The Butterfly that Turned the Tides

Now the sons are coming, the new generation, and they are saying, 'I don’t care that my father agreed with you — I am asking for more, and I am asking for something else.'

-Bahraini columnist Sawsan al-Shaer,
"Unrest Spreads, Some Violently, in Middle East," The New York Times

This is like when food fights started at school - by one person at outset, then the whole cafeteria got into it. Ironically enough, food has a lot to do with this: these are revolutions of people starved for morale and dignifying resources, while those responsible for oiling the machine throw parties and feed their dogs.

But it's also so much more than that!

This is what happens when you are able to compare yourself to people you can relate to, and find that, despite your similarities, your freedoms are incredibly lopsided. That kind of power once belonged only to wealthy meritocracies.

But because technology flows like water, penetrating those deep shadows in human society, making remote strangers feel so much closer than they are, so much more real and human, everyone has this capability. Everyone can see when they're being shafted by a rotting hegemony.

That is amazing, because the world is about to change faster than it ever has - huge ripples resonating across our fiber optic cables, ripping the chords that compose the white noise of our lives.

Pay attention to this dissonance in the frequency, even if it sounds faint, or you will miss something enormous: not a turning point for the Middle East, but a turning point for humanity to which we all contributed when we decided that 56k was too slow, that we wanted organic from Wal-Mart, that Nestlé and Cadbury had to stop using palm oil to make our candies, that Wikileaks deserved an audience, that we wanted to stop paying for out-of-state long distance, that, finally, we wanted our own communication channels, and we wanted to publish faster, and we needed to feel closer.

That's beautiful, isn't it?