I donated to CeaseFire Chicago last night, because while I am lucky to be able to live and work in relative peace and safety, just a few miles away from me are areas of violence where innocent children have been killed on a nightly basis.

I am committed to the idea that regardless of the extent of our technology and the always new and interesting new ways it can be used to make money, we will not be a truly advanced culture until we have created a society where senseless violence has no place. As the article below clearly establishes, creating such a world means breaking into deeply ingrained systems of understanding and meaning-making that drive cycles of violence.

Social media has helped to steer the focus of communicators toward more sociological and anthropological understandings of the world, and I hope this understanding will continuously broaden from a narrow application to online communities, to application to the principle of community in physical space. Everyone deserves the opportunity to be a contributing member to the communities and economies that our technology has engendered, but for many, life must seem too dangerous and arbitrary to offer that kind of promise.

While a donation is certainly a small contribution to the effort to shift the mindset of violence to one that sees promise in life, I certainly hope it helps with that effort, because when even a few of us lack any sense of promise in the future and therefore bring violence to the present, we all lose out on the full potential that we could realize together as a community.

What use are any of our advances in communication if they cannot solve the really hard problems?

Please read this insightful article.