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Wameeth’s Views (1): Iraqi People and New Media

This post is written by Wameeth, a young Iraqi who was written several articles on MideastYouth.com, a youth network with the following mission: ”promote a fierce but respectful dialogue among the highly diverse youth of all sects, socio-economic backgrounds, and political and religious beliefs in the Middle East.” Besides that Wameeth is one of the youngsters behind the blog Iraqi Streets, what he describes as  “a free platform for expressing Iraqi citizenship and brotherhood”. Please feel free to share your thoughts on Wameeth’s views on Iraqi People and New Media.

 Iraqi People and New Media

In Iraq it is common to see people miss the old days, not only on the security and services levels but on everything, life was cheaper, less noisy, young people more respectful, and it was simple and more civilized, this comes from the fact that we distinguish our lives before and after the war in 2003. That does not mean life was great before, with wars, dictatorships oppression. But people were more used to it, it was familiar to them, safer. They had distinguished their safety personality zone, as the system trains you from birth to learn what to like and hate.

During the few years after the war in 2003 Iraqi people had to catch up with what they missed in the 20th century. They had lost the system and had to learn a new system, more free and democratic, but also newer and faster. As we grow enjoying what is familiar, strange new things terrify us, we will look to it with suspicion, not trusting eye, but as we need to survive we try to adapt.  For example older people were horrified to miss the one TV station with two news programs and missed sleeping when its broadcast ends. But soon the 24 hrs broadcast of the war in Iraq in the many new news stations became a source of entertainment to them, despite the serious images of the war.

Soon we could not live without the new technology. But as we still in our way try to build a new state, our needs to define our identity makes us look for the past and focus on the days when we had movies, theatres, libraries, art and civilization.

We miss the old days because our needs as humans for enjoying safety and civilized community was lost. We need to find a common state in which we can benefit from the new changes in our way of life to reconstruct a civilized modern culture, with respect to peace and free from violence.

Then we can just miss the past and enjoy the future.