Technology
Another common argument supporting the idea of progress is that modern technology has made life so much more efficient and comfortable. We are saved from so much time-consuming, draining toil. We can produce so much and never have to wait long for anything. Who wouldn’t agree that technology has made our lives better?
I think the big consideration here is, it depends on who the “we” is. For many Americans, yes, life is undoubtedly better. However, we must ask ourselves, are “we” all that matter? What about those other people? The people who have to work in factories, in mines, on plantations. The people who don’t get days off and don’t get paid enough to stop working anyway. The people who have to perform the same menial assembly line tasks over and over and over. The people who live in areas torn apart by conflict, drug and human trafficking, and poverty. The people who don’t have enough to eat. Are all of these people (representing a sizeable portion of the entire world’s population) really better off than they would be, for example, living in a small community, doing farm work for their own subsistence and supplementing their needs with crafts and trade?
Poverty and inequality are fairly universal across time and space. But a system in which most of the people on this planet have no choice about how to sustain themselves, and are forced to perform dehumanizing labor, and do not have enough to feed themselves and their families on a regular basis.... that is an entirely new phenomenon. There is a big difference between the limited poverty that results from interpersonal relations or environmental conditions (for which one can plan and adapt) and poverty on an unprecedentedly large scale that is necessitated by the functioning of a global system, over which most people have no control. There is a significant difference between a person’s role being determined by a small community with mutually shared interests (a community which the person is free to leave) and a person’s livelihood being completely determined on a regional basis by a global elite with which most people do not have any personal contact or relationship (also making it impossible for anyone to “escape” the system of control).
Plus, even for those segments of the population that get to enjoy all of the benefits of modern technology, it is still a double-edged sword. We get convenience, efficiency, and comfort on the one hand. (Though comfort is relative.) But we also get advanced weaponry, environmental degradation, dehumanizing productive processes (and alienation), materialism (people who devote their entire lives to such ridiculous, superficial considerations as what colors are “in” this season), sophisticated mechanisms of control and information-gathering (your bank knows more about you than you realize), weakened communal bonds (in favor of more plentiful and scattered long-distance relationships), fewer choices (more and more products and services are falling into the hands of a few mega-conglomerates), and less enriching forms of relaxation and entertainment. Since it is really a balance of superficial pleasures and grave, wide-reaching destruction, I would say the scale might tip against technology.
Of course, my position cannot be reduced to simple opposition to technology. I am suggesting that we might think more deeply about the benefits and harms of technology. I am contending that the image of “progress” as it relates to technology is too distorted. It is possible, if the current world order could be broken, and something more humane were to take its place, there could be positive uses for technology. We would just have to think very carefully about all of the potential consequences.
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