There is this belief that’s spreading, that human beings will be able to outsmart their way out of any problem. The energy crises will be solved with clean nuclear fusion and hydrogen, water cleanliness will be solved with bottled water, and overpopulation will be solved with increasing agricultural efficiencies. And oh yeah, that “educating” the world will create a million jobs and give us everlasting world peace. Given enough time, science and intelligence will liberate us from all that we don’t like about the world.

This is all a bunch of crap.

We live in a world of biological processes. No matter how much our brains don’t want to admit it, we are biological creatures. We derive nourishment and happiness from biological sources. We live in a world designed to provide us with everything we need. It is only when we think we can do better, that things fall apart.

We are transforming the world from a biological process to a rational process. Replacing the magic and power of irrational biological processes with clean, scientific, understandable solutions. Eliminating the soil’s natural ecology, and replacing it with specific nutrients engineered for perfection. Getting rid of face to face learning for the more efficient computer learning. Along the way, we are losing the most important part, the biological processes that make us human.

Nature understands this, but human beings do not.

We want to completely redesign the world for efficiency. Pills for brains to work the way we think they should, genetically engineered food to grow the way we think they should, and mass communication so people think the way they should. Slowly eroding diversity to create a very simplified world. One that will never work.

The problem with science is it looks at everything as though it’s happening within a vacuum. Each discipline only happens within its own little world. Physicists don’t know much about sociologists who don’t know much about biologists. Least of all who understand every discipline. Everybody’s asking “How do I do this?”, and very few are asking asking, “Why? Why should we do this?”

Why do we want to redesign the world so bad? Why do we want science to rule over every area of our life? Why do we want a veneer of reason over every aspect of our life?

Science won’t save us, we need a biological, irrational world. Despite our best intentions, our brains are still driven by feelings. People are not rational beings just because they have rational thoughts. Watch what they do, and you will see the irrationality. Creating a world of rationality with science will only destroy our spirits. Force us all to pretend to be something we are not, and leave nobody happy. Then make billionaires of the people who sell us synthetic happiness.

I challenge you to an experiment. Sit in front of a television for three hours and then write down how you feel afterwards. Then go into wilderness for three hours and write down how you feel.

Next, chat with someone online for half an hour, and then talk with someone in person for half an hour, one on one with no distractions. Write down how you feel after each.

Which feels more real, which feels better? We are feeling creatures, and everything we do is to feel a certain way. Why are we sacrificing the immediate closeness for the detachment of technology? Why do we give our cell phones and computers so much time, but ourselves and each other so little?

Science won’t save us. It will only disconnect us further and further, into little efficient machines that are all miserable. Fifty years ago I don’t think anyone knew what social anxiety was. Now it seems like everyone’s got it. We’re uncomfortable and we don’t know how to act. We’re losing our ability to relate to each other in exchange for the ability to relate to machines.

So what am I advocating? The elimination of science and technology? The destruction of reason for a world of complete irrationality and feelings? That we do away with modern medicine in exchange for magic potions?

None of the above. I’m just pointing out the necessity for restraint in how much we seek to change the world for the “better”. Very often, the largest pushes forward are really bigger steps back. The green revolution made global food production dependent on fertilizers and pesticides derived from oil. Now the production of food depends completely on massive oil inputs. What happens when we can’t create an easy fix to replace these non-renewable inputs?

I’m advocating appropriate technology and voluntary simplicity. Intelligence tempered with wisdom. Our massive technological advances have come exponentially quicker and quicker, but our collective wisdom has not grown as quickly. There is a push to know more and more, and information gets larger and larger. But nobody knows what information matters and what doesn’t. Computers can organize it all for us, but they can’t tell us if it matters or what it means.

Our intelligence has outpaced our understanding. We need to be very careful with things we don’t completely understand. Releasing genetically modified corn into the food supply with only a few years of testing. Dropping an atomic bomb to end a war.

So let’s start with implementing solutions we understand. We know a living soil is better for the plant and for the person who ends up eating it. Why are we solving the problem with the most complicated, technologically advanced solution we can find?

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There’s nothing left to explore.

The whole world has the internet and computers. Everyone’s communicating together quicker than ever, but we still haven’t done anything worthwhile with the power of instant communication. We’ve got all this technology, but it’s not improving the world as much as we thought it would.

Now we’re giving kids in the third world computers through the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program. Countries are buying up cheap laptops to give to kids, in the new computer arms race. What exactly, these computers are supposed to magically do is beyond anyone. Looking ahead, the laptops will probably do exactly what affordable PC’s did to the United States in the nineties.

Kids will get hypnotized by the screen, and disconnect from the world around them.

Giving a young poor kid a computer is like giving them a ticket out of all of the worries of the world. All they have to do is learn how to use it, and they’ll permanently escape all poverty. I know, because I was a young poor kid who got a computer.

When I was twelve, I got my first computer. It was a Pentium 75Mhz with 32 megs of RAM. Cell phones today have more computing power. But I got it and I knew it was something significant. I spent hundreds of hours on it, installing Linux, installing Windows, compiling, learning to program. I became very proficient, and developed an attitude.

Whatever time I spent on the computer away from family, away from friends was justified. It was my ticket to the easy life.

And so, days passed and years passed, and still I worked on the computer, absorbing everything. I waited for the day where I could redeem my check for all of the hard work.

Only, every other kid in the United States did the same damn thing. So, when it came time to cash in on all that knowledge, it wasn’t very highly valued. Years of life into a machine, with nothing back out.

This is what the kids in the third world are really getting with that laptop.

Because it’s inescapable, we live within the physical world. We thrive on human connection, the kind that doesn’t glow through a screen. This is forgotten when kids think they live within the plastic bubble of the computer and the screen. Instead of valuing and paying attention to what matters—time with family, volunteer work, school, etc—kids will go away into their own worlds, through the screens.

And it’s this disconnection with reality that causes a whole lot of problems. Television was bad, we thought, because it was just such a passive activity. Now, the internet is even worse, because the content is just as stupid as on TV, but it’s accepted as a productive activity.

What’s really being sold with these laptops is distraction. Give the third world laptops, and watch them waste their hours away on the internet instead of focusing on bettering their world, their land. It’s a distraction, plain and simple, and it will work. They’re thinking it’s a gift.

What the kids should do, instead, is focus on the things that matter, the things that make them different from the first world. Focus on healthy soil, focus on clean water, focus on clean air. A world view is being sold through these computers and the internet, one in which your land doesn’t matter. But in reality, your land is what matters the most. Just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you can stop eating food or drinking water or breathing.

The United States and the rest of the modern world has forgotten this, and mega corporations grow genetically engineered food for us. In fifty years we’ve become a nation in debt and on our way to a depression. Now none of us grow food, and the soil’s been abused. It will take hundreds of years to repair the damage done.

So save yourself, kids. Get out before you get sucked in like we did. Get sucked into believing the computers could redeem you from the world. It’s a lie, none of us get to escape its inconveniences. Embrace the world instead, and make it a better place. We need it more than we need an internet.

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