We’ve come a long way haven’t we? The human race I mean. Later this year it will be the 50th anniversary of the moon landings. Half-a-century on from that amazing achievement and there’s talk of firing nano-rockets into space via laser beams in order to explore neighbouring galaxies. Wow! Doesn’t that just blow your mind!
From picking up rocks and stones and fashioning them into rudimentary tools, we now have computers so intelligent, they are capable of doing most things that human beings can do. From the humble wheel, we now have planes that can jet from continent to continent in mere hours. Magnetic levitation trains that can travel at speeds of up to 375 mph (603 kph). We now understand our own physiology down to the genome level. So much so, we are now able to identify the very gene that ages us.
Our understanding of ourselves and the world around us has never been higher. The advancement we have made in the last hundred years is absolutely unprecedented. Or is it?
And yet we are flummoxed by the most mundane, everyday things. Here in the UK, the country grinds to a halt if we have a light smattering of snow, or if leaves happen to fall on the train tracks. We are unable to buy a few simple grocery items, because the self-serve till can’t differentiate between a carrier bag and an empty space. People are no longer able to change a light bulb, because there isn’t an app to show us how to do it.
We are still unable to cure the common cold and in trying to do so, we have almost made ourselves impervious to modern antibiotics. We cannot generate the energy that we require to sustain ourselves without destroying the very planet that we live upon. We are unable to ensure that all children reach early adulthood with the educational fundamentals they require in order to be independent. And we are unable to guarantee that our elderly and infirm will be cared for and looked after in a manner to which they deserve.
The most frightening thing about all of this though, is that it doesn’t look likely that we are going to get a handle on these things anytime soon. Or maybe it’s a case that we don’t want to, that we aren’t even trying to fix these things. After all, if you cure the common cold, the pharmaceutical companies will lose millions selling us next to useless remedies. And why develop cheap sustainable energy when you can rape the environment and turn it into billions of dollars instead. In the future, it will be someone else’s problem. As for the young and the old, screw ’em! The young are our next generation of workers and slaves and the old are of no use to us any more.
Oh yes, we’ve come a long way all right. We have turned billions of people into drones, so that a few people can be unimaginably rich. We should be so proud!