Happy Coalition of the Willing Day!

Today marks the 10th Anniversary of one of the darkest days in modern history — and I am glad that is 10 years behind us.

The other day, a friend of mine noted another 10th Anniversary, one that I am sad that is also over: Pierre Omidyar’s omidyar.net community project. This was an online melting pot of people trying to improve the world in different ways. Sue Braiden wrote a very good column about it years ago: “Can Social Networking Heal the World?” She also mentioned my opinion — namely that money is probably not the (only, or a “sufficient”) solution to many of the world’s issues.

There were a lot very smart people, and also people with a lot of expertise with group behavior, and most people — perhaps even everyone besides Pierre himself — were very disappointed that the project was terminated.

Since then, I have often wondered what it would require to build such a project. Today, technology has advanced so far that many of the technological features could be replicated at little or even no cost whatsoever.

But there are still 2 things I feel have not improved much in the past decade — and perhaps these are also some of the hurdles that have prevented something like this appearing again.

First, the “critical mass” phenomenon is still alive and well. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can do it yourself — you can’t. Terrorists can blow themselves up, and deranged people can murder other people by themselves… and newspapers and other mainstream media will turn these morons into global icons, but I would hardly call that something to be proud of. Most projects with the aim of improving something in the world require group collaboration — and starting without a supportive circle (usually based on trusted and trusting friends) is doomed to failure — at least in something like 99.9% of cases.

The other issue that has not changed is the idolatry of individualism propagated by mass media. Unless — as even Dr. Seuss put it — unless someone has the courage to stand up against such anti-social competitive mantras as are widespread in the most popular circles of propaganda (e.g. facebook, twitter, the New York Times and similar retard media), there is little hope that anything will change.

Then again: I might be wrong, and/or there might be other issues that continue to prevent “a better world” from happening — what do you think?