The Progress Paradox…

Moral decline renders society on the fast-track, in reverse gear!

We have come a long way from the tyrannical rules of absolute monarchs, corrupt clergy and tin-pot dictators. After four million years of evolution, humanity had finally earned the right to don the mantle of civilisation. No more obese kings murdering their wives. No more depraved monks exorcising demons in torture chambers. No more militarist dictators plunging nations into catastrophic wars under noble banners.

Progress begat civilisation and democratic freedom and freedom repaid its parent by accelerating progress. Today’s computers are building tomorrow’s, and scientific conundrums which once took years to address, are now resolved in minutes… Yes sir, progress has brought us along way down the road, but the road to where? Is mankind ready to embrace so much progress, or are we still too closely related to our simian ancestry to be trusted with it? Can anyone trust a baboon with a loaded Kalashnikov in a crowded shopping mall?

Yesterday’s pickpockets, con-artists and highwaymen, risked having their necks being stretched at the ends of ropes, when they plied their trade stealing piffling amounts of money and property from their marks, have today evolved into cyber-space identity thieves and top executives of corporate giants who ruthlessly drain bank accounts and steal billions of people’s hard-earned cash without remorse.

Yesterday’s anarchists and zealots who contented themselves with singling-out a political leader or a celebrity to use for target practice, have become today’s suicide bombers who -in the name of god- slaughter thousands of his creation and wear explosives-laden jackets bearing the designer label “God is great”.

“I have nothing to fear from the law” are words which resonate from every walk of life, but law enforcement has to progress with the times in order to serve and protect. We all want our children to be kept safe from drug-dealers skulking around street-corners and the ever growing menace of lurking paedophiles. We worry about our hard-earned cash being pilfered by some smart hacker, fret about our property being robbed or vandalised and most of all, we pray for our lives to be spared from the deranged wearers of that particular designer jacket, which may be detonated on a crowded train or bus.

In the age of relentless progress in the fields of instant communication networks, vast information technology and super-fast travel, the Kalashnikov toting baboon is still prowling around the shopping mall, only it has now learned how to pull the trigger. Technology has moved forward in leaps and bounds, but man has not only failed to keep pace with its progress, man has morally and socially regressed, giving rise to the need for more aggressive, intrusive and proactive policing methods.

Although Hollywood would still have us believe that all we need is four Stallones, three Van Dammes, Two Shcwarzeneggers and a partridge in a pear tree, and it’s “Yo ho ho, merry Christmas to one and all”… The reality on the ground remains very different.

I have nothing to fear from the law or any close scrutiny by its enforcers, nor have many like me. I say hello to over 4 million CCTV cameras trained on public places in the UK alone, hail to the FBI, CIA, MI5 and GCHQ for their Herculean efforts in monitoring telephone and email contacts by possible terror suspects and hallelujah for the introduction of identity cards, which may eventually be affixed with a GPS location microchips, fingerprint and personal DNA profiles. And when the criminal elements and terrorists find ways to dodge all of the aforementioned, we will all shout hooray when the system picks up the pace and progresses its policing and monitoring technology further, in order to protect the democratic civilisation we value so much.

But hold on for just one minute and reflect. Might the mantle of civilised democracy turn into a weighty millstone around the neck of progress? What will happen to the individual’s rights to privacy and personal liberty? What if instead of ID cards, we have surgically inserted miniature satellite location detection chips and devices which hear every word we say and then -for our own good of course- register and report all of our excesses?

Wouldn’t it be great if an inserted electrode, reminds us with a “mild” electric shock that we are eating or drinking above healthy levels, and hey, let’s not stop there… Why not an even harsher reminder that we should not smoke or exceed a driving speed limit? It would all be for our benefit ultimately wouldn’t it? The state would then become our loving and caring although a somewhat stern nanny… Come forth George Orwell and take a bow, your prophetic fiction has come to pass, albeit a little later than predicted.

I am willing to stand atop the tallest of social minarets and cry-out that I have nothing to hide from the eyes and ears of the law, but I shall cry-out even louder that I do not want to spend my life naked in a goldfish-bowl, being watched and listened to by total strangers.

A question now looms large: Might further progress turn out to be the assassin who committed infanticide and destroyed the civilised democracy it gave birth to?

Society may well be paying for its own folly. The breakdown of family values, children desensitized against violence via thoughtless entertainment, absence of social responsibility, would be role-models from politicians to sports and music stars who; lie, cheat and openly extol the virtues of drugs, gang culture and even murder. It is “uncool” to have regard for the law, respect for the system and empathy for the meek and needy. That baboon which still lurks within every one of us is breaking free from the shackles of civilisation and reverting to its wild and lawless origins.

Progress has become a revolving door where the access and exit are one and the same, a circular path which leads only back to the starting point… Therein resides the paradox.