Online vs Offline 'action ground' (karmabhoomi)

This thought process is in part inspired by the surge of online activism on 26-11-2008 and in part by our increasing tendency to consider the online medium as be-all and do-all.

Today life has taken an additional dimension from what it had way back in 2000. The dotcom era has engulfed people's time and led them to be online 'junkies' of sorts - a term that could be used alternatively to being information addicts - for the sake of being addicts that is.

Activism in India was never new, but 26-11-2008 gave online activism a little more boost. But do you know to what effect?

The presence of online 'groups or forum' have remained most of just that - online.
People, with that pent up urge to be part of something, wanting to contribute but shying from the efforts, not sure of where those efforts will go, whether they will be recognized or not in this huge sea of similar thinking people, have decided to still do something - from their arm chairs.

So they sent out opinions and points of view and analysis and thought they have done their bit.

But guess what. just like a junkie who wants his next shot from somewhere for that short term gratification and release, this is all that the armchair analysis, blog post and online contribution does.
It makes people feel high with that short term release of the burning thought process which remains unchannelled into action - since it loses its steam as soon as the individual hits the 'Enter' key The online fora makes people comment, smirk, chat, well do some amount of deep thinking and then express their point of view. That's that.

So guess what happened to the 26-11 online activism. i for one was sleepless for 2 nights last year. Online, twittering, watching TV, but all in all it was clear, it was a huge level of emotion that needed a release and there was no way an individual like me would have come out on the street and asked others to join to go and encourage the cops to take action or to get some kind of help or even contribute in ANY PHYSICAL way. So here there were millions like me who had no way to channel their energy physically and all of it went in typing at breakneck speed and hitting the 'Enter' key with such a force that it would have carried a bullet for at least a meter.

But all that has remained of that online "activism", burst of emotions and pent up opinions today is a huge resource pool of computer servers and hard disks which are hosting the archives of that thought energy converted to kinetic energy finally residing in the form of electrical energy - and doing what - generating heat into the environment and contributing to global warming.

So in what way has online fora have any impact on how we 'act'?
Going by what happened for 26-11-08 or for that matter any such online fora which are for a cause - Nothing Great. All the energy if would have been channelled into some 'action' for which there was even an iota of constructive outcome predictable, I am sure people would have poured out on the streets to contribute physically, not just on that day but through the year also an year after that event. But most such online fora today have become mediums for MLMs where people are using the numbers to advertise products or comment on non-issues.
All that has happened to all those online surge of emotion lasted for not more than a month as was predicted even by the talk show members on TV who more so were from the political classes and knew the subjects well. They said this is raw emotion and it will die down, people will burn candles (again not something everyone understood to what purpose) and with that their emotional energies will burn out. Which is exactly what happened. We are back to where we were much before any terror attack tried to put us out.

So what actually would work? Online activism, blogging, joining fora and groups or offline physical getting together of people to make things happen? "Everyone" need to remember that The internet is only a medium, not the source of action. It can facilitate but the action has to happen in the physical human world by human beings coming together physically

Only 'coming together' at a value/idea/objective level can be facilitated by an online medium. the physical coming together, accepting each and every human being with whatever looks, height, shape, size (s)he has takes a huge amount of mental effort in today's times without feeling threatened and invaded into 'personal space' but focusing only on the common objective/goals.

Thinking that simply participating via the online medium will resolve issues is a mere fallacy that will lead us human beings to turn more passive, isolated, divided and incoherent in resolving our critical issues.