IS THERE LIFE AFTER FACEBOOK? – ADDENDUM THE CYBER GULAG REVISITED & DEBATE RELOADED • ON THE ARAB “SPRING,” LONDON “SUMMER” AND WALL STREET “AUTUMN” – AN INSTRUCTIVE LESSON FOR ASIA/SEA
ANIS H. BAJREKTAREVICABSTRACT. Misled by a quick triumphalism of the social-media, the international news agencies have confused the two: revolt and revolution. The past unrests started as a social, not political public revolt. Through the pain of sobriety, the protesters are learning that neither globalization nor the McFB way of life is a shortcut to development; that free trade is not a virtue, but an instrument; that liberalism is not a state of mind but a well-doctrinated ideology, and finally that the social media networks are only a communication tool, not a replacement for independent critical thinking or for the collapsed cross-generational contract. Londoners, Greeks and New Yorkers are experiencing about the same. How does the Arab “Spring” correlate with the European Euro-frost, and American OWS unrest? For almost ten years now, the youth in Europe is repeatedly sending us a powerful message on the perceived collapse of the social contract. The cross-generational contract should be neither neglected, nor built on the over-consumerist, disheartened and egotistic McFB way of life. Equally alienating and dangerously inflammatory is the collision of the entering youth generation (if/when deprived of the opportunity and handed over to a lame hope) – through a religious or political radicalization. In this word spanned between the Kantian hopes and Hobbesian fears, thus the final question: Is there life after FB? If so, how can we register our future claims? pp. 125–139
Keywords: Middle East/MENA, social media networks, integrity and monetization, popular movies, Dostoyevsky, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Plato, Dante, Goethe, Fromm, Huxley, Tesla, Sagan, cross-generational contract, London riots, anti-politics, Europe, Radicals and Islamists, Right-wing populist parties, austerity, Occupy Wall Street, Euro-Med, Southeast Asia, prosperity, solidarity, security, Hegel and freedom, meaning, common cause