Can our differences of opinion bring us closer together

a few years ago

i joined flat earth 24 7. a community on

the internet

where people that believe our planet is

flat as opposed

but don’t worry i was undercover in fact

i didn’t even want to belittle their

views i wanted to understand them

and how people ended up this way

in the end of the day my problem with

the community was not even their views

it was the fact that the second i

introduced a contesting opinion

i was immediately banned from the

community

this got me thinking to the founders of

the internet

who imagined a town square for the

global village of tomorrow

or a tool that would cross barriers and

connect cultures

is flat earth 24 7 really something they

would be proud of

now this community might not have used

the internet in the best way

but its potential to connect people and

impact change in the real world

is something that’s always inspired me i

wanted to use the power of the internet

to bring two of my interests together

one is the internet itself

and the other is environmental

conservation

the idea for what i wanted to do started

out with the view from my window

sometimes when i looked outside i saw a

lake on fire

that’s right i’m talking about

bangalore’s infamous belundu

well how does a lake catch fire lakes

are supposed to put them out right not

start them

in short it’s something called

eutrophication

where plants release methane instead of

oxygen which is

combustible i wanted to help out

but i didn’t know where to start so for

a period of time i just jumped into the

issue

and tried to learn as much as i could

about it i interviewed activists

such as sema sharma who’s been a guide

throughout my project

scientists such as dr tv ramachandra who

taught me about freshwater ecology

and even some politicians that i could

access

i learned a lot through this process

about policy

and science but i think my biggest

learning

was the fact that there’s absolutely no

lack of passion in bangalore

people want to help they don’t like

these problems either

but the problem was that they had no way

to get connected to each other

and no way to get turned their passion

into actual impact

now i wanted to bridge this gap between

a desire to do something and actually

doing it

and i thought i knew the perfect way

using the internet

with the help of the one million for one

billion foundation

i developed savebelondolake.org

an organization centered around a

community website that had blogs not

only written by me

but by activists and scientists and

politicians

and problem forums where people could

discuss problems with the lake

solution forums where they could ideate

solutions

and i even organized photography

competitions just

to get the youth involved and sensitize

them not only to the problems of the

lake but

to a vision that it could be beautiful

one day i soon noticed

that on the website there was a lot of

push back to ideas and a lot of conflict

of opinion

some people wanted to change the lake

into a water park because

at least that way it would get cleaned

others

wanted to turn it into a wetland because

that would support a strong ecosystem

and fishermen

and farmers in the area many people

wanted to build

parks around the lake and we were trying

to decide which was the best idea

early on i saw this all as a distraction

why were we spending time

arguing when we had such a pressing

issue to deal with at hand

what i didn’t realize though is that the

only reason we were a vibrant community

was because of this conflict of ideas

the only reason

we had good ideas is because the good

ones rose to the top

and we let the others fall to the bottom

soon

i was even able to advocate for belando

lake at the united nations

this got me invited to the belandur

career group the most prominent

conservation group

to do with lake issues and other

environmental issues

in bangalore we work together with the

media to pressure the government into

action

and it even worked for about a year now

the government’s been desilting the lake

in short

removing excess sewage and beginning the

cleaning process

and that was amazing but i want to take

this opportunity to say

that i was never the one that knew the

most about any of these issues

i wasn’t a professional scientist i

wasn’t really an activist

and i definitely wasn’t a politician but

what i could do

was notice the fact that conflict of

opinion

actually brings us together after all

the internet can lead to a lot of

different communities

flat earth 24 7 was a perhaps benign

example of this

but we’ve seen several riots around the

globe prompted by social media

what you should notice all of those

started off with people echoing the same

opinions

save balander lake on the other hand was

born out of a crucible of conflicting

ideas

and pushback and i think that’s what

made it great

so we should notice that sometimes

disagreements can bring us together

and lead to impact and change in the

world

the internet really is a huge

marketplace of ideas and opinions

it amplifies the voices of even the

smallest communities in the world

and sometimes this conflict can be

really intimidating

but what i’ve learned is that it’s these

differences of ideas and opinions

that actually bring us together so let’s

use the internet

use these difference of opinions to

continue to change the world