WE
live in a time of great turmoil and change – a time fraught with man’s
destruction of his environment and his world, but a time too, full of promise
for the future.
“The turning of the millennium,” sociologist Kenneth Boulding once wrote,
“marks a middle period of a great transition from a civilized to a
post-civilized society.”
“Science and technology are the bases for this transition. Our present
generation is similar in many respects to ages past. However, it has its own
uniqueness in the extent that man has relied and grown dependent upon technology
and the benefits it has conferred upon us.
We live longer. We can see more of our world. Our thoughts and work can
reach a worldwide audience. Some would even assert that we have finally attained
a significant measure of control over the quality of life
Rachel Carson, in her essay “An Obligation to Endure,” states that until
now, “the history of life on earth has been the history of life on earth has
been the history of interaction between living things and their
environment.
It has only been humankind, which has acquired the significant power and
intelligence to alter the nature of his world. However, the consequences of
change have also been catastrophic.
The destruction of the environment bears witness to man’s folly. Every
year, animal species are continuing on the path of extinction. Likewise,
hundreds of thousands of hectares of rainforests disappear under wanton
aggressive development undertaken in Third World countries. The cities and the
megalopolises of the world are urban centers of pollution and
decay.
The greatest fear Carson has had is that humankind, adaptable beings we
are, will accept passively the continuing destruction of our
world.
If science and technology have enhanced our creative potentials, they
have also enhanced our power to destroy. Is technology then a villain
disguised?
To answer this question, we should not simply look at technology, but we
should also examine the cultural attitudes and values, which have led to and
resulted from technological advances.
For if these attitudes and values have ushered in a favorable environment
for the advancement of science and technology – and made us receptive to the
advancement of modern society – the same values might as well be affecting the
misuse of technology and its failures.
Poet e.e. cummings, a humanist, once ridiculed what he feels as
humankind’s exaggerated sense of self-importance – a factor that governs our use
of technology by advancing the cause of our progress.
He has spoken about the dehumanizing effects of technology and the fact
that technology has increased barriers within society by blinding us to the real
needs and desires of our fellows.
Those who have warned against modern technology’s ability to destroy
values maintain that humankind has already built an “artificial universe” and
has been devoured by that same pseudo-universe. What humankind has failed to
realize is that the same artificial universe it has created is dependent upon
the real world for its continued existence.
Modern technology has now imposed upon us responsibilities at least as
great as the rewards it promises. Thus, those who are scholars of culture and
society should not look with awe and wonder at what humankind has accomplished
with technology.
For modern technology, despite being an extension of humankind and a
product of the creative genius of many men and women, is a tool to which we all
have yet to perfectly come into terms with.
22
June 2000