Progress vs. Technology

Progress. The very definition of being human. Or would it be ambition? On the everlasting quest for progress the boundaries between the beneficial advances of technology and stark greed seem to be increasingly in conflict. Always craving for immortality, striving so hard to look like gods and even harder to be God, humans often forget that progress cannot be a consequence of lust for vanity. It is true, however, that beneficial consequences can come from this twisted reasoning, even though they should be the reasons themselves.

The pursuit of immortality is as old as mankind. From elixirs to cryonics the dream of living forever has always lurked in our minds. This desperate longing for never dying has caused a huge alteration in our society in a way that, frequently, researches related to this outpace the ones related to real problems like finding cures to certain illnesses, for instance.

This quest brings about an immediate consequence. Why live forever if one cannot be beautiful forever? This question is as history-changing as wars. Standards of beauty dictate our lives from the very beginning. Imposing rules on our behaviour, way of living, cultures, on history itself. People are hardly satisfied with their appearance, mainly due to the massive bombarding of 'be pretty or you are worthless' ads on the media (which is nothing else than humans making other humans think of themselves as 'bad products'). It starts with wanting to change ourselves and now even the ones to come have to suffer from our meaningless vanity. Funds are wasted on 'designing' babies, which could be used in giving babies a proper raising or in any other more useful scientific endeavour.

It often starts as a noble idea. But as soon as the researches begin there will be a twisted-minded person waiting to blur the original goal and turn it into another by-product of greed. Reaching a point which makes people believe they can be God themselves. Take the human cloning for example. It started as a way of cloning human body parts to try replacing members lost in accidents, in birth, etc. and it turned into a foolish idea of copying humans. It is interesting how, when it comes to beauty, mankind seems to long to be the same, to be part of a whole, but when it comes to logical thinking, they just care about the individual.

Technology surely brings several benefits to the society, this is unquestionable. The problem is and it will always be mankind. Progress turns into ambition, righteousness into greed, care into vanity. If so much money was not wasted into tending to these void dreams, it is very possible that many problems could have already been solved. If we want to change, let it be our minds not our bodies.