Just a heads up… The first decade of the 21st century is almost over.
It’s almost the year 2010. Let that sink in for a moment. Two-thousand and ten. Twenty-ten. We should be diddling with black obelisks in orbit around Jupiter, but instead, we’re stilling trying to figure out if a modern, progressive, technologically advanced nation should be concerned with the health care and well-being of its own citizens.
We’re unlocking new vistas of science and human knowledge, literally blasting apart the very fabric of reality with the Large Hadron Collider. We also still have entire populations living in dirt huts, wasting away on treatable, curable diseases.
The same people voting against the rights of an oppressed minority were once themselves, a mere generation or two ago, oppressed and unable to vote or marry outside their ‘race’.
Obesity is an epidemic on side of the globe and starvation an epidemic on the other.
Does anyone else feel a weird sense of both pride and guilt when looking at the current state of the human condition? I’m incredibly proud of some of humanity’s accomplishments, yet i am still shocked at our failings. The fact that both can be seen right next to each other, in such a stark comparison, leads me to question the true value of all of our bleeding edge advancement. What good is a particle accelerator when there are still people starving in the world?
Yes, we each have our camps, our teams, nations, groups and tribes… and we’re all getting along as best we can with the cards that circumstance has dealt us, but shouldn’t we be more circumspect in our views? Will we ever see the Earth (or, at least our species) as a unique whole?
I mock the “Mega-Churches” in my Southern town… “wow, how many poor people could they have fed with the millions of dollars it took to build that monstrous alter to ego and ignorance?”. Whereas i do not believe the LHC to be an “alter of ego and ignorance” (quite the opposite, actually), i am still forced to apply the same scrutiny and examination. What other (better?) good could have 3 billion Euros done for the world? How many improvements to the infrastructure of our poorest, our most desolate? Before forging ahead, should we stop and help the others that are lagging behind catch up a bit? Which would be the greater good and will have a greater net effect on humanity, as a whole?
I guess i just expected that ALL of humanity could be as impressed with living in 2010 as I am. I understand that i am in a privileged few… barring some catastrophe, i will not starve to death, be killed violently or die due to a common disease. I have my own climate-controlled living space, internet access, video games, all the food i could ever want and unlimited clean water. Fuck, i have an iPhone.
Deep inside, it bothers me that my lifestyle is not really sustainable and that it is built upon the back of the environment and people lower on the socio-economic food chain than me. But what can i do? Play my part, enjoy what circumstance has given me? To deny that is to throw away a good thing, though, right?
I like to think that all of advancement is for the common good, that the end goal is that ALL of humanity can enjoy the cushy lifestyle that i am accustomed to. Maybe by 3010 EVERYONE can be impressed with the arbitrary number of the date as i am now, of 2010.
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