We need to get one thing straight from the start. The Internet is neither good nor evil, friend nor foe. Good and evil is an evaluation of human morality, which is a function of free will. Something without will can be neither good nor evil, though it can be used for either. Guns kill both friends and enemies, depending upon who is shooting and why.
It is easy to love or hate the Internet (I happen to love it), because it is what we see doing the building or the destroying, not the people behind it.
Who tempted Chava to eat from the Aitz HaDa’as Tov v’Ra?
The snake, right?
Wrong.
The Sitra Achra, aka Angel of Death, etc. That’s who spiritually entered the snake and took over its brain and mouth. Chava thought she was talking to a snake, but she was in fact talking to the Sitra Achra, who does everything he can to make a person sin and rebel against God. A master of disguise, the S”A just found the snake to be the best fit for the job (Drushei Olam HaTohu, Drush Aitz HaDa’as, Siman 4).
No, what makes the Internet evil is not the Internet. It is the access it provides the Sitra Achra, vis-a-vis human agents, to our yetzer haras. But then again, did we really think something so powerful and useful could actually be so inexpensive? Not unless someone really wanted us to flock to it, so that they could gain access to aspects of our lives that previously were off bounds to them.
It’s like going to war against guns. Guns are not the evil thing. People who misuse them are. In Israel, astute gun-carrying civilians have often averted crises because they had the firepower to do so. But a lack of gun control can also leave too many evil people in a position to carry out their nefarious plans, and since it is too hard to know who they are it is just easier to hate guns and stop them from being sold.
It is likewise with respect to the Internet. It’s not the smartphone or Internet that is the culprit, but the people who make evil things for them. Who are they? Where are they? It’s easier just to ban the Internet and anything that uses it. It’s classic baby-out-with-the-bathwater mentality.
It’s also not going to work. If someone is miserable enough to shoot up strangers, they will find a gun. They’ll buy it on the blackmarket somehow, and then we won’t know they have one…until they use it on innocent people. Likewise, as long as children grow up thinking that living by Torah is painful, conclusions they draw from seeing their parents struggle, they’ll look elsewhere for their happiness, which today is enticing them from all around. If they want a smartphone, they’ll find one somewhere.
That being said, who isn’t at war against the Internet today? To be connected is to be at risk. How many billions of dollars are spent on cybersecurity each year? Governments live in fear of hackers getting through to sensitive material, shutting down defense systems, or interrupting vital public services. The world is filled with evil people relentlessly hacking away at anything and everything that can give them a greater opportunity to rob us blind, or worse, God forbid.
But the greatest threat of all? It comes from people who want more than our money. They’re not interested in causing our sites to crash just for the sake of crashing them. If anything, they’d rather remain unnoticed for now, undetected. Their war is a quiet one…They want to know who we are, what we do, what we’re up to, but not for marketing purposes.
Remember the American Revolution? The French Revolution? The Russian Revolution? Each time the politically and militarily weaker elements of society gained strength in numbers and overthrew their ruling classes to take control of society. Revolutions have happened countless times throughout history.
But back then revolutions only involved populations of tens of thousands, perhaps even a hundred thousand people at best. And the revolutionaries were not well-connected to similar populations in surrounding countries, much less far away empires. This kept most revolutions local.
Today, however, it is a VERY different world. Not only are there almost EIGHT BILLION PEOPLE on this planet, but they form a global community. They’re in touch with each other. Within moments, the whole world can know what is going on thousands of miles away, and support it locally if not internationally. We may not think like that yet, but the people in power who want to stay in power, do. They have to.
For example, China and Russia have known about this potential “problem” for the longest time and are already dealing with it. They already exercise population control, and subtly experiment with new levels of it. You can watch fascinating, but scary documentaries of just how easy it is to take control of hundreds of millions of people with the help of current technology.
No wonder people are worried about the hysteria surrounding a man-engineered pandemic, and the mass “vaccination” program that has followed it up.
The amazing thing is that you can achieve unprecedented population control without much overt intrusion. You can call it a society-wide brain transplant. You don’t have to physically operate on anyone’s brain, just replace its way of thinking. You just have to convince people that they’re still doing their own thinking when in fact they are absorbing what others want them to think.
The whole BDS program against Israel is the perfect example of this. Most of the people who have joined it have no idea about the truth of the situation, just what they have been told is the truth. They believed it, absorbed it, and have become passionate about it, and unwitting victims of someone else’s falsehood, thanks to the Internet.
Billions of people the world over have rolled out the welcome mat for the Internet because they are convinced it is totally to their benefit. Let’s face it, it is in so many wonderful ways. Who knows how many lives it has saved, or at least enriched?
Yes, you have to be careful. There are a lot of scammers out there. The Internet has cost the world billions of dollars in fraud, robbed innocent people of their savings, caused a huge amount of divorces, led to an inordinate amount of illicit relationships, and resulted in countless tragedies, etc.
But all of it, the good, the bad, and the ugly is really just subterfuge, a distraction for the real damage that the Internet is capable of doing. Thanks to the Internet, it’s no longer only about the dumbing up society. It’s become about doing the thinking for it. And then just like that, the people in charge can control billions of people by telling them what to think, how to think, and when to think it. And no one will be the wiser.
The War of Gog and Magog?
We’re smack dab in the middle of it.