Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Sriram on June 16, 2022, 03:58:42 PM
-
HI everyone,
Here is a nice if long article about progress...
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220615-do-we-need-a-better-understanding-of-progress
*************
You’re a typical American in 1870. You live on a rural farm. If you’re a man, you likely began a lifetime of manual labour as a teen, which will end when you’re disabled or dead. If you’re a woman, you spend your time on labour-intensive housework. If you're Black or any other minority, life is even harder.
You’re isolated from the world, with no telephone or postal service. When night falls, you live by candlelight. You defecate in an outhouse.
One day, you fall asleep and wake up in 1940. Life is totally different. Your home is "networked" – you have electricity, gas, telephone, water, and sewer connections. You marvel at new forms of entertainment, like the phonograph, radio, and motion picture. The Empire State Building looms over New York, surrounded by other impossibly tall buildings. You might own a car, and if you don’t, you have met people who do. Some of the wealthiest people you encounter have even flown in a plane.
For most of history, the world improved at a sluggish pace, if at all. Civilisations rose and fell. Fortunes were amassed and squandered. Almost every person in the world lived in what we would now call extreme poverty. For thousands of years, global wealth – at least our best approximations of it – barely budged.
But beginning around 150-200 years ago, everything changed. The world economy suddenly began to grow exponentially. Global life expectancy climbed from less than 30 years to more than 70 years. Literacy, extreme poverty, infant mortality, and even height improved in a similarly dramatic fashion. The story may not be universally positive, nor have the benefits been equally distributed, but by many measures, economic growth and advances in science and technology have changed the way of life for billions of people.
Over the past few years, a number of researchers and economists have raised concerns that scientific and technological progress could be slowing down, which they worry will cause economic growth to stagnate.
To illustrate this more tangibly, Gordon invites his readers to reflect on the rate of progress between the mid-late 20th Century and 2020s. Imagine after that first nap as a typical American, you had taken a second one in 1940, waking up in the 2020s. Your fridge now has a freezer, and your new microwave lets you reheat your leftovers. You are refreshed by air conditioning. You are far more likely to own a car now, and it’s safer and easier to drive. You have a computer, TV, and smartphone. These are impressive inventions, and some seem like magic, but over time, you realise that your living standards haven't transformed quite as much as when you woke up in 1940.
**************
How to define 'progress' is the issue.
Cheers.
Sriram
-
I get the point it is making but not sure 1940 is best year to pick to make it.
-
I get the point it is making but not sure 1940 is best year to pick to make it.
Quite difficult to take any nap that year, even in America.
If anyone there had done, they'd have been rudely awakened in December 1941.
-
These are impressive inventions, and some seem like magic, but over time, you realise that your living standards haven't transformed quite as much as when you woke up in 1940.
Define "living standards".
It may not be true of the USA but I would say that between 1940 and now, the living standards in the UK have absolutely transformed for the average person.
-
Define "living standards".
It may not be true of the USA but I would say that between 1940 and now, the living standards in the UK have absolutely transformed for the average person.
And now we stand at the turn of that tide.
-
I agree that probably 1940 is the wrong date to choose. It could have been 1950 (after the war) or even 1960. He somewhere mentions 1970 also.
-
And now we stand at the turn of that tide.
What tide?
-
What tide?
The tide of human progress and regress.
-
Science is progressing at as fast a pace as it ever has. If this is not reflected in rising "living standards" it is because we have started to become more aware of the damaging effects of grasping all the "low level fruit" in the past without sufficient regard for the consequences.
We know more and more, we have to use that knowledge responsibly to ensure the common good - not country by country but worldwide. Failure to achieve that will result in returning to the stone age.
We seem to already have a growing group of Troglodytes in charge - only too happy to take us there.
-
We seem to already have a growing group of Troglodytes in charge - only too happy to take us there.
Ain't that the truth.
We have countries that claim to be democratic - UK, USA, India to name but a few, whose electoral system are so skewed that they in no way reflect any sort of reasonable consensus within those countries and allow troglodytes to run riot (literally in one case). Or you have China, Russia and the Gulf states where there are autocratic leaders in charge who by their very nature pay no heed to any issues save those that serve their pockets best.