Excerpt #9 from my book, Interconnected, Interrelated & Interdependent, Like It or Not:
A WORLD OUT OF BALANCE
When we examine some, and by no means all, of the evidence of our abuses, a deeply troubling portrait begins to form.
Contrasted against a glowing background of achievement and a horizon of unlimited potential, we observe a foreboding pattern of excessive consumption, short-term gratification, and primitive partisanship.
Each of these by itself has extracted a great toll from us, but the three, working simultaneously and interacting synergistically, are propelling us toward a destination from which there may be no return.
By our decisions and our actions we have introduced varying degrees of richness or poverty into the human equation.
In this manner, we have produced the world in which we live.
What do we find after we weigh all of our advances against all of the costs we have willingly paid?
Do we find a content humanity, at peace, enjoying the fruits of its technologies and consumption?
Hardly.
To the contrary, despite our considerable ability to analyze, resolve, and provide for ourselves technologically, and to benefit from endless creature comforts, there persists a prevailing pall which dampens our spirit.
There exists among our people little buoyancy, mirth, nor companionship.
ln their place there is all too often a surrender to the mentality of “getting ahead” often through intense competition while, in truth, falling further behind.
In stark contrast to our quantifiable achievements, there exists a quality of life to which we aspire that remains distressingly beyond our reach.
It is the essence, the very nectar of existence, which remains stubbornly elusive.
Within it lies the key to both our mental and physical well-being, as well as the solutions to our pervasively troubled relationships between us individually and between us as nationstates.
It is the unfulfilled half of our potential, of which our deeper selves are mindful, that lies dormant awaiting release and expression.
It is like a genie, trapped within a bottle, ever ready to be discovered, silently waiting for its liberator to extract the cork, so it can shower its wonders upon the beholder.
“Technological societies know how to create material wealth, but their ultimate success will depend on their ability to formulate a postindustrial humanistic culture. The shift from obsession with quantitative growth to the search for a better life will not be possible without radical changes in attitudes.
“The Industrial Revolution placed a premium on the kind of intelligence best suited to the invention of manufactured articles, as well as to their production and distribution on a large scale.
“In contrast, a humanistic society would prize more highly skills facilitating better human relationships and more creative interplay between humankind, nature and technology. (Rene Dubos)
While we marvel at our ability to instantly transmit sound and clear color images over great distances, including outer space; to jet and rocket across the face of the earth and outward toward neighboring planets; to store, access, and manipulate virtually unlimited quantities of information with our computers; and to in every way continue our technological assault virtually unabated, we remain a troubled people.
We are reaching limits and are entering a phase in which human values and the quality of life will influence not only thefuture of human population growth, but the future of science and technology, rather than the other way around. (Jonas Salk)
World-renowned scientist, humanist, and Pulitzer prize winning author, the late Rene Dubos, expressed his concern for what he considered to be one of the central problems of modern civilization.
“Science and technology provide us with the means to create almost anything we want, but the development of means, without worthwhile goals generates at best a dreary life and may, at worst, lead to tragedy.”
Today, most of us would be hard pressed to state goals that transcend the acquisition of things.
The opportunities of living are diminished in proportion as what are called “the means” are increased. (Henry David Thoreau)