No Such Thing as “The Only Answer”
Normally, I am a compulsive reader. If I start a book, I somehow feel morally obligated to finish it, even if it is a piece of crap. If I am glancing through Huffpo and see a headline that intrigues me, I generally get sucked into reading the whole article. But there was one headline I just saw that I want to respond to, but which was so glaringly stupid and wrong that there’s no way I’m going to bother reading the article.
“Only Spirituality Can Solve The World’s Problems.”
Now, I am not entirely against spirituality. I am not a believer in any kind of a Supreme Being, or an afterlife for that matter even though I would like to be. However, I believe that spirituality is generally a positive sort of emotion, and people who are honestly seeking spirituality are at least not out holding up liquor stores or kidnapping small children.
It’s the word “only” that I object to. Very limiting and unimaginative.
There are many possible technological advances that could solve the world’s problems. Cold fusion or some other breakthrough that provides us with unlimited safe, cheap energy would rejuvenate the world’s economy in a heartbeat, and with that unlimited power we would have the means to solve all our other problems as well.
Cheap desalinization, which is right around the corner, could make the deserts green and feed the world.
Advances in cybernetics could give us an army of slave robots capable of building the infrastructure of a civilization that would have us all living in luxury for the next 1000 years.
Medical advances in the very near future may lead to us living that long.
It’s not only technological advances that could solve the world’s problems. A massive epidemic, WWIII, massive climate change or a meteor strike, while wreaking untold havoc and causing a relatively large amount of short term misery, would reduce the world’s population to a level where the survivor’s could live very comfortably.
There are other possibilities; a benevolent invasion by aliens with a superior intellect (hey, they’ve crossed light years. If we ever meet any aliens at all, they will undoubtedly be superior to us in intellect), or a spontaneous realization (practical, not spiritual) on the part of the leadership of our species that solving the wold’s problems would actually be a good idea.
I’m not holding my breath on those last two, though.
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