Do we have the technology to create a perfect world for all?
Question from the Internet:
“Does mankind possess the technology and resources to feed, clothe, and provide shelter and education for every human being on earth? And if so, in what year did we reach that point?”
Yes, in theory, mankind possesses the technology and resources to feed, clothe, and provide shelter and education for every human being on Earth, even more people than we have today.
When we have reached that point, I do not know, and I do not think we can precisely measure it since, at the moment, we can’t even tell what our actual necessities and the available resources are since we are not in sync with nature’s integrated and interdependent system.
The problem is not with the number of people living on the planet or with available resources. The problem is how we accumulate, consume and distribute those resources. When we look at our world, especially Western society or the Western model — based on constant quantitative growth and artificially generated overconsumption- most people have much more than we need, even considering our present standard of living.
Just look at the energy consumption of the US, for example, compared to the size of their population.
We are all born inherently self-serving, self-justifying, subjective, and individualistic. According to our abilities and the given conditions, we all want to accumulate and consume whatever we can for ourselves. In the meantime, knowingly or unknowingly, we survive and succeed at each other’s expense. Again, according to how able we are and what conditions we have, we control, manipulate and exploit others and Nature for our own selfish benefit.
On the other hand, we exist in a finely balanced and mutually integrated Natural system, where each part and element takes only what they truly need and pass on everything else to the rest of the system.
We can observe this “mutual guarantee” and mutual responsibility in Nature, most obviously in our own biological body.
Human beings inherently act against this general balance and homeostasis, despite being integral parts of the same natural system. This is why in parallel with our technological and social development, we have become increasingly destructive towards Nature and each other, reaching a true breaking point and seemingly inevitable self-destruction in our times.
The only way we could understand what our true, comfortable, and natural necessities and the available resources are and how we could create a harmonious, relatively equal, prosperous, and sustainable human society is by learning from Nature’s system how integral living systems work.
Only when we create “Nature-like,” mutually responsible, and mutually complementing integration in human society, and by that, we achieve similarity and an “inside understanding” of Nature’s laws and operations, can we finally realize who we are, where we exist and how we need to live in order to remain within the crucially important balance and harmony life depends on.
Then our technology will also turn from a self-serving and self-destructing weapon that we use to control, exploit and destroy one another into a positive tool for the benefit of everybody.