we've done...are we any better? have we made any advancements? have we moved forward, or closer? closer to what? closer to any understanding?
as we look out into the world, we are able to see all these new and wonderful technologies. a device that is able to hold more music than any one person is able to listen to. things to get on the internet. things that make our lives easier. easier in the sense of what ever makes your life easier. the diesel engine in my car has made my life easier. i don't have to fill up the tank as much. i get further on a tank. it saves me some money...that goes other places, but at least not into my tank. so i'm running the whole gambit.
advances in science. knowing that a planet is orbiting a star. or that the universe is 'slimmer' than previously thought. are these advances?
while we are still killing each other over anything. we are still dealing with questions of ethics. no one is right or wrong. however some believe that they are right, and thus the state of the world today. what makes one view better than another. expanding into a political view. what makes one politic better than another. or more right than another. have there been any advancements? or are we just apes with opposable thumbs still living in an hobbesian state of nature...we just have political boundaries? what makes the world of today better than the world of the romans?
nothing. we have not advanced. we have not moved forward. just because i am able to have a 'phone' that is able to do everything but wipe my ass doesn't mean that i am a better person. or the fact that i have an understanding of what it means to be a person. much less the fact of your 'personhood.'
ignorance is bliss. is this even accurate? the word ignorance implies that there is knowledge.
what is the starting point? what then becomes the razor; ockham's razor?
[shalom...]
12.11.07
with all that...
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4 comments:
I think we are better. I for one am glad that science and technology has allowed me to move beyond living in trees and scavenging on the African plains for food. Overall quality of life has improved since the Roman times. The fact that people allow themselves to be manipulated by the media/corporate/political powers is another issue. And which belief or politics is best? None. There is no ultimate ethics or politics. The ones that win are the ones that can get the most followers with the might to defend them.
man does that sound like Nietzsche. but i think that we just have made side steps, moving out of the way of things, rather than forward. it seems that we are still living in an Hobbesian State of Nature, within the state. Life within the State of Nature, according to Hobbes, is 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.'
i don't see a 'betterment', but rather an 'easement'. it's easier to get our food. i may be secure from the lions from the african plains, but am i secure in any other way?
[shalom...]
I just had a similar conversation with two different people this week: We (I mean the current Gen X or late baby boomers or whatever people want to call us) have never had to 'want' for anything. Many of our parents (or our grandparents at the very least) lived through World War II and the depression and knew what it was like to go without. On Tuesday I had a woman tell me that she remembered what it was like not to have meat available when she was young. Sometimes people would say things like, "Hey, the Andersons have meat!" so everyone would run to the local grocer and stand in huge lines only to find that the meat was gone when they finally achieved their goal at the end of the line.
So... science and technology have made our lives easier and have made it possible to get almost anything we could want. But are we richer for it?
Absolutely we are richer for it. If it wasn't for science we would not have the options available today. The thing to remember is science just gives up options. It is up to us to take advantage of them. To often either fear or ignorance causes us to reject science and what it offers...
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