In his ceaseless quest for “progress,” man is creating an environment which is ever more inhospitable to man. Many would call this statement an oxymoron. The general wisdom is that progress makes our lives better, as embodied by the old DuPort slogan, “Better living through chemistry.”
Unfortunately the general wisdom, while in part undeniably true, has come at a terrible price for mankind. The environment which sustains us and gives us life as well as our very humanity are being seriously compromised, possibly irreparably. Let me count the ways - some much discussed, some less so.
Probably the most discussed way in which progress is creating a world inhospitable to man is the destruction of the environment. The industrial revolution and the adoption of the automobile as the primary and preferred mode of transportation, combined with the rate of population growth and the emergence of newly-middle class populations particularly in China and India, have resulted in an exponential growth in the use of fossil fuels over the past century, especially in recent decades.
From 1910 to the present, fossil fuel use has increased from a base of 1,000 to 11,000. In the last 50 years alone, its use has increased almost 300%. And while coal, the dirtiest of the fossil fuels, does have a much smaller share of the total energy market today, what is rarely pointed out is that the actual amount of coal used world-wide is more now than ever; a 200+% increase since 1965.
This increase in fossil fuel use is causing a change in the climate/weather parameters that man has depended upon to support his way of life for millennia. (See my post, “Climate Disorder = Global Upheaval.”) We are probably already past the tipping point. The efforts of the international community to reduce carbon emissions may, if successful, slow the process, but it will not stop the process. The news from scientists is always the same, “We didn’t think it would happen this quickly.” But it has and continues to.
Beyond the use of fossil fuels, our use of chemicals in every conceivable product is causing mostly unknown damage to man. Yes, a small number of chemicals have been studied and shown to be dangerous, and they have been taken off the market. And there has been improvement, along certain parameters, in air and water quality under the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.
But vast numbers of chemicals have been released into the air, soil and water, and absorbed by our bodies, that have not been studied at all. We simply have no idea what impact they will have. We do know that illnesses, such as cancer, exist now in unheard of numbers and there is speculation that the air we breathe, the water we drink, etc. is the cause for this increase is disease prevalence. But there is no proof.
However, a rational person looking at the plethora of chemicals in our bodies, the air, the soil, and water would say that the most reasonable assumption is that these chemicals will have a negative impact on us. How could they not, given the intricacy of the functioning of the environment and the human body. And that they therefore should not be allowed unless proven to be safe. Rather than the other way around, which is how we have operated. The dictum of criminal law, “innocent until proven guilty,” has no place in this context.
Then there is the issue of technology. Several decades ago, the development of new technology was touted as the harbinger of more leisure time, a shorter work week. Instead, just the opposite has happened. With each new technological advancement, making it possible to do things more quickly or be available at all times, our lives have become more burdened. Certainly people in white collar jobs work harder now than they ever did with less time for leisure and for family. For many blue collar workers, technological progress has brought unemployment as their jobs have been eliminated by increasing automation.
But there is a darker side to the impact of technology resulting from the use of smartphones and tablets in combination with the development of social media. It’s obvious in just looking around that most people are connected to their electronic screens every moment when they are not otherwise occupied, and often even when they are. Whether they’re in a restaurant with friends or family, standing in the subway, walking down a street, or even in the theater … there, those electronics don’t get turned off till the last possible second, and as soon as the lights come up, they are turned on again.
Numerous articles have been written stating that the use of social media has become an addiction and that the social skills of people, especially the young, who are obsessively absorbed with their electronics have been negatively impacted. Their interpersonal skills have been weakened. They shy away from real relationships and instead see their social media “friends” as relationships. They are removed from whatever they are doing, they aren’t really there. This so closely tracks the definition of autism that I recently wrote a post, “The Increase in Social Media and Autism - Coincidence or Causal?” But few people seem to be paying attention to this threat.
Another topic that is rarely discussed is the impact of the automobile and tourism on our lives. For centuries we have made our homes in cities, towns, and villages. These were vibrant places … even the smallest village … with life and human interaction typically centered around the local grocery/general store or stores, sitting on porches and chatting with passersby, or otherwise being part of a community.
Now tourism and the automobile have created a double whammy that has rendered almost every place, with the exception of the largest cities, either a perversion or shell of their former selves. In the decades following WWII, many cities and towns suffered economically. Those that could turned to tourism as a way to pour fresh blood into the local economy. But due to the increased use of credit cards and the marketing prowess of the internet, tourism has in the last decade become an all-devouring monster for many communities.
Yes, it brings in people and dollars, stores are no longer empty, but the cost to the lives of the people who live there has been great. Whether it’s Charleston, Savannah, or Asheville, to name just a few, towns are now overrun with tourists. And these are not mostly tourists who have a love of history, who want to savor the charms of the past. It’s hard to know what drives them, but mostly they seem to be out for fun and a few minutes of enrichment. With hordes of such tourists, who seem to have no respect for the place they are visiting, the beauty and pace of life that was, is no more.
Other cities and towns, who continued to prosper and grow after WWII, developed suburbs in response to population growth and the availability of the automobile. With the new residential development came shopping malls filled not with local stores but chains.
As a result of this growth, and people’s love of driving, even people who still live in cities or towns started driving out to the suburbs to do their shopping because they wanted name brands/chains. And the stores in the new malls were larger, had a greater selection of merchandise, often at lower cost, than the smaller stores that existed in town. So not only did many people with disposable incomes move out of the cities, but those that remained stopped shopping there.
And so slowly, the small local stores that had been the hub of life in the cities/towns went out of business. I experienced this first hand in my home town of Reading, PA. When I was growing up in the 50s and on into the 60s, downtown Reading was a vibrant place. That’s where people went to shop. You knew and talked to the store owners, sales personnel, the butcher, etc. But by the 80s, the suburbs and shopping malls had grown so much that downtown Reading collapsed. It was no more. Literally. Now it has been turned into an office center.
And this is not just an American experience. A recent article in The New York Times noted that the same phenomenon has happened in France where many of the older cities/towns are filled with shuttered shops as people flock to the outskirts to shop in the new shopping malls.
So the progress offered by the freedom of the automobile together with that offered by the use of credit cards has resulted in a catastrophe for many cities and towns. They are devoid of the life that they used to have. The new suburbs are also devoid of this quality of life. They aren’t towns in the old sense of the word; there is no commercial nucleus around which the towns exist and function. It’s all sprawl. Everything is totally car dependent … you can’t walk anywhere in post-WWII suburbs. There is no community.
And so people’s lives have changed, and not for the better. As an example of poetic justice, the technology of the internet is now threatening those very shopping malls as more and more people are shopping online; it’s convenient.
In the largest cities, you do still have vibrant neighborhoods. They have not been impacted by tourism or the automobile. But here, community life has been drastically altered both by technology and the chase after the almighty dollar. Everyone is so focused on their electronics and making money, on improving their status in life, that they have little time or energy for other people, even often their own family. Yes, people still get together to have fun. And parents and children cross paths at home. But that seems to be all that it is. There’s no energy for a deeper investment or interest in others.
This is not nostalgia. This is an assessment of how our interaction with each other, our sense of community (beyond rooting for the local sports franchise), has diminished. And with that we have lost something very important as human beings. We have created an atmosphere that is barely fit for human life. For to be human is to interact with others, face to face on a personal level.
So what does mankind have to show for all the “progress” we’ve made in the past few centuries, especially the last one? We certainly have more wealth. We have more creature comforts, a higher standard of living. Household chores have been made easier. Illnesses have been cured and people live longer. These are not minor achievements.
But in this Faustian bargain, we have set in motion an upheaval in our environmental habitat that will have major but unknown consequences for our lives and well-being. We have polluted the air, soil, and water around us, as well as our bodies, with a multitude of chemicals, again with unknown but unquestionable consequence for our health. We have each year created new technological advances, and yet our lives grow harder and the sap of human life is drained from us. And the ubiquitous automobile together with credit-driven tourism has resulted in the demise of our cities, towns, and villages as places where humanity thrives.
In this post, I have discussed these issues from a very human-centric perspective. Yet we ignore at our own peril the impact that our “progress” has had on the animals and plants with whom we share this planet and on whom we depend in so many ways for our survival.
I’ve written several posts on how we might find our way back to a more meaningful life. (For example, see “Healing Our Nation, Healing Ourselves.”) But given human dynamics, it seems highly unlikely that we will change direction barring some huge catastrophe which makes everyone stop and reassess our way of living.
