The Challenge

Advance disparities

Published by Esteban Glas on February 10th, 2007 | This post lacks all category except for: long term thinking, philosophical rant

Mark’s comment on my post on reply to his post got me thinking on a subject I have long wondered about. Our advances in terms of society and humanity as opposed to technical and technological advances. I have always wondered why this disparity exists, what are the reasons for us not to evolve in terms of society.

Yet arriving to any conclusions on the subject has always been hard. I’ve never come up with a set of facts I could feel answer this question, not even partially. I have some thoughts on the matter but I’m afraid nothing too fancy or too deep.

The first question that comes to mind is: what drives technological advance? It is imperative to understand this question in order to turn it around and understand what prevents social advance, or, at least, the same amount of advance in both fronts.

Technology is based on science, science is based on facts. Facts are found by observation. Observation is the base of science. Trial and error (base of the scientific method) experiments are the way scientists have found to force such observations with a controlled environment, under previously set circumstances. Once you rule out chance for most variables you can actually check weather your theory is true; if a given result is the actual outcome of what was previously stated. Usually it’s not, but that’s another question.

The steps science takes forward are called paradigms, statements thought to be true until another paradigm proves the previous to be false. This way, the old paradigm that stated that objects increased their speed when on free fall by the sheer fact that they were happy to approach the ground was proven false once an apple hit Newton’s head, since no fruit can be happy if it hits a renowned physicist body.

Paradigms fall (like the apple) once they start to fail to explain certain indisputable truths. Technology’s paradigms are set by the market. When Cassettes where the indisputable truth then came this little disc (since it was little they decided to call it “compact”) that was so much better and convenient that the market adopted it. 20-odd years later, a disc the same size (in inches) became popular since it could not only store music and data but movies as well (now a company is trying to tell us that just by changing the colour of the laser to blue, sorry, blu, we should make the switch. Again).

I have just explained the what, but not the why. Observation is always easier than actually thinking.

If the world were a perfect place one could say advance is driven by human being’s indomitable desire to progress and find the truth. This might be part of the reason; but the most common force is another indomitable human desire: greed. (Greed has a very negative perception, but it’s not that bad if used correctly, or so would Yoda say). This can be monetary greed, as in “I’ll make this which will make me rich”, intellectual greed (“I’m smarter than you and I’ll prove you’re wrong”), greed for knowledge (“I will know more!”) and other interesting sorts.

Think I’m too harsh? If human kind was just a little bit more logical a lot more money in basic science, which has absolutely no economic benefits on the short term but could boost development in (and thus profit) in the long term. Lets take medical science for instance, millions of dollars are spent each year to try and find cures for common diseases. Yet, the beaten road they take is try to get a cure for a very particular issue; a small portion of the big picture. And don’t get me started on the humongous amount of money spent on “social medicine” (aesthetics, viagra, anti-depressives, the list is endless). Over a period of time if the same amount of money was spend on building basic understanding on the underlying processes instead of trying to cope with individual, isolated issues, the outcome would be better, medicines would actually cure (instead of numbing) and the bulk of knowledge gained would benefit everyone down the road.

Before anyone jumps to my throat, let me say there are a lot of scientists that either try to escape this system, or avoid it altogether. My criticism is against the way things are set, and not the executioners (scientists, investigators) who do wonderful things.

Thus we have the driving forces behind technological and scientific advance. What can this tell us about social and human advance (or lack thereof)?

Let’s look at history for a little bit. The last important social revolutions happened in a similar fashion. A group of intellectuals aren’t all that happy about what’s going on around them; and they notice the unhappiness of those around them as well. Being intellectuals all they can do is think about it, and how the world would be a better place if things were not as they are but as they think they should be. Don’t believe me? Look at the French Revolution and Enlightenment and the Russian Revolution and Communism, just to name a few.

Thus it would seem that for a social revolution to take place it’s necessary to have unrest and an intellectual support. It sort of makes sense; I can imagine the peasants on the streets yelling “Down with the king, but please suggest some replacement!“.

Social unrest must be rampant. As in people starving to death. The gap between social classes must be huge for it to take place. If everyone starves there’s no one to send to the guillotine. If no one starves, there is little need to go through all the hassle of the revolution.

Yet over history, regimes, kings, emperors, dictators, politburos, presidents, prime ministers, and the like there is always a constant: there is a group of people in power (either permanently of for a given period of time) and another (larger) group of people that just “is not in power”. Democracy, tries to give power to the people, and as Winston Churchill said “Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried“. A very nice improvement, since we are given power of choice. If we are mature enough we also have power of action in thanks to freedom.

The odd thing is that democracy is not new, Greeks had it 2000 years ago. And it was more advanced in a sense: you did not choose a representative, you chose policies (if you were lucky enough to be a free Athenian male, a minority in slave-prone, chauvinist ancient Greece). Why haven’t we come up with anything better?

Because we tend to be lazy. Most of us don’t even bother voting, imagine if we had to actually make choices. It would be nice to blame governments, economic powers and interests, but it’s all of us who are responsible for the lack of change in social and human nature. If we took so much interest into “changing the world” as we do on the latest release from Apple (or if they open up the source of they software); we would soon build a better society. But that, I’m afraid is utopia.

We can sure improve. Education (real education, not just schooling) is key to move our world forward; it might be our only chance.

And this, my friends, is my rant.

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