I would hate myself for quoting the one of the most hated
villain of Harry Potter – “Progress for the sake of progress must be
discouraged”. But what was dangerous in that context is very much relevant in
today’s context.
The meaning of progress might differ from person to person.
For someone moving towards betterment, some might define it as finding solution
and solving problem or for some it is just moving from status quo. We might not
realize but in today’s world the term progress sugar coated in jargons like
innovation, invention etc has reduced to nothing but giving push to “status quo”.
A slicker phone, a device that could take command from your eye movement,
making Nano devices into Pico, femto or atto device – it’s just how far you can
think. It’s all about what next, not about what purpose the progress is
serving.
Many of you sneer at me for being so anti-technological. You
would love to brand person like me as anti-progress, traditionalist etc etc.
Remember the middle century, when church used to persecute scientists. That was
the religious crusade. Today is the world of science crusade, anyone having
doubt about so called scientific progress deserve social and political
crucification. I would still put my thought forward. Take a step back and think
what purpose these 250 years (taking industrial revolution as base) of
scientific progress has served? At first lets just talk about the indicators of
Human Development Index (HDI), which is a generally acceptable criteria.
Mean year of schooling of the world as a whole is not more
than 5 years (lowest being less than 1 year for Burkina Faso and Highest for UK
13.8 years). In Ancient Greece, China and India children used to get on an
average 5 years of education. Worldwide life expectancy is 71 years but there
are around 30 countries whose life expectancy vary within 45-55 years. That’s certainly
not better than what we had in before and early Christian era. We have made
phenomenal progress in terms of getting cure of diseases and controlling spread
of many communicable diseases that has contributed in increasing life
expectancy. But at that front also (which is actually a genuine scientific
achievement) we have nonetheless become prisoner of our own so called broad
mindset – “progress for the sake of progress”. Once we didn’t have enough problem
to find solution we started creating problem and that is what is happening in
world of pharmaceutical research today. One pill for every damn problem, who
cares for the source of the problems or the consequences of solution being
creator of more problems.
Moving to the next indicator – that is GNP per capita.
Talking about wealth, are we wealthier or well off today? Wealth is a relative
term and counting them in terms of rupees or dollars would be as misleading as
terming Voldemort as source of all evil. Your wealth should be able to fulfill
all your needs, wants and desires. If we quantify those criteria then certainly
we are much poorer than our predecessors and our wants and desires are multiplying
faster than increase in our wealth.
So all in all we are not better off than what we were
before. There was a time when progress was necessary to save children, to ward
off diseases, to remove ignorance etc. I wouldn’t list hunger, as earth has
always provided us enough to lead a healthy life and men has always found a way
to get it from nature either its primitive agriculture, hunting or gathering, technology
has broadened the choice of food and that doesn’t mean it has made it better. So
there was a time when technological progress was a tool to problem solving.
When we had less problems, then technology transformed itself problem solver to
problem creator. More the merrier, and hence it remained relevant, not only
relevant it has become next god. We might talk and talk about human achievement
but a cursory glance at our surrounding would tell us that nothing has changed.
The more we are connected, the more distant we are, the more we are safe, the
more prone to danger we are, the more we achieve, the more we are losing, the
more we solve, the more problem we are creating. It’s just a battle of moving
to and fro from your status quo. You move an inch forward and you are hurled 2
inches backward.
The hell has opened. I am ready to be crucified :P
