1914年12月24日，在一片“詭異的寂靜”之中，現代戰爭史上最悲傷的奇蹟沿著第一次世界大戰“西線”開始了。
槍聲消失了。新掘的戰壕裡，士兵面對突如其來的寂靜無所適從，因為他們已經習慣了炮火的震耳欲聾。入夜，從不遠處敵人的防線中傳來的第一次不是子彈破空的尖叫，而是聖誕頌歌，不同的語言，同樣的曲調。
從寂靜到頌歌，在交戰雙方的檔案中均有記載。戰後數十年，免於戰火的信件、日記和老兵的口述零零碎碎地拼起了“1914聖誕停火”的故事線。在參戰國紛紛明確拒絕聖誕節停火的建議之後，沿“西線”對壘的近10萬人“不約而同”地選擇放下了武器，走出戰壕，和擁有同樣信仰的敵人一起慶祝同一個節日。
歷史的全景則多少有些暗淡。在1914年的那個冬天，無數複雜的因素交織在一起，才讓和平意外得以喘息。
戰爭初期，協約國和同盟國雙方都對戰事程序有著不切實際的自信，走出戰壕與敵人寒暄計程車兵樂觀地認為自己很快就可以回家；此外，對於軍官的不滿讓普通士兵藉機公開違抗不準通敵的命令…今人唯一可以慶幸的是，在所有可能的心理因素背後，人性對和平的渴望仍然是“1914聖誕停火”的核心誘因。
“1914聖誕停火”最大的悲哀，在於它止步於1914年。那個聖誕節的寂靜很快便被索姆河和凡爾登的殺戮聲所填滿。
成功避免了第三次世界大戰的今天，人類在歷史的程序中終於長大了一點點。但戰火硝煙還在，在炮聲傳不到我們耳邊的地方。
追求世界和平是個大詞，在我們歲月靜好的手機電腦螢幕上，好像有些裝不下。那就讓我們先追求身邊的和平吧，在火藥味兒越來越濃的社交網路上。
不再因為反轉不斷、真假難辨的故事怒髮衝冠、不再因為與我們相左的意見而惡語相向、不再因為喜歡不同的明星而彼此詆譭中傷——不再因為一個感染了新冠的姑娘是否去過夜店而判斷她的人品是好是壞。
就像在那場模糊掉正義的帝國主義征伐中把槍放下計程車兵，我們也可以選擇在網路暴力失控前暫時放下鍵盤，讓流量重歸平和。
Sidelines | Christmas E-Armistice
In the world of social media, hardly a day would pass by without a skirmish breaking out about something somewhere.
An unknowing transmitter of COVID-19 accidentally set the Chinese social media off last week. She became the bull's eye of online trolling after stopping by several nightclubs before being diagnosed. After local police cleared her name of any wrongdoing, hate speech changed direction, blaming the "foolhardy people like her" for the lingering epidemic. A war of words ensued between the critics and lovers of modern lifestyle.
Social media seems to possess the power of having us constantly on the edge of our seats, with stories pandering into our whims. First, we have ourselves to blame. Human brain functions in favor of coherent narrative, where there is only fragmented information, and ideas that sympathize with our own. A prejudice firmly formed in the head is the shortest track on which our train of thought charges to fruition.
The pressure from a long day at work or months of being in a lockdown could trigger the mental shortcut. The anonymity with social media commentary is also complicit in our shooting from the hip. Moreover, while the consequences of the ill-judged verdicts stay on, we turn away, vanishing among a group of like-minded people and forget.
There are people who know how to make the best use of our weakness. If a network's business lifeline is data traffic, it would ache the platform to rein in content conducive to swelling stream. The persistence of fake news is an example. Dressed in provocative title and picture, the false stories appeal more strongly to our emotions, which act faster than reasoning in our neuro system, to push up click-through rate.
A click or pause at your post means one step ahead of your competitors in the cut-throat competition for viewer's time and attention. Whatever the prize of that may be. The social media players like Donald Trump, the outgoing U.S. president, know this. Divisive content can work to achieve hits. Audiences are drawn to factually problematic posts by any strong emotions, disgust, anger or excitement, to the detriment of other contents and their makers.
The risk of social media bullying and trolling could increase in the loop – we read things that reinforce our own belief and belittle others, turning short-tempered, reading more and becoming more impatient with people we disagree with.
Regulating could be a delicate dance. Social media, by and large, has emerged as the most far-reaching and inclusive public sphere. Neither governments nor the users want to choke it with heavy hands. Compared to leaving the networks to their own device, holding them responsible for the content appearing on their platforms seems a more plausible option.
What can we do to survive and spare others the emotional trap? A simple but profound lesson is from the Christmas Truce in 1914.
An estimate of 100,000 soldiers along the Western Frontline of World War I came to hold their fires in almost miraculous spontaneity at the first Christmas of the four-year-long Armageddon.
Surviving letters, diaries and oral accounts from witnesses help piecing together a vast picture rich in details but short of causality. For the benefit of this column, an important detail that comes out is how it began: guns falling quiet as the Christmas eve came down the battlefields.
It was an "eerie sound of silence" after months of "hissing, cracking and whining of bullets in flight, machine-gun fire," recalled Alfred Anderson, a Scottish World War I veteran in 2004.
Haltingly throughout the night into the next morning, carols emerging across the trenches in German as well as English broke the silence, instead of the roar of canons – a detail shared by many reports of the truce.
Every history textbook record what followed. Emboldened soldiers clambered from gorges to exchange festival greetings with enemies, sharing cigarettes, food and alcohol. Burial of bodies scattering on the no-man's land for weeks. Even games of football between opposing soldiers.
Later on, research found several historical and psychological factors at work behind the truce. Not all of them may attest to humanity's absolute command over depravity, but together they could drive towards the same sentiment: the war machine should be switched off, and people should go home.
If the neuroscience findings of the past half century are not kidding us, all we need to do to snuff the fuse leading to a potential social media shouting campaign around something that's probably factually problematic is to pause and think quietly. Holding our keyboards like the soldiers putting down their rifles in the WWI trenches on 1914 Christmas Day. In the course of a minute, let us ignore the exclamation marks in the headlines and let the reasoning kick in, chewing the lines to the bone to see if they are worth the salt.
It was the first Christmas during the "war that ends all wars" (what an irony in retrospect). Three more were to come in bloodshed and the fourth with trauma. At least 22 million lives were lost by the end. The 1914 Christmas Truce tells us two things: it could happen as well as what would happen when it failed to hold.
Social media has become a battlefield, some people say. But, with a little pause before typing, hopefully we can make it look a lot less like one.