Technological Progress Has Not Led To a Better World
by John Lawrence
By all accounts we live in a pretty technologically sophisticated world: self-driving cars, robots, automation, the internet, smartphones that have the computing power of mainframes of 20 years ago. You'd think that we wouldn't have to work as hard, that poverty would have been eliminated and that there would be no more war. But that isn't the case. Far from it.
There is more poverty than ever with masses of people living on one or two dollars a day. War rages all over the planet. There is a permanent war establishment. More and more destructive and sophisticated weapons are being developed and deployed every day. 65 million refugees roam the world looking for a permanent home preferably in a more developed country than the one from which they came. Their homes and cities have been destroyed by war. The old saying, "We had to destroy the town in order to save it" applies to large swathes of the Middle East and Africa.
In the preeminent country of the world, the US, the world's policeman, infrastructure is crumbling and large numbers of homeless people roam the streets of downtown urban centers. Hepatitis A and other diseases are breaking out due to the fact that people must urinate and defecate on the streets. It is a veritable dystopia.
The problem is that no one, including government, is concerned about the overarching problems of peace, a decent standard of living for all and protecting the planet and the environment. People are only concerned about selling boxes whether those boxes be cars, houses or smartphones. There is no profit in protecting the environment; there is only profit in exploiting and destroying it. There is no profit in providing for the poor and wretched of the earth. There is only profit in exploiting them. Frantz Fanon's book, The Wretched of the Earth, needs updating.
Too bad that this is the official mindset of the world's formerly greatest country, the US, where seeking profit above all else is the first and essential commandment. And devil take the hindermost.