There is the point that has appeared in my mind some time ago – people do not change. Please, do not roll your eyes with the mark of “too obvious” – at least not till I fully clarify my thought. The issue is that we were taught our whole life how our society has been developing all these years, how advanced we become , how much cleverer we are right now, comparing to previous generations.
Also, how it is important that we are able to obtain enough knowledge to compare – so as to know history. There is no doubt that we have to remember history to create the future. As Robert Heinlein claims: “A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.” This statement refers to the idea of us , as humanity, to learn from the previous generations in order not to make the same mistakes and not to start the process of development all over again but to use information which was already understood by our predecessors and create a bright reality. The funny thing is that in theory it sounds reasonable, meanwhile practice shows that even this simple idea is an utopia for our society. The most clear proof of that would be war in Ukraine – blindness and stupidity of the occupying nation. Even though we have learned about so much horror in the past – we still willingly bring it to our present. Besides, we, as individuals also haven’t changed that much – our moral values still being interconnected with laws of cristian religion and we still tend to break them; our desires can be structured in a simple piramide; there are still a lot of us who are sexists , misogynists, racists, homofobic and the level of inequality is not even dreaming about getting lower.
Our generation has faced the radical change in our routine life – we are surrounded by modern technologies from the day we are born. There was a hope that with such ability to spread information and provided opportunity for self-education something might be changed. It is indeed true that technologies have influenced our mindset even though not in the way we would like them to.
“For example Mary Midgley (1992) argues that the belief that science and technology will bring us immortality and bodily transcendence is based on pseudoscientific beliefs and a deep fear of death. In a similar vein Sullins (2000) argues that there is often a quasi-religious aspect to the acceptance of transhumanism that is committed to certain outcomes such as uploading of human consciousness into computers as a way to achieve immortality, and that the acceptance of the transhumanist hypothesis influences the values embedded in computer technologies, which can be dismissive or hostile to the human body.
While many ethical systems place a primary moral value on preserving and protecting nature and the natural given world, transhumanists do not see any intrinsic value in defining what is natural and what is not and consider arguments to preserve some perceived natural state of the human body as an unjustifiable obstacle to progress. Not all philosophers are critical of transhumanism, as an example Nick Bostrom (2008) of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University argues that putting aside the feasibility argument, we must conclude that there are forms of posthumanism that would lead to long and worthwhile lives and that it would be overall a very good thing for humans to become posthuman if it is at all possible (Bostrom, 2008).”
Additionally, such rapid spread of technological capabilities brought us from the point of being able to learn something to not learning at all, as we can find it on the internet. It is funny to realize that Socrat had the same fears that we face today. “Socrates lived during the long transition from a largely oral tradition to a newer information technology consisting of writing down words and information and collecting those writings into scrolls and books. Famously Socrates was somewhat antagonistic to writing and scholars claim that he never wrote anything down himself. Ironically, we only know about Socrates’ argument against writing because his student Plato ignored his teacher and wrote them down in a dialogue called “Phaedrus” (Plato). Socrates, who was adept at quoting lines from poems and epics and placing them into his conversations, fears that those who rely on writing will never be able to truly understand and live by these words. For Socrates there is something immoral or false about writing. Books can provide information but they cannot, by themselves, give you the wisdom you need to use or deeply understand that information. Conversely, in an oral tradition you do not simply consult a library, you are the library, a living manifestation of the information you know by heart. For Socrates, reading a book is nowhere near as insightful as talking with its author. Written words,
…seem to talk to you as though they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say, from a desire to be instructed, they go on telling you the same thing forever. (Phaedrus, section 275d).
His criticism of writing at first glance may seem humorous but the temptation to use recall and call it memory is getting more and more prevalent in modern information technologies. “
In general, technologies simply make our life easier but , unfortunately, they do not always make it better.I am not claiming that technologies are good or bad, I simply think that we give them empowerment they do not deserve.
What do you think?
Resources:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/it-moral-values/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/6-ways-technology-has-changed-mindset-modern-forever-adam-henderson
https://www.thoughtco.com/famous-history-quotes-2832302
