“With guns you can kill terrorists, with education you can kill terrorism.” -Malala Yousafzai
I had an idea of what would be found under my search for “terrorism in 2015” in Google, but hadn’t actually tried out my experiment yet. I hit “enter,” and watched as 105,000,000 results instantly popped up in Google’s approximate count of .37 seconds. Some key terms, such as Paris, Islamic, Taliban, Muslim and FBI could be located multiple times on the first page of results.
What do all of these terms have in common? Well the obvious is that they’re related to terrorist actions from this past year. If we dig deeper to find a fundamental link, however, we discover that these words are repeatedly spat out by the media as a way of fueling the exponentially-growing fear currently felt by people throughout the world.
Here’s a different solution: Peace. We now live in a world where people choose to turn to violence, death, torture and devastation rather than talking through our issues, human to human. I’m very secure in my statement when I say that terrorism is the easy way out. You have this idea. You get people with similar beliefs to strap on a bomb with the mindset of “doing it for the cause.” You go to a crowded place at a specific time. You send the message. And it’s over.
With the sweeping age of technology, mankind has already forgotten how to deal with real-life interactions. It’s easy to type nasty comments about someone over a keyboard, because saying it to their face means that you have to deal with the real-time reaction you’ll inevitably provoke. Terrorism is cowardly because extremists refuse to intelligently articulate their ideas or demands and effectively communicate what they believe to be right to the people in power. I know that bureaucratic systems can be tough to navigate, but by taking out rational thought processes and human interaction all together, we skip a vital process in actually achieving and accomplishing goals.
We all know the name Mahatma Gandhi. Just one man, but how did he make his presence an international legend? Peace works — we’ve seen it. Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, peaceful protesters — sure, they might not get as much attention at first. They don’t instill fear in the hearts of their peers, and they don’t make unreachable ultimatums. They are patient, kind and articulate. Terrorism receives attention — peace gets results.
We are alive in a time when people generally choose to stand up for what they believe in, but in doing so, refuse to see life from a different point of view. By closing ourselves off to the possibility of viewing our world through an unfamiliar lens, we in turn contradict knowledge, academics and wisdom. Rather than turning to weapons, the world needs to realize that words, education and peace can be the greatest vehicles of change.