June 19th, 2009
I am making a big pot of beans. Pinto beans. Jiminy they smell awesome! We’ll eat them with grilled tortillas and fresh made salsa and – if Husband gets my voicemail – Mexican beer. Tomorrow they live again as refried beans (did you know the “re” means “well” and not “repeated”? Well-fried, not fried again.) and I will probably make some kind of Mexican style red sauce for a baked tortilla/bean/veggie affair. Enchiladas I suppose that would be.
And I have a question. Some friends and I were discussing this the other night what the benefit of spreading information about Iran’s current crisis is. One point I thought was very good is that, in general, more information in a crisis is better than less, and on those grounds it’s good that Iran is being Twittered and FaceBooked and blogged about. Another point I thought was very good is that, so what if it’s popularly known, or that the advent of internet communication means we get this information without having to wait for the 6 o’clock news, what the fuck is anyone doing about it? Merely spreading information is erroneously conflated with helpful action, in other words.
I agree with both points. I have often thought that internet chatter gives only a false illusion of participation and dissipates real social energy that might otherwise be spent doing something like… I don’t know, but something more effective than Twittering about it. But there are probably things I haven’t thought of on this issue, so I wonder what you think. Is social media helping Iran? Does spreading information help people, or prompt people to act in such a way that others are truly helped? Or does it just makes us feel better, feel like we’re participating when really we’re just sitting on our duffs in our comfortable living rooms and offices not doing a fucking thing for Iranians? (Or Sudanese or etc etc.)
I will be honest, I haven’t done anything for Iran. I don’t count this blog post as “doing anything” as I truly cannot imagine how this will affect the life of a single Iranian person, for better or worse, in anything more than a hypothetical manner.
The Iran situation is one where very little information was spread through legitimate channels at first. CNN and other networks got their information from citizens of Iran through twitter, not through reporters. Many of the pictures of the brutality were taken by Iranians and shared over the internet, not by journalists. The Iranian government then tried to crack down on Twitter. By other people around the world spreading the message, it makes it clear to the Ayatollah that the internet bans did not succeed in silencing the issue. The whole world knows about it now. You can’t stop the signal.
It’s also important for the reputation of Iran. That country has had a (well-deserved) bad rap. But many of Iran’s citizens do not support the policies of the President and the Ayatollah. Spreading the message that most Iranians do not hate the west and want peace is important. This is an area of the world that many people are ignorant about. If people start learning about Iran and what is happening there because it is all over facebook and twitter, that is a good thing.
And more than just that, there may be practical results from this. The reformists have asked all of us to talk to our leaders and ask them not to recognize this election or Ahmadinejad as the leader of Iran. They are asking for the UN watchdogs to intervene. By showing that this is important to us, we send a message to our government that this is an important issue that their voters care about, and it should influence their foreign policy.
Iranian reformists have tried to rise up against the security forces before, and failed. At that time they had no foreign support and quietly retreated. The overwhelming support from the world community this time may be the morale boost they need to keep trying, and it may help tip the scales for those who have been too afraid to stand up before.
This is a long ramble of a response, but I guess what I’m trying to say is that moral support is not worthless.
An analogy:
I like steak. I will eat steak at any reasonable opportunity.
Let us pretend there is only one way to prepare steak – this does not change how much I like the meaty goodness.
Now let us pretend there are many many ways to prepare steak – this again does not change how much I like it, it just gives me more ways to come at it.
Basically, I think that the set of people who would do more if they had less information is much smaller then the set of people who would be able to do nothing without information.