Greece riots[/caption]Carol Forsloff with Marsha Hunt----Standing up to government is the message going on around the world, as one after another groups of people are taking to the streets to voice their objections to how their various countries are being managed. And while democracy and the people's voices can be critical in overturning injustice, is there a different side to the clamor for change and the suspicions surrounding the criticism?
While governments have their problems, with many of them, since many are composed of elected officials, the problem might be "us" in the larger sense of the word. For when we elect officials, often we do so with our emotions and not necessarily with the facts. It has also been well substantiated by science that we, as a people, are often "monkey see, monkey do" when it comes to public events. We see others responding a certain way to their objections, and we mirror those responses by our own activities. Sometimes those responses are correct, and sometimes they are simply based on wanting to be one with the crowd.
For there are only a few who, in the midst of crowds all seeming to shout with the same slogans of freedom, change, rights and so forth, as we have seen in Greece, Egypt and many areas of the world, will say it's important to look at individual situations. For are the problems in Egypt identical to those in Great Britain? Some surely are, for people need jobs, freedom of expression, rights for those living in poverty, or rights for individuals who have racial, cultural or religious differences. The traditions, however, are different. Great Britain has a history of democracy from the 11th century, a democracy whose basic foundations have been used by countries around the world. Egypt, on the other hand, comes from domination by European nations, but it's longest history has been of monarchical rule, religion-dominated themes in much of its more recent times, and an ancient past of tribes and cultures that lived in disunity for centuries.
Some countries consist of many tribes, factions, languages and cultures, so fractionalized in their patterns and customs they often do not socially interact. So across regions of the world, these people, when protesting their own need for independence, will recall the issues of the past as the foundations of their objections. Their anger and frustration sometimes boils to the top because of those ancestral roots that call for revenge for old wrongs. This was in the case of Bosnia, where conflict created genocide, Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East, where similar instances of violence have occured. Western Europe too has had its tribes and factions, but the unification within countries has been maintained for a longer period of time than in other regions of the world.
This means that the kind of protest that is being copied in different places throughout the world may be appropriate for some places and not as appropriate in others.
And sometimes, as seen in the United States, there is a certain unity in large regions where differences are significant in social as well as political arenas. One must only look at the US political map to see that of these patterns and some of these differences between North and South, and smatterings of other areas, mirrors much of the Civil War differences, although there are enough differences as well to suggest the present map is not exactly that of pre-Civil war times. Yet America has dragged its own baggage along in its historical growth. But while there are these differences, there are few instances in modern times where wholescale mobs take to the streets, as some within the United States protest should be done. The foundational history, however, reinforced by the Constitution, allowed for protest, while the Founders foresaw the protest to take a more gentlemanly tone, based upon long-held traditions, ideals and precepts of the philosophers, Locke and Rousseau. In Egypt, however, there are factions that call for religious government, others for secular strength, and still others who protest in a fragmentation of voice, not aligned with a particular group, and instead are individuals seeking the strength of many for their own individual purposes.
The Internet fuels that "monkey see, monkey do" behavior and the slogans that span the globe. And while social media can bring good principles and shine a light where there are problems, it can also spark fires that in a great conflagration can bring down the just as well as the injust.
The world's door is open for the most part, and people walk through it in the freedom of exchange in a world where information traverses thousands of miles to bring people to sound their complaints. Yet education, sound judgment and an understanding of one's history, should create for each of us the wisdom that reminds us that while we are all the same in essential ways, our history, cultures and religions are different enough to warrant an individualized response to the events surrounding us. For if we do not heed these essentials, we can bring chaos to our countries and ourselves.
