The Arrogant Smugness of Progress

Today I read a little article about children in grades 1 and 2 who were asked by their teacher to mark on a chart every time they consulted their cell phones, whether for email, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp or any other evil distractor found on a Smart Phone. They would put a hashmark on a big chart in the front of the room. The chart was completely filled with marks—so many marks they were falling off the edge of the paper.

Why do second graders even have a cell phone? Why do kids this age even know what social media is? Well, it’s progress, right? What can you do? There is a lot you can do, but we don’t do it. Why? Because most people are slaves to progress. They think all of this garbage we contend with every day is simply meant to be, “You can’t stand in the way of progress,” they belch. That would include all manner of progress, social, technological, emotional, medical, etc.

What does this mean?

Well, somewhere along the line we started to believe that technological and social evolution is a natural occurrence and something we are not supposed to get in the way of. Then, when weird things happen due to our brilliant intellectual advancement, we just shrug our shoulders and say, “What can you do about progress? You can’t stop it.”

But many of us do worse than that. We are smug about it, we are arrogant. How so? I think there is a little bit (or a lot) of ego-pride that seeps in. An ego-pride that pats us on the back and says, “How clever is that? Look at all that we humans have accomplished, sure, there’s a little bit of crap we have to take with it, but it really is worth it in the long run.”

How sad. Meantime kids are dying (by their own hands) nearly everyone we meet on the street is depressed. No one feels there is any purpose or meaning in life. The people who are not depressed are anxious. Alcoholism has run rampant as well as drug addiction and drug overdosing. Everyone thinks the only way to escape all of this horror is to acquire more money and more things (some want power of course), drink more booze, smoke more pot, take more drugs, watch more porn, and play more video games.

While running wild to keep up with all this insanity, more and more shiny and seductive “things” roll off the conveyor belts of industry—phones, games, virtual reality, self driving cars, computers, appliances, jet skis, motorcycles, fancy watches, fake boobs, fake faces, on and on. Half of this junk is designed to entertain; the other half is designed to keep us barely alive so we can live to enjoy the first half.

So, what other great progressive technological advances are we making? Well, it seems we can do just about anything with technology, with the exception of medical technology. Oh sure, there are a lot of amazing medical devices, procedures, and interventions out there, but they still can’t cure cancer—yet—can they? And just not cancer, there are a ton of things they don’t know dick about—but should. Don’t you think? Seems oddly convenient to keep people alive just to the point where they still depend on the system, and will keep throwing bucks at it, so it will at least keep them ticking until they are bone dry. When they reach a point of diminishing return they are asked, “you want a ticket out of here? We can help you with that too.” Then those folks can go on to the great beyond and make room for the next rank of “sick and dependent folks.”

But that’s progress—oh the wonders of medical science and progress.

What else? Well, there’s AI, right? And all the advances in “gaming”—virtual reality, AI sexbots, and nearly every job humans used to do, which has now been taken over by electronics and machines. There’s that. Progress. Nice.

Oh, and I must not forget the advancements made in killing. There is nowhere in the world where our ingenuity, cleverness, brains, and intelligence have gone in a bigger way than in the advancement of military technology. In addition to what we, as the general public, know about these advancements, there is a mountain more we are not aware of. The atomic bomb started it all, and of course, that thing came as a result of the great discoveries in physics. Can’t do anything about that, can we? And how proud we all should be that humans are capable of harnessing such incredible power. It really is of no concern that we can destroy the earth many times over now with our weapon wizardry. I mean, what can you do? Stop progress?

But let’s return to everyday things before closing off this dismal commentary. Let’s look again at cell phones, television programming, social media, AI, virtual reality, and all those wonderful advancements due to human ingenuity. Has the toll these items have had on our culture and on humanity inspire no more than a mere handful of concerned citizens pointing out their dangers? Everyone else seems to be in denial of the huge cliff we are headed for—and indeed are already falling off of.

I have heard stories of parents who have TV-free homes, who do not give their 6-year-old children cell phones, and for the ones who do have them, limit social media and other mind-rotting apps. And then I hear of the people who deride these fellow parents for being too rigid and not allowing their children to be part of the progressive and happily modern culture. Religious parents are accused of this limiting draconian approach as well, and are made fun of, or worse, for pushing a “Little House on the Prairie” approach to parenthood replete with moral standards and sacred values.

And then I hear of the same protective parents demanding that books be banned in schools, when the real culprits are not controversial literature but the silent killers of advanced technology in the form of cell phones, virtual reality, and social media which brings access to children unregulated pornography, access to pedophiles, and the general dangers to the psyche found through unrelenting bombardment of “screen material.”

And what’s coming up? The technology of surveillance is probably the newest kid on the block, and it is advancing by unbelievable strides. Identification devices, cameras, chips under your skin, digital IDs, digital currencies, Musk’s Neuralink, Amazon’s new palm scanner, on and on. Soon, if not already, there will be no way to escape full identification in every regard. And not just mere identification, but a complete rundown on everything about you, every interest you have, every website you have been on to, every vaccine, every illness, every single thing you ever bought or said or typed. But that’s progress for ‘ya. Isn’t it a dream? Humans are so clever.

There are also obvious things going on in the culture that would not necessarily be labelled “technological,” but still have their basis in scientific advancement. Take the whole gender fiasco. It is now “taken for granted” that a person can determine their sex/gender by how they “feel” in their body. 100 years ago we did not have the option to do much about this “feeling.” No doubt some people had issues around this, but they just made do. Today we can surgically alter our bodies to match our feelings, and/or take drugs designed to modify our hormonal function. And it is all just par for the course. Business as usual. Sure, why not?

But what can we do? Scientific progress is a sacred cow. We are not allowed to question it, to limit its current unlimited access to our bodies, our minds, and our souls.

We will not stop this through legislation, or protest by taking to the streets with signs reading “down with science” or “kill technology.” Restrictions, laws, and mandates will not get to the core of this problem. We will not stop the damage caused by irresponsible and unwise advancements by stopping the relentless march of technology and discovery. We will only be able to protect ourselves and our children by developing and nurturing a greater awareness of the values of life and of living.

Much of what we see is driven by the agenda, by fear, and by the unquenchable quest for power and control. It is not wholly a natural evolutionary process. A large part of all that I mention here is propelled by the intentional destruction of humanity through forces that many of us are just now beginning to see. We have been brainwashed to believe there is nothing we can do about it, and that simply is not true.