Has the world gone mad?

Has the world gone mad? No. Violence is a part of our history, as mankind – we’ve known it all our lives. But, never before have we been exposed to violence in the manner that we are now, because of cable news coverage and social media. Before this age of rapid transfer of information, it took us much longer to learn about acts of violence in far away lands.

[One example is Cambodia – its people experienced genocide while the world had no clue. It wasn’t until much later that people started to learn about what was happening, about Pol Pot’s Red Army of children, the plan to start from “zero.” There is genocide going on today as well – but we are clued in much earlier than used to be the case (for example, the Rohingyas in Myanmar), because they make headlines and because “civilians” report from the ground.]

So, while we are experiencing huge exposure to violence, there is little understanding of the reasons for the production of violence.

To understand the violent world in which we live today, it is important to understand that with neoliberal policies came rapid globalisation (that fostered international trade, privatisation of national institutions, deregulation, and competition) and that includes, as we can see, globalisation of terror and acts of terror. An excellent example is ISIS. Their “franchise system” that allows group membership to anyone willing to commit an act of terror in any part of the world – which ISIS can then claim responsibility for – has been a successful model because of social media and networking capabilities that are enhanced via the internet, the mascot, if you will, of the globalised world.

The UN had declared in 2011 that internet-access is also a human right (for reasons such as freedom of expression). And countries have responded well – but, for many under-developed and developing nations of the world, the internet has been an easier “upgrading” of infrastructure in the absence of real ones: roads, railways, institutions. This nod from the UN has allowed neoliberal policymakers, hand in hand with the Facebooks and the Googles of the world, to aggressively push last mile internet connectivity for deeper reach to the “Bottom of the Pyramid” to garner more consumers. So, we have a situation in which we have populations that do not have decent healthcare facilities or schools, but have internet-enabled smartphones.

In some ways, this can be seen as “development” (indeed, some pluses include mobile banking services for the poor that fosters financial inclusion). But, this also highlights the old concept of uneven and combined development that doesn’t keep par with economic growth, that in turn makes way for a class-based structure, in which many are left behind, disenfranchised.

It is, thus, fairly easy and profitable to recruit foot soldiers in a system that has produced enough disenfranchised individuals, primarily youth, looking for meaning. Indeed, meaning-making for young people has become a challenge in a system where even universities are in the business of producing skilled labour for the neoliberal regimes of the world, which isolates them as they strive to take personal responsibility for structural problems that they did not create; fighting in a system that’s rigged against them.