Thanks to the availability of 24/7 news, we are reminded, on a daily basis, all over the world, that among us live some truly horrible people. Every day, wherever we are, we can see, read and hear about the heinous actions of these animals. The Martin Place siege is another example of this. The danger is that this permanent negative feed of news will eventually desensitise us. There are also people out there that live and breathe hate and feed on these events to divide societies. The word terrorist has its roots in the Latin terrere, which means to frighten. As the siege continued hour after hour, I became more and more concerned that the social media terrorists would latch onto this event to spread hate towards Muslims, fear and uncertainty. This was indeed the case. But then, the good people stepped it up and within hours #illridewithyou attracted thousands and thousands of tweets from people offering to accompany Muslims to work who felt unsafe or scared to travel in their religious attire. A few hours later this hash-tag had gone global and the fears I had earlier changed to hope and even excitement that we may yet be able to defeat this evil, without bullets. If we live by the #illridewithyou concept, we WILL be a better society. We will be more tolerant of those who do not share our beliefs because we might actually take the time to talk to people we perceive to have nothing in common with and learn more. Additional victories will also be ours as this approach will nullify any terrorists actions, whether he uses a bomb or a keyboard.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 07:34:31 +0000
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