Mankind In Transition
Jul 06
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner.
The Struggle of Biological Man and Technological Man
Biological mankind, in a relatively stable environment for over a million years, is finding the contemporary pace of emerging technologies a test for everything that we have known before.
- All of mankind’s biological history has little to do with present digital information based lifestyles
- Fifty years is a genetic and instinctual minute compared to the previous million years
- It will be many centuries before our primordial nature fully adapts to the realities of ever-changing technology economies
So we are not simply 21st century beings, but a complex compilation of thousands of centuries, blended into behaviors we all exhibit today.
Consequently, the pace of our technology transformation is out of sync with mankind’s traditional capabilities.
The Results of Consumer Technology and Expanding Populations
- Violence: A national symbol of American culture
- Crime Rates: An urban nightmare
- Prisons: If not for cost we couldn’t build them fast enough
- Mental Hospitals: Crowded warehouses for discarded lives
- Fear-Anger-Neurosis-Anxiety-Depression-Virtual Reality: You name it, we got it
- Detached-Solitary-Impersonal Lives: Hiding behind Televisions, Computers, Smart Phones
- Children Having Children: The only thing they know
We are out of balance, out of touch with the classical relationship we have had with our environment, and therefore, with each other.
We know technology can have many benefits, but there is a growing awareness that the benefits, if left unchecked, may control our lives in ways we are not fully able to comprehend yet.
The Old Triangle
Life forms on earth emerged because three separate elements of the environment (air, land, and water) produced conditions which were necessary for sustaining and developing new life systems.
Man is a product of adapting to the natural world, which shaped both his physical characteristics and his emotional and intellectual development.
For eons, an ancient triangle existed which represented man’s dependent relationship on the three basic elements. It was man’s precarious link to existence, a link which controlled his life and dictated his daily routine.
The New Triangle
The points on the old triangle, are being involuntarily reshuffled into one unified point. The other two points have now been replaced by powerful forces which are incrementally changing traditional biological relationships of the distant past.
- The Environment
- Mankind
- Technology
The environment then is no longer the singular engine of this planet, but part of a troika pulling the train of life.
It is a serpentine trail wandering through time in a perpetual state of change, unsure of its destination, but moving steadily away from the roots of mankind’s existence.
Some believe technology is the new savior, a priceless discovery to be nurtured and developed until it finally reveals all its great secrets, and we will finally be free from the environment’s primordial, dependent relationship.
Technology is predicted to be the great liberator of human toil and misery, a super-renaissance in the ongoing development of our existence on this planet and beyond.
Remembering the Past: Fight or Flee Instincts
From past history, combined with the lessons of more recent events, it is questionable whether mankind is prepared for the journey.
If we are both lucky and smart we will continue our march through time.
Surely we can alter and control the acceleration and ultimate velocity of our travels, and it may be prudent and timely to do so.
Without fully considering all the possible ramifications, the journey for many in the past has been and could be for most of us in the future one of ongoing terror and violent conflicts.
We still remain more biologically suited to searching for food with fight or flee instincts, rather than pondering and adapting to technological and population forces racing to new levels beyond our wildest dreams.
Image Credit: Technology and Evolution www.encefalus.com
