Bullies, Hackers, and Terrorists

Bullying is one of the oldest social disease in human society. Hacking (or more appropriately speaking, cracking) is one of the newest social disease in the last millennium. Terrorism has at its root in the same source and origian as bullying and cracking, in the depth of the human psyche.

Scott Peck wrote in his book, "People of the Lie", that the root of all evil is not in money, not even in the desire for money, but the exaggerated love of self, the love the pushes out love for any other. Bullies, hackers, and terrorists share the same exaggerated love of self excluding all others.

Rudolph Giuliani's idea that we must stand up to bullies is a good start because when we stand and be counted, to say, "here I am", the bully must stop, and take notice of someone outside of himself. Depending on the depth of the sickness, such an act of strength is sufficient to bring the person back to normalcy. Rarely does it takes an extreme act like it did with Nazi Germany, when an entire nation must be forced to re-examine its own self-love.

The other aspect of these social diseases are the need to dominate, to control their victims. Bullies sometimes dominate not only by physical force, but also with words of criticism, of demeaning comments, of psychological rejection. They can also dominate by controlling, by taking away a person's choices, a person's inalienable right to liberty. In the same sense, hackers, when they become crackers engaging in criminal activities, seek control and domination by breaking down the electronic defenses of others, to prove to themselves that they are superior in some way, in the same way that bullies who pushes little kids around in the playground have issues with their own self-esteem.

Are terrorists fanatics loyal to their cause, whatever they may be? Or, are they merely another form of bullying, hurting innocent powerless victims who can't fight back?

The new millennium has brought us new technology, nomadic devices that both free and bind us, standards of living that are at the same time highest in human history, and poorest in some places.

In his book, "Gulag Archipelago", Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote that there is a fine line that run through every human heart, regardless of political ideology, of race or creed, or any other artifical label or distinction. This fine line separates good from evil, and every human heart can make a choice, a free will determination of which side of the line to land, to walk, to live. Every step we take, every decision we make, crosses that line. Until we change every heart so that old evil does not become new terror, technology is not a solution, only a path to the world described by Bill Joy in his article warning against rogue individuals who uses technology to harm not only a few, but many. Technology is merely a neutral multiplier. How we use technology depends on what is in our heart. Until we can change every human heart to land and live on the good side of that fine line which runs through every human heart, we won't achieve utopia or a kingdom of heaven on earth.