My Problem with Technology

As anyone who knows me fairly well will tell you, over the past three to five years I have developed an increasing distaste for technological advances.  So I thought I would take a few minutes to put my thoughts into more carefully constructed words.  First of all: I don't believe technology as a general concept is uniformly bad.  In fact there are whole categories of technologies that are uniformly good.  Specifically easily replicated and distributed technologies are almost always uniformly good.  For example the idea of the wooden plow, paper, writing, open-source software, etc.  These technologies are good because *most everyone* who wishes can through their own labor take advantage of these.  So what are the characteristics of a good technology?  1) Mass-distribution/Availability 2) Replication and 3) Harnessable with One's Own Ability (Can anyone no matter what their economic/social state learn and reasonably take advantage of it?)

However, most technology falls into the bad category which while it has positive potential uses most often ends up creating a negative social outcome.  These are technologies whereby economic and social power become more concentrated by the limited owner or user of the technology.  This includes things like copyrighted inventions, satellites, machine-intensive industrial production, etc.  So why are these not necessarily good for society?  I will not argue against the fact that these inventions have had a positive impact on a very large number of people's lives.  A lot of technology does in fact improve at least some people's lives.  However, they also tend to concentrate power into the hands of the few people who control that technology.  Now is this a bad thing?  Some would say these people who came up with the ideas or controlled the capital allowing them to be created deserve a reward of some kind.  (apparently the reward of adding to the collective knowledge of human achievement is not reward enough)  However, has this created a net positive for society?  Is creating technologies only a few can access/use a good thing for the world?  If it ends up concentrating power in a minority is that still okay?  Over time my answer has increasingly become no.

At the end of the day what begins to frighten me more and more is the fact that the further we seem to technologically progress the further we also seem to go towards negating the idea of meritocracy.  The more that we require access to increasingly complex technology or capital markets the more power gets concentrated into the hands of those who control it.  Therefore the lowest in society who may only have access to intelligence and labor can only go as far as the limiting factors may take him or her.  Is this a society based on merit or based on unequal access to life-defining resources?  Will even more technology help with this issue or simply exacerbate it?  I suppose my idea of 'progress' is not simply more technology and more useless consumer gadgets, but a mass movement towards a society where those who wish to fully use their capacities for reason, intellect, and labor have a reasonable pathway to do so.

The Friendship Compact

Today I am going to write about what I have decided to call the 'Friendship Compact.'  After talking philosophy with Jon yesterday it made me want to put this idea into words.  We were discussing the notion of self-interested action being held on a pedestal in US culture.  So this goes into why I think it's quite rare to actually have a true friend.

The Friendship Compact as I will describe here is an understanding among friends to do be committed to making a meaningful impact on each others' lives.  Too often I think friendship is a superficial agreement amongst people out of either necessity or coincidence.  It is rare that many friendships I think endure the test of time because most are not committed to being a meaningful relationship.  I think many friendships develop into what I label as 'Coincidence of Interests' friends.  By this I mean they are only friends because they happen to share a common interest in blogging about stamp collections, but neither friend really wants to move beyond the sphere of mutually shared interests.

So what is a true friend that fits the description of 'The Friendship Compact?'  Well these are friends that are willing to move beyond the sphere of simple common interests and are willing to set aside their own personal wants to help out or advance the interests of a friend.  An example of this would be two friends who share an interest in horse riding.  However, one friend also has an intense passion for country music and the other finds it displeasing.  True friends, following the Compact, means that at times if there was a country music concert the friend wanted to see and did not want to experience it alone the other friend would set aside his or her own self-interest and help make a meaningful impact on the other friend.

Whoa!  Friends who don't only do things when it solely suits their own personal whimsy?  It should come as no surprise that each side of the friendship is a human being with their own personal wants and desires.  While at the core of friendship this means that both friends will generally want to do the same thing there will be at times where those interests diverge.  True friends are ones that see this and are willing to make personal sacrifices for the other person.

We all need those friends who are there for coincidence of interests, but I think those few friends who put aside their self-interest from time to time are the ones that really make life meaningful.

The moral dilemma of parenthood

When I think of my personal aspirations of whether or not I want to be a father one day, I am always hit with a moral dilemma.  I have to ask myself, is it fair for me to purposefully bring another life into the world under current conditions.  I think those that know me well are not surprised that I am utterly appalled by many of the social conditions within the United States, the high military spending, lack of concern for the environment, insistence on profit as the main force to propel our daily lives, and unrelenting conditions of poverty for millions.  As someone who strives to continually learn and know more I have to recognize the implicit contract in a society which has inequality, if you choose to live in a system with inequality you must also accept the fact that at any time you could be on the other end of that system's inequalities.

Therefore, I reach the inevitable 'dilemma of parenthood.'  I define this dilemma as wondering if it is an immoral act to bring life into the world which you know could potentially starve, have less than adequate health coverage, and generally lack the basic economic necessities for 'decent' human existence.  So by living in a system that perpetuates inequality as the 'natural and proper order' it means that at any time even if I start off in a good position it could change at any time.  This is not fair to my kids whom have done nothing at all to the world except be born.

So my ultimate conclusion is that by living in this society, I have to also accept the fact my kids might have to live under terrible conditions, regardless of any and all personal actions.  Of course this flies in the face of the common notion that everyone can end up with whatever economic circumstances they want based only on their personal actions.  While in my youth that was a nice naive thought.  I did grow up in poverty, although I never realized at the time.  I was lucky to have parents that cared and tried very hard.  However, it takes more than working hard in the USA.  It takes luck, and am I willing to bet my kids' future on luck?

The Nature of Violence

Today something somewhat troubling happened while interacting with my three year-old nephew.  He saw a bug...and wanted to kill it.  Now, why would this seemingly ordinary event seem troubling?  After all, doesn't this same kind of event happen in untold thousands of households on a daily basis?  Well here is why it's so troubling, the reason he gave for his actions was "I don't like it, Uncle Sid."  So here I am presented with the forceful will of a three-year old (if you have never interacted with a three-year old forceful is indeed the proper word) and I was at my wits end trying to explain in terms a three-year old might understand why perhaps it might be wrong to destroy another living creature just because you simply "do not like it."

The troubling implication of this fact is that a three-year old has already decided that violence is the solution to removing things he or she does not like.  Somehow my nephew has learned that violence is an acceptable way to deal with his problems.  Now perhaps he fails to recognize that the bug is another living creature and there are implications of its own existence, but I would imagine that in the mind of a three-year old where monsters become real that he understands it is a living creature.  Therefore, this inexorably leads me to one of two possible conclusions - either he has already picked up from our culture that violence is an acceptable means for carrying out ones own will or that until properly educated people naturally turn towards violence to get execute their own desires.

Now, being a proper student of Gandhi I naturally lean towards the former in lieu of the latter.  However, even making this assumption, it is a troubling thought to realize how ingrained in our culture violence must be for this to be the conclusion kids draw at such a young age.  Is this due to interactions between children and adults whereby adults use their physical advantage to control children (such as picking them up and moving them when they don't come willingly)?  Or is there some other cultural artifact going on, such as glimpses of violence in television (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a culprit in my youth) or seeing interactions with other children who come from families where violence is a more common punishment (spare the rod, spoil the child).

Finally I would ask if it begs the question should we be doing more as a society to move beyond our ancient roots whereby violence was an everyday part of our existence.  In some ways ancient struggle for survival was part of a cruel system whereby to survive required extraordinary action.  Forming a hunting party to kill animals with spears would naturally breed violence into any society.

Could I be looking too much into a simple action by a three-year old? Yes, most definitely.  But are there things that this three-year old can teach us about ourselves?  Yes, most definitely.  I will leave with this parting thought.  Gandhi once remarked that India should not obtain her independence through violence because then violence would be required to maintain that independence.  Although Gandhi was a construct of his own cultural time and circumstances, I can't help but wonder if the United States' obsession with violence somehow connected to our foundation in a violent struggle for independence.