A quote from a science magazine, “The great mission of science is, directly or indirectly, bettering the world.”
Of course. Advances in science and technology are talked about as “improving” our lives. Making things “better”. Leading to a better “quality” of life. Often by making life “easier” or “saving time”.
If lives have been getting “better” with the advances in knowledge and learning over the last hundreds if not thousands of years, then lives in the past were, by definition, “worse”. How many people today would be happy living without all of our advancements, in a time 100 years or as far back as 4,000 years such as the ancient Greeks? Very few of us, if anybody, would choose to go back in time to live. Many people might casually reply they “would rather die than live like that”.
The present, the now, the current state of science and technology, continue to change. We continue to “move forward”. Science continues, technology continues, and will in the future. So 200 years in the future life will be much “better”, right? And the people then will look back and wonder about our “worse” lives. Will they recoil at the thought of going back to our time and living? Will those future people flippantly state that they would “rather die than live like that”?
Is that how we view our lives today, as just a wasted experience on the long timeline of human lives getting “better”? Don’t we live, laugh, love, work? Are large numbers of people committing suicide because they can’t wait for the next science or technology breakthrough? Did the ancient Greeks suffer from mass suicide because life wasn’t enjoyable?
How did human life ever get this far? Once humans were conscious and able to ponder their conditions (some suggest as long ago as 20,000 years) why didn’t they all just give up and die? If you doubt that the people 3,000 years ago could have deep and profound thoughts, then you haven’t read the ancient Greeks, like Homer, Thucydides, Herodutus, and the philosophies of Plato, Socrates, and so many others.
I really hope that you think our lives are worth living today. That we can be comfortable, happy, even joyous, and satisfied. And many who are working on advancing science and technology love that work, would never want to give that up. But it’s the journey, not the destination, if you stop to really think about it. Not that reaching the destination, getting out a new product, seeing a science experiment confirm a theory, isn’t thrilling, because we do crave accomplishments. But is it really the “thing” that is desired, or could achieving some other “thing” have been as satisfying?
If there is such as thing as a good-enough life, given some state or snapshot of science and technology, how do we know? What do we use as criteria, as reasons, for saying that we have reached some basic condition of giving every person the ability to be fully human? Is having clean water, basic sanitation, enough food, communities, education, rights and freedoms enough? What if science progression came to a screeching stop? Would that be a catastrophe, or could we adjust our thinking to accept that really things are OK?
Personally, if we couldn’t be OK with our lives now, I’d call it pathetic to be so enthralled with what may be coming in the future that we can’t appreciate today. So again, I have to ask, if Science is the Answer, What is the Question?
StoppedThoughts 