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Why I am too old to conquer the world
Aug. 15th, 2004 12:51 pmI'm still in school at 24. Soon I will be married, pensioned, safe and cocooned in all the little daily tasks. We pay something for this constant connection, we sacrifice something for the tiny pieces of knowledge we endlessly acquire. We trade depth away and receive breadth in return. We trade originality for mastery. A whole culture (myself as well) who would rather pay to hear greatness recorded on a Compact Disc than pay to hear the merely good performed live. We tell each other that we're so much wiser now because of all the printed information, words and microchips we juggle in our busy lives. But where in this whirl of information is their time for reflection, for self-analysis, for the fierce testing of faith to its breaking point?
The modern world is a wonder and a miracle. That we can speak to each other, travel great distances, live in cities where feces don't run in raw sewage down the gutters -- all of this is wonderful. Hot baths, running water, machined tools, electric bulbs and movie theaters -- all wonderful. But there is some sense that atrophies in the face of all this wonder. Or possibly some sense that was never there at all: most of us aren't designed with any deeper, wilder needs than food and entertainment, sex and shelter, comfort in the storm. When all these come so easily, then this uneasy questioning sprouts in the back of the mind. Why are we here, why am I breathing? What is this life that I am feeding with this food that came so easily.
At some point, we are going to have to face, as a nation, some big decisions about what we will do with ourselves now that the struggle for survival is, for so many, not a necessity.
There are still poor. There are still suffering. There are hungry people all over the world and there are still cities filled with cholera and raw sewage and starvation and a thousand woes and ills. But all of these things seem somehow unnecessary. No longer can we say "it isn't possible for everyone to have the good life." We know that it is technologically possible for everyone to have the good life. We can afford to feed and clothe and house the world. And if we're not doing that, if we choose to keep part of the world starving so that part of the world can feast beyond its needs, at some point we'll have to ask ourselves why.
We're also going to have to ask ourselves: what next? How will we deal, morally, with a world where most people will be forced to ask themselves questions bigger than those of mere survival? Because not everyone is wired to care about things beyond the immediate. Not everyone has passions, avocations, that they need to fill. How are we going to build a world that satisfies everyone, treats everyone fairly, recognizes the needs both of those who long to be tested, to strive and fight and blaze, and those who long to live and enjoy. There needs to be room for both. And there needs to be a world where everyong gets to make that choice, and no one is trapped into starvation and misery.
The wealth of the world is simply too great, now, for anyone to rationally claim that the people still starving are starving because nothing can be done. But at this point we have to realize that the challenges that will face us in the future are moral as well as technical, social as well is intellectual. And those are challenges we, as a culture, have not been preparing ourselves well to face.
Psychological, sociological, moral, ethical and political instruction lag far behind the physical sciences. And so we have a world where we have more knowledge than we know what to do with. Where the hard moral choices are evaded through language of political and economic "necessity" where necessity is just a short word for the failure of vision.
Something has to be done. But it won't be done by students while they're studying, by engineers while they're building, it won't be accomplished by any of us while we stand in our neatly defined places.
The modern world is a wonder and a miracle. That we can speak to each other, travel great distances, live in cities where feces don't run in raw sewage down the gutters -- all of this is wonderful. Hot baths, running water, machined tools, electric bulbs and movie theaters -- all wonderful. But there is some sense that atrophies in the face of all this wonder. Or possibly some sense that was never there at all: most of us aren't designed with any deeper, wilder needs than food and entertainment, sex and shelter, comfort in the storm. When all these come so easily, then this uneasy questioning sprouts in the back of the mind. Why are we here, why am I breathing? What is this life that I am feeding with this food that came so easily.
At some point, we are going to have to face, as a nation, some big decisions about what we will do with ourselves now that the struggle for survival is, for so many, not a necessity.
There are still poor. There are still suffering. There are hungry people all over the world and there are still cities filled with cholera and raw sewage and starvation and a thousand woes and ills. But all of these things seem somehow unnecessary. No longer can we say "it isn't possible for everyone to have the good life." We know that it is technologically possible for everyone to have the good life. We can afford to feed and clothe and house the world. And if we're not doing that, if we choose to keep part of the world starving so that part of the world can feast beyond its needs, at some point we'll have to ask ourselves why.
We're also going to have to ask ourselves: what next? How will we deal, morally, with a world where most people will be forced to ask themselves questions bigger than those of mere survival? Because not everyone is wired to care about things beyond the immediate. Not everyone has passions, avocations, that they need to fill. How are we going to build a world that satisfies everyone, treats everyone fairly, recognizes the needs both of those who long to be tested, to strive and fight and blaze, and those who long to live and enjoy. There needs to be room for both. And there needs to be a world where everyong gets to make that choice, and no one is trapped into starvation and misery.
The wealth of the world is simply too great, now, for anyone to rationally claim that the people still starving are starving because nothing can be done. But at this point we have to realize that the challenges that will face us in the future are moral as well as technical, social as well is intellectual. And those are challenges we, as a culture, have not been preparing ourselves well to face.
Psychological, sociological, moral, ethical and political instruction lag far behind the physical sciences. And so we have a world where we have more knowledge than we know what to do with. Where the hard moral choices are evaded through language of political and economic "necessity" where necessity is just a short word for the failure of vision.
Something has to be done. But it won't be done by students while they're studying, by engineers while they're building, it won't be accomplished by any of us while we stand in our neatly defined places.
