The Drunken Philosopher #8: Just think what we could do!

 A bit ago I saw this image posted by the All Science, All the Time FaceBook page, and it sparked a bit of a fire in me.  This picture spells out, in only a few words, a frustration I've had with human nature, and our seemingly inherent unwillingness to accept change and progress:

Srsly guys, stahp.

  Since this is something I actually do feel strongly about, expect a bit more seriousness than what you may be accustomed to from the Drunken Philosopher series of postings.


  So yeah, this is something I've been saying for years. There've been so many periods in human history when serious progress was stalled significantly for no reason other than simply because we couldn't just get along.  And it doesn't just have to be wars, either.  Differences in ideologies, the perception that those who come up with innovative new ways of thinking are somehow "heretics," you name it.  And we see it even in the present day, with businesses that're more worried about their own profits than doing some good in the world, halting advances which would benefit us all... and politicians with serious capital invested in said businesses, and the influence to actually push their agendas (I've always flung off the government conspiracy theories as the bullshit they usually are, but the actions of lobbyists and the connections of so many politicians have served as more than enough proof to make this readily apparent.  And who can blame them; it takes money to get enough attention to be taken seriously in an election, and it's got to come from somewhere).

  Don't get me wrong, this is a decent era to be living in... but I always think about how great things *could* be, even just with some of the advancements that've been made and vanished into obscurity in our own time alone.  Hell, even in the late 90s we were seeing the first hydrogen fuel-cell cars, which would create the electricity required to run their engines from naught more than just the air, and create no more by-product than just pure water.  But as with most technologies, it is quite a bit of an initial investment (albeit one which would more than pay for itself in only a few years), that was considered enough to declare them "unprofitable" in spite of their many benefits.  Thankfully, other countries have seen that the positives outweigh the downsides, and may soon change opinions in this country in favor of this brilliant clean energy source... but I'm holding my breath on this one.  At least until the oil is all gone and there's no longer a choice in the matter.

  And we've got to step back and realize that the main reason we've been able to advance to quickly in recent decades has less to do with any truly independent discovery, and more in the fact that the international community is chilling out and actively trading with one another; more resources and products are available to each nation than ever before, which may find a previously-unheard-of use for it now in a place where said resource or good would've never ended up if we were all still isolated from one-another.  Even something so simple as foods and spices from other lands, greatly enriching the cuisines of lands to which those ingredients aren't native!  Imagine how Italian food would be if the tomato had never reached their shores!

  It's all about synergy.  Each place in this world of ours has something that someone in some other part has been needing and/or can make better use of.  If we could set aside our differences for just a moment and just think, "Oh wait, I don't know everything, and maybe you could use this thing I've been needlessly hoarding!"  then the world would be much better off.  And if it's about an ideological difference, then fine.  You can have your religion, your faith, your beliefs.  But the moment you declare something "immoral" because it "offends your faith" and you feel the need to deprive everyone of its benefits for nothing more than your own karma... you've obviously no understanding of the concept of secularism and I've no respect for you.  Keep your dogma to yourself, I'll be too busy over here doing SCIENCE! to have any time or patience for the likes of you.

  And now back to the point in the original picture.  It's a no-brainer that without the aforementioned conflicts of interest (to put all the causes into one all-encompassing term), we'd be FAR more advanced than we are today.  Imagine that we could've solved the Theory of Relativity sooner, and instead of rushing to weaponize it and spending the next several decades embroiled in the Cold War, trying to see which side could gain the greatest advantage from what we gleaned from said theory... if we didn't have to immediately put it to war and could've focused all efforts in nuclear fission on using it as a power source and figuring out how to use it safely, or even working around some of the equation's other variables to unlock the secrets of faster-then-light (or near to it) travel... imagine what we could've discovered by now?  And even if we didn't discover alien species right away, so what?  Setting up colonies on other planets,creating new cultures within our own species, and, to go back to the point I'd made above while talking about the international community, maybe there'd be some sort of resource on the colony world that's not available, readily or at all, on the Earth, and we figure out new means of exploitation of that resource and come into another unexpected scientific Renaissance!  Who knows what the future, or the present of an alternate path our current reality could've taken, may hold!