Is it possible (even remotely) to achieve peace using social media and modern communications?

It would be wonderful if it was. But people are the authors of war and warlike behavior, and I don’t see any end to that.

I didn’t think it will be but we saw how fast and effective ideas went spreading across borders through social media in Egypt and now Mubarak is no more. Possible? Yes. Guaranteed? Only if this FB post stop Iranians from developing nuclear weapons. But that would be the mother’s mother of all IFs.

Search the terms abortion, politics, homosexuality, and cats here on Fluther and you’ll have your answer.

this is not meant to be snide. i believe that the collective is head and shoulders above many, many, many other social sites in terms of intelligence and open mindedness . . . until it comes to issues like those above and then all that ever present human-ness comes out.

Even Fluther wouldn’t work without moderators keeping hostile users in check. Sometimes there’s even more verbal violence online and people are nicer to each other face to face.

My optimist side hopes so.

My pessimist side thinks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_disinhibition_effect

@phaedryx – Great article!

Piffle. Writing that you love someone is not love. Love is action. This is like online petitions. They don’t mean anything. You want to love the Iranians, then you have to take serious action, such as pressuring your government to remove sanctions. Oooh. I wonder how many of those love birds would be left if they had to talk to a legislator about Iran.