, provides entertainment for the young, tells you where you are and remembers that for data banks in vast warehouses. 

Daisy internet server, photo by Adhemerius via Wikimedia. In public domain

Can that vast, global electronic revolution be harnessed for the better?

Let me give a try at some answers.

Warfare now includes a new weapon: hacking. I don't condone hacking, but perhaps involuntary sharing of information by national departments of defense and weapon building organizations will render some horrific weapons less ominous or less used.

Climate change and the ruined climate: as ordinary people build grass roots electronic networks to communicate the urgency of the global climate situation, grass roots environmental organizations may come to exercise more clout for the common good. Examine the rising line in the chart below for a depiction of the increase in atmospheric CO2, 1960 to date, at Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

                                                         

Image by Delorme, via Wikimedia

Guns. If electronic surveillance at entrances to church and other buildings becomes more affordable, more effective, then a prayer meeting might become a safe haven again.

International economics: better data gathering and quicker evaluation of statistics on a larger scale may bring rescue to economically floundering nations before they are forced to the life boats.

And bloggers will be sharing cartoons that require only an instantaneous glance on the internet instead of printing essays on paper that requires pulp from trees, is expensive to produce and costly to deliver. That would be environmentally responsible.

Higher peaks imply broader bases, in data pyramids as in mountains. An electronic issue today and tomorrow is how to create broader network bases and lower peaks. 

“Freedom and justice” are will guide the revolution, even though the final end hasn’t yet come into view--hasn't even been defined.

What can individuals and small groups do? 

• Link up with like-minded internet users.
• Find a blogger that meshes with your values and share the link with your contacts.
• Put your values on the internet through comments and postings you write.
• Bring justice, freedom and democratic values into your postings (along with recipes, photos, recipes and advice.) I'm thinking of your postings on Facebook, Twitter and Linked-In and the like.

You may have other ideas. Share them.  Personally, I have hope but I live in uncertainty.