progress
progress. big word.
sorry if what follows sounds random. i've been reading econs and AD/AS crap and NI and income disparity and trade and cos my mum screamed me out of bed for some reason im in a zhamming mood and i did the right thing I THINK by fishing out my lit notes and forcing myself to read bout darwinism (watever that is. sorry miss heng) and natural selection and human rights and community .. and progress.
lit and econs. throw in a bit of gp and i am utterly sleepless. and restless.
lit notes mentioned natural selection - "laissez-faire" - where the law of nature cancels out the weaker leading to the survival of the fittest. darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, believed that the "worst elements of the poorer classes.. would have to be physically prevented from passing on their infirmities" by having children. all in the name of.. thats right. progress. we need social evolution for progress. we need community reform for progress. we need to co-operate, everyone, to work towards the infinite promise of advancement.
but do we have to build the ladder from the bones of one another? fact is by the time we reach the top and triumph that the world is, literally, at our feet, the applause we've always been waiting for would die before reaching our ears that only then realised the surrounding silence. we could realise we are alone.
the crux lies in the very word progress. what do we first think of when we see this word? in econs, in gp, in lit. anywhere in the world now the this word is likely to mean money. technological advancement. when people mention progress now, what they really mean is economic growth, an increase in status, and all those important things that somehow seems more vital to our well-being than ever before. and they butter it up by saying we should work hand in hand and achieve it together. then some people toast it to crumbs by saying that next we should stop the "weaker" from having children so that we can all move forward.
is that what progress really means? we have had so much, so much pride in declaring mankind being more "civilised", a word that is never far from "progress". being a civilian in the civilised soceity of a civilisation. to me, it is more than building concrete buildings and roads and wearing suits and speaking impeccable english over an earl grey in a pretty porcelain teacup. it is more than inventing new things and creating methods to keep an endless inflow of money. it is about feeling. progress in human mindset. the way we handle our emotions. without these civility is merely an empty shell of concrete.
how could we truly declare progress when we do not want to help and support who we deem the "weaker" people? there is an irony here. we are intending to progress as a whole by leaving a few people who could hinder us behind. not only physically, but emotionally. the fact that we could be willing to put them down is telling. in fact, are we actually going backwards? in the past where humans lived in their primal stages natural selection decided the strongest lived, irregardless of the existence of the weaker. it was NATURAL, perhaps, to see the weaker fall and accept this as part of life.however, now with strings tied to pinkies all over the world one well-directed twitch could make a difference. we are all connected, whether by technology and increased awareness and consciousness of ourselves, of one another, of the world. could this notion of "natural selection" come so naturally to us? can we really see our weaker fall and take it as it is? or even encourage it? we would, in essence, be integrating an element of primal existence into our quest for progress. we could be building a nice gravel highway in the wrong direction - backwards.
in truth, if we are trying to be fair by implementing "laissez-faire", we could end up terribly unbalanced and fall hard on our butts. natural selection can never be possible in a world that man has made with his hands. one reason is, obviously, there is not much of nature left to select naturally. in fact, purposefully stopping people from having children is in no way natural and can never be. how can we determine who is "weaker"? we are building our own definitions on our earlier definitions. how we define the weaker would be based on how we define progress which is defined by how we define success and our ultimate goal. we are fitting ourselves into frames and one wrong frame in the wrong perspective could lead to a huge mistake on mankind's part, and the danger is we can hardly see and analyse beyond the frame because we think it is what it is. we made it what it is. if we choose to frame progress as a picture of wealth and power then it will be what we work towards.
i wouldnt dare say im right, but coming back to it, progress is about learning. not just how to operate complex machines and fiddle with human genetics and bring the entire humanity onto "a higher level". it is also learning how to be human, and humane. to understand the intricacies of human interaction (blast brain neurons and pheromones and other scientific jargon here) and feel for one another simply because we care for our kind. let our hearts grow with our purses. that, to me, is the true development of mankind. if we can work so thirstily towards acquiring knowledge, surely we can also take effort acquiring a heightened sensitivity (oh darn, the word here is LOVE) for fellow people. otherwise, we could turn into those very robots and machines we created and proudly used to indicate our spreading progress.
mm well. i think i made a lot of sweeping statements and all that gp-booboos. but well not intending to write a logical essay. its jus ranting. jus found it sad that somehow the world is turning a little colder and warmer at the same time. oh crap now there's geog here. miss heng's notes really caught me at a good time.
HAHA oh man i jus realised ive really neglected my blog. sorry guys. :0(
eep. prelims up. MUGMUG :P
