This article was first written in July 2009. It remained in draft form for a while and I published an edited version during the Covid pandemic. I have updated it several times since.
Like many of us I ponder questions that keep resurfacing in my mind.
These questions are varied and many – Why are things the way they are? Why is oil so important in today’s world? What drives global conflicts? Why does extreme wealth exist alongside desperate poverty? Why is religion so important? Why do diseases like bird flu appear out of the blue (A question in 2009 before the Covid-19 pandemic)? Why do we need passports and visas to travel? Why is Africa poor and North America rich? How did humans become Earth’s most dominant land species?
These questions often result in deeper reflections – Are these conditions inevitable and can we influence them? Are we helpless and is our our fate predestined? Do we or can we know the answer? If not, is there a rational way to find answers and solutions?
There are so many questions I would like to explore, but before I begin you may wonder why I am sharing these thoughts. Various concerns have inspired me to put pen to paper.
The greatest driving force is a sense of confusion and despair while living in a highly complex modern world. I read about the rise in mental health issues and sense that many of us don’t know where we are heading or why. I cannot ignore that we face devastating realities. Billions are living in abject poverty with little hope, our environment is fast deteriorating, and we consume resources at an unsustainable rate, while diversity and other life suffers.
Meanwhile other people are optimistic. We live in an age of unprecedented access to knowledge, with astounding scientific discoveries, improved health services, remarkable efficiency of food production, and the ease of trade and travel. If we have managed these successes surely we can also fix other issues that might arise?
While our technological achievements are astounding, these do not seem to be the main ingredient for a cure. I have the impression that our current trajectory is molded primarily by two other factors – our inherent human nature and our underlying attitudes, beliefs, and level of education. The uses we put to our new technologies is more often than not determined by these two factors.
Surely our technological achievements and our level of education are related? It may seem contradictory to celebrate our technological achievements—which clearly stem from knowledge and expertise—while simultaneously suggesting that our general level of education is lacking and contributes to failures. After all, our collective ability to design remarkable tools and solve complex technical problems is extraordinary. However, I believe these technological successes are largely independent of our broader educational levels. Specialised technical knowledge is typically developed in collaborative specialist environments such as corporate or university research laboratories. These settings are far removed from the kind of general understanding that most of us need to make informed decisions and navigate our modern complex world. Aside from that, even some acclaimed scientists can have a poor understanding of who we are and how we relate to our surroundings. For example mathematician Isaac Newton spent a lot of time on alchemy (trying to make gold from other metals) and trying to calculate the exact date of certain biblical events. Lord Kelvin, one of the greatest physicists of the 19th century declared that “heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible”.
While we are unlikely to be able to change our human nature, we cannot even begin to do so without heeding the advice etched on a temple in Ancient Greece advising visitors to “know thyself [1]”.
However we should be able to improve our general level of education, and change our attitudes and beliefs. These have changed consistently over the generations, and sometimes in much shorter periods.
Assuming that decisions that we make today can have an influence on our future prospects and the quality of our decisions are likely to be influenced by our understanding of our world and our level of education, we should be able to improve our trajectory simply by questioning and obtaining knowledge.
Thankfully, this is relatively easy to share and interchange. Hence this blog is my personal response to these challenges.
Ideally I would like to have more time to ponder these questions and explore them with others before publishing, promoting more clarity.
However, I have realised that I do not have the luxury of time on my side. This is a hobby that I do in my spare time. Furthermore, if I wait, these thoughts may fade into the fog of memory or disappear entirely. Most of all I feel an urgency to do something positive.
So I publish earlier than I would like. I hope that this compromise is interesting to read. I would like this to result in dialogue and a positive trajectory of thought. Ultimately I hope it leads to something beneficial.
[1] “Know thyself” – from Wikipedia – (Greek: Γνῶθι σεαυτόν) is a philosophical maxim which was inscribed upon the Temple of Apollo in the ancient Greek precinct of Delphi.