It’s Complicated

Volodymyr Kish

        We are living in a world that has gotten far too complicated for most people to understand. We have become totally dependent on technology and gadgets whose inner workings are far beyond our ability to comprehend. How many of us know how our cell phones work, or what makes the Internet run, or why our microwaves work faster than a conventional oven?

This applies not just to technology, but also to our whole infrastructure; the social, political, economic and ecological world in which we live. Our economic and financial systems are such that even the experts have no idea of how they really work. With all the best minds and expertise available, governments throughout the world have failed miserably in providing economic stability, full employment and equitable prosperity for their citizens. Our legal and judicial systems are such that it seems nothing can be done without the expert assistance of a $500 an hour lawyer. Our tax system is so convoluted that the average tax-payer is incapable of filing an annual tax return without the assistance of professionals or a computer program.

Even the food we eat has become a mystery to us – check the ingredients on a can or package at random from your grocery bag and I would hazard to guess that you would have no clue as to what most of them are. Do you know what the Disodium EDTA in that can of chick peas is, or the Calcium D-Pantothenate in the bag of granola? Go back further down the food supply chain and most people would be astounded with how the food they consume is produced. The old model of the farmer personally tilling the soil, planting and harvesting his crops or raising farm animals is long gone. Modern food production is a complex industry utilizing mechanization and automation to the max, not to mention the use of countless chemicals, hormones and genetic modification techniques.

The worst thing about this trend towards complexity is that it’s accelerating, and our ability as average human beings to understand and manage this change is deteriorating rapidly. It is particularly troubling to me, since I have made my career and profited from being part of this escalating pace of change. I have worked most of my life in the technology sector and done well by it. However, as I get older and begin to appreciate the downside of uncontrolled expansion and “modernization”, I am becoming more convinced that we are creating a dangerous gap between the complexity of the environment that we have created, and our ability to manage it in a manner which is both sustainable in the long term and in the best interests of Mankind, in general.

It is obvious that that the less we know about something, the more limited is our ability to make an informed choice. Because of this, most of the time we leave the important decisions to the experts. Regrettably, the prime motivation of these experts is not necessarily the well-being of us the users and consumers, but rather, the profitability of those who employ them. From all the disasters and scandals of the past few decades, we have increasingly become aware that the priorities of the small elite of those at the top of the economic and political pyramids are usually based on greed and short term self-interest, and not a better quality of life for a burgeoning Mankind. The results of all this are easy to see: unstable economies; loss of faith in our politicians and political systems; a widening gap between the rich and poor; global warming; the destruction of our natural environment; and the breakdown of many of our long-held ethical and moral values.

The gist of the matter is that our rapid technological and scientific progress over the past century has created a huge gap between our ability to change our environment, and our ability to do so wisely and responsibly. What we can do these days is mind-boggling. Unfortunately, what we are actually doing places us at increased risk of destroying both our planet as well as the social progress we have made as human beings to this point in our history. We place inordinate importance on technical and scientific education, and virtually none on ethical, moral and spiritual learning that is crucial to the further positive evolution of the human race.

We need to redress this imbalance if we are going to survive this century. We need to pause more, and question why and how we apply all of our rapidly increasing technical and scientific knowledge. We need to establish different priority and value systems that are based more on social and cultural criteria that benefit civilization in the long term, rather than the short term bottom-line mentality that dominates our world today. We need to recognize that we are human beings with personal and spiritual needs, and not just a labour resource commodity in an impersonalized economic machine geared towards consumerism and perpetual, irresponsible economic expansion at the cost of our planet’s and our civilization’s health and well-being. And we need to do this sooner rather than later – we are living on borrowed time.