I have asserted in other essays that the single greatest moral and philosophical question of our time is what would occur if any further scientific and technological advance were impossible.
Would, in fact, our species’ much vaunted ingenuity be directed towards employing current technical means and prowess towards the establishment of a fairer world, a world marked by equal opportunity, relief from the ravages of hunger and privation, and preservation of human liberty?
After all, having harnessed the energies of the atomic nucleus and having mapped the human genetic code, having constructed scarcely believable edifices and a web of satellites that brings within its embrace a system of global intercommunication, what more is wanting to achieve a social fabric that would ensure human autonomy and protection from the perils of inequality?
Nothing, in my opinion, save a moral imperative.
Yet mankind, renowned for its unquenchable – and never-to-be-questioned – mission to ‘know’ and to discover, woven into the very fabric of its constitution, will undoubtedly continue on its quest and therefore to control even more; and just as assuredly will every scientific advance be appropriated by those in positions of power to enhance their power.
There is indeed an artistic form of knowing, represented by the great Greek tragedies and the works of Shakespeare and the many wonderful poets that have served to represent the other pillar of human achievement, but this kind of knowing has little, if any, practical value. It cannot be appropriated by politicians for uses of manipulation and conquest, not at its core; and if so appropriated it becomes not art but rank propaganda. I can think of no practical utility associated with having read a wonderful poem, or seen a magnificent play, or listened to a marvellous piece of music, save a sense of overarching communion with humanity and with those idealistic and transcendent forces that inspire our ideals.
To those whose talents lie in the acquisition and exercise of power, art is an irrelevance, while any new scientific advance is appropriated for its potential to subjugate. Even though art may represent a mastery of sorts, a mastery of emotional riddles and conflicts, it is a mastery that confers no material advantage. Creativity, and the freedom of thought and feeling that is essential to its function, is a distinctive characteristic of humankind, but its distinction pales in relation to that other pillar of human uniqueness, the wielding of power and the never-ending search for greater power under the guise of scientific inquiry.
It is no exaggeration to assert that in our here-and-now the condensation of power, spurred by remarkable advances in computation and so-called artificial intelligence, has never been more sublimely cogent, nor more global. The Few have, at their fingertips, far more than ever before, and the covid debacle showed to any with a sentient eye or ear how easily they might impose a world-encompassing agenda. It is worth recalling how swiftly and efficiently human activity was brought to a virtual stand-still in early 2020, thanks to a phoney pandemic engineered by a global mafia, a mafia that continues relentlessly to push for centralized control, censorship, ‘depopulation’ and the extirpation of human rights.
Nonetheless, we really do have a choice, but the ‘we’ I am referring to is the ‘we’ of governments and institutions who have seized the reins of power, but whose power can only be derived from the people they are meant to serve. And the choice is this: renounce the avid search for further technological advance in favor of concentrating on the creation of a just and equitable social order – or continue as is to violate the human genome and flirt with nuclear catastrophe until a catastrophe greater than Hiroshima and Nagasaki occurs.
The Amish community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, made a decision to draw a line at technological development. They eschew automobiles, for example, and maintain an intimacy with the natural world unknown to those of us who are ‘urbane’. In fact, they did exceedingly well throughout the covid wars, despite their rejection of masking, distancing and ‘vaccination’. They did so well that their success has been concealed by organized state-sponsored media. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is a paean to a similar pastoral ideal and a marked repudiation of industrialized terror.
