What we need is simple technologies and common sense!
Thank you very much for your comments on my C4-Rice article.
🙂 Yet, I remain unconvinced!
My sceptical attitude is not just about issues such as C4-rice and nuclear fusion. I am basically opposed to the uncritical belief in technology of some of our contemporaries.
You cannot solve the problems of this world priorily by technological advance! Because we are stuck in a fatal loop:
Our problems get more and more complex. Complex problems call for complex solutions. These solutions again cause more complex problems the side-effects of which, again, need to be alleviated by even more complex solutions. And so on, and so forth.
This is called a vicious circle! And the circle continues to move faster and faster all the time.
We have to break this circle. Because all statistic numbers show that …
- the air we breathe will soon have left the range of carbon-dioxide concentration that was proved to have existed in the atmosphere of our earth during the last 40 million years,
- drinking water will soon become a commodity we are short of,
- the soil is being used up and destroyed at enormous speed.
If we continue in this manner, there will soon be an end to us all!
Obviously, this dangerous situation is in great part due to our unreflected belief in technological advance.
Let me cite Bertrand Russell:
» All increase of technology must, if it is meant to increase happiness, be coupled with increase of wisdom. «
So if you follow Russel and remember that the increase of wisdom among humans is and was a relatively slow process, that would mean you would even have to slow down technological advance!
Personally, I do not believe that people today are happier because they have computers, internet access, TV and radio sets. When I was young, there was one day per week when you soaked in the warm bath-tub and, following the example of your parents, you slept with open windows. My children take a shower every day and their bedrooms are well-heated. Does that make them happier?
And I have my severe doubts about cars and planes making us happier.
As a result of progress, I see more obese people than happy people (that is my cynical view). And you can read everywhere that thirty per cent of the citizens living in the American-European high-cultures suffer from depressions (that is the statistical view). We have been running after progress and blindly trusting in technology for decades. The pair of them was supposed to give us security and wealth, if not make us immortal.
During the last few years, this worked less and less. And our high-tech lifestyle is a threat to our future. It happened too often that we tried to “replace bad with worse”. Now we slowly start to discover the brutal consequences. Still, some people keep encouraging us to cling to “technological straws”. Sometimes they are called electronic cars, sometimes nuclear energy, sometimes desertec. Or hydrogen.
And to top it all, there is the lie about growth: if only we had enough economic growth, all problems would be solved. That is what an (unholy) alliance of technologists, industrialists and politicians tell us. But woe to him who starts doing the sums himself.
Our strategy of relying on technology as an all-powerful tool for solving problems has failed. What do you do if a strategy has failed? You give it up and come up with a new one.
What we need now is common sense and critical questions about things that allegedly are self-evident. Instead of focussing on the magic wand of high technology, we should develop slim and simple solutions – if possible on a regional and de-centralized basis. And if high technology can help us a little in the process – so much the better.
So: let us (among other things) also give up our technological life lie. Let us start a fresh life and deal with what is really important. This will take an effort and will mean renouncement. Giving up property is not comfortable. Comfort, however, is not a value that helps towards our goal.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
Under the heading humour, I found a nice side blow on nuclear fusion in a wikipedia article.
Using a humorous undertone, the fusion constant (similar to the petrol constant) has been defined as the fact that the technical mastery of nuclear fusion and respectively the energy gained by it are always considered possible around 30 to 40 years from now for decades.
P.P.S
And at CERN, the experimental physicists are way behind the theoretical physicists.
P.P.P.S
The pictures show miniatures of Rolos Computer Vintage Galery. In those days, they were highly complicated. Today, they are somewhat trivial and hard to reconstruct or put to work.
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