I Believe in the Internet (Reply to Q)

Qumars Balourchian posted a blog for me today.  This is my reply for now. It may not be immediately apparent to you how it is a direct reply, but trust me, it is.

Q, I believe in the Internet.

I believe in the Internet because five thousand years of civilization have produced progressively more destructive technologies and power structures which have now led us to the brink of global cataclysm.  I believe we stand at a precipice.

People say I am an idealist but I believe I am a pragmatist.  I believe I am a pragmatist because the old ways are obsolete and the only possible new way is to make our ideals become reality.  The great ideals of the Secular Enlightenment, of democracy.  The great ideals of spiritual enlightenment, of the oneness of all being, which the Persian Sufis call "the seamless fabric of being."

I believe that our technology has provided us with this our one last hope, this new technology which we are now on, and which connects us all. This global mind, this global matrix (womb, cf. matriz, Spanish).

I believe the Internet, this gift, is our one last chance, and our one first chance, to create global communities and processes which erode conventional oppressive hierarchies and bring true power to the people for the first time in recorded history on a planetary scale.  And power to the people means power to the planet.  The Internet is Power.

This website is our little corner of the Internet.  It is not so little.  It has almost half a million hits PER MONTH from INDIVIDUAL computers all over the world.  It scores extremely highly on google on almost all modern Iranian topics, often within the top five, not infrequently first or second.  It is the largest English-language Persian website in the world. Submissions to this website frequently appear on google within fifteen minutes of posting here. I know.  I've tracked them.

This website is our little corner of the global matrix/mind.  Iran is our little corner of the world.  It's not such a small corner either.  The eyes of the entire world are glued on Iran.  And secretly, silently, somehow people suspect that if Iran can make it, there is a chance for us all.  If Iran cannot, the prospects are grim. And when they seek to learn about Iran, sooner or later google brings them here.

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THE SILK ROAD

The Silk Road was in reality many roads but the one thing they all had in common was they all had to pass through Persia, through the proud Persified cities of Bukhara and Samarqand.  The Silk Road, whose caravans transported commerce, ideas, religions from Europe all the way to China.  And on which armies also trod. The Silk Road, the veins and arteries of   Eurasia for over one thousand years.

You carry the caravans of the Silk Road in your blood  What will we transport now on this new road, this new technology?  Commerce, ideas, spirituality? Or more death, destruction, armies?

Please bear with me for a moment. 

It is likely that we all emerged from the womb of Africa.  To my understanding the oldest human remains have been found in the Great Rift Valley--in Ethiopia and in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.  Humanity may well have seen its first dawn there. Surely we sense in some profound way that Africa is our Mother.

Africa is dying.  She is dying of massive drought, of AIDS, of malaria, of dumping of toxic wastes by industrialized nations, of hunger, of ethnic wars that are the fallout of the greed-driven map-carvings of Western Imperialism gone mad.  Darfur is a WATER WAR.

Africa is dying and she is crying out to seven billion children, all children of one Mother Earth: Children, children, if I die, you will be the next to go.

Can't you hear her?

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I believe in the Internet.  I am not saying let us focus on Africa.  Our little corner of the world is Iran.  I am simply saying that we are on the new Silk Road.  What will our caravans carry? 

I believe in the Internet. I believe in Africa.  I believe in Iran.

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If you wish to dialog with me, please go to Qumars Balourchian's new blog.  Sorry, I'm unable to paste the link but if you go down the unfeatureds, it's right here addressed to Rosie and More, by Q. Please leave this thread blank.  I won't reply to any posts on it.

Thanks.

Robin Jayne Goldsmith

(Rosie) New York City