The Internet: A Portal to Violent Islamist Extremism

[marct]

Hi Steve,

On the afternoon of September 11th I said that THE great debate of coming years is whether we can survive with an 18th century constitution and a 20th or even 19th century conceptualization of war in the 21st century.

Yup. The thing is that what has really strained your constitution isn't war per se, but a complete shift in the communications and cognitive environments. The environment which produced your constitution was one of a literate elite and middle classes, but restricted numbers of works. This led to a definition of "cultural literacy" which was broad based and highly reflective and reflexive. It also led to a situation where people knew what "clear thinking" (in the sense of logical thinking) was and recognized its limitations (i.e. change the assumptions, change the outcome).

Ever since you folks shifted to a Managed Society, things have changed (consider the effects of shifting from oral debate and letter writing to local papers vs. the employment of radio and, later, television - broadcast media rather than interactive). The Managed Society pretty much had put the last nail in the coffin of your constitution by about, say, the mid-1960's and then proceeded to go into its own death throws in the late 1960's - early 1970's. The spin offs, however, such as a large bureaucracy, large corporations, "recognized thinkers" and a two-party system which stifles actual debate and thought, are still with you.

Now you are in the Information Society - a form of social organization that is closer to hunting and gathering behaviour and meaning construction than anything else. And, given the spread and reach of 'net based communications, that means the search for meaning is global. What is even worse is that the "traditional" forms of meaning available in the US, many of them centered around individualism and/or service to an ideal, had been appropriated by the Managed Society and either "tainted" or warped by them.

I agree with you that we need to relook our notion of free speech. Our traditional idea is that we're willing to accept constrictions of our freedoms during time of war. That was OK when wars were abnormal and episodic.

I'm going to sound a bit like Buckle (or Jared Diamond) here, but it really has little to do with the "abnormal and episodic" nature of war - it has to do with communicative closeness. The US, like Canada, Australia and New Zealand had a major advantage during the 19th and early 20th centuries - we were all a long way away from anyone who wanted to schmuck us and protected by oceans. Nowadays, our communications environment is closer to that of the Germanies in the 17th century and it is our communications environment that is the environment in which and through which we construct or sense of meaning and identity.

But how does that play out if war is persistent, maybe even perpetual? As a nation, we have not yet had this debate.

That is a key question, Steve. My take on it is that in many ways you need to centre that debate on the what it means to be "American" - the positive forms of identity. One of the keys to that is freedom of speech, but not freedom of action (i.e. you can talk in favour of the irhabi but not materially support them). The debate does need to be held and it will, IMHO, be a very long one.