The Future of Technology?? 

                                     Ava (android from movie Ex Machina, 2014) 

                                     (credit: A24 films, via Wikimedia Commons)

Chapter 3.                                                  (concluded) 

Another criticism of Moral Realism takes the form of railing at the modern world, in general, and technology, in particular. But our technologies from the Stone Age till today have always been fraught with both blessings and hazards. The first flint axes made smaller men roughly equal to bigger ones. Those axes made hunting more successful, but they also made war easier. And we know from archeological evidence that early hominids made war on each other, sometimes tribes of fifty or less attacking rival tribes of similar strengths. The social order built around physically big men began to break down as the Stone Age wore on.   

All of the advances in all fields have come with hazards attached. Domesticated grains could be grown in abundance and could be stored, with care, for years without rot or vermin destroying them. This enabled the first farming societies to multiply; building larger, denser towns became logical because they served as central storage sites for the tribe’s food wealth. Thus, came cities. And after city-dwelling became a way of life, citizens even took pride in not being villagers.

However, some of those early cities with their greater concentrations of people also offered excellent environments in which disease could run rampant. Athens was twenty-five percent wiped out by a plague in 430 B.C. It was a main factor that caused Athens to lose the Peloponnesian War. Agricultural technologies with their grain-supported cities have their downsides. Many other examples exist.

In short, technologies can prove hazardous for the tribes who first find, and live by, them. A new technology is always a mixed blessing because human societies are extremely complex social ecosystems. But it is worth emphasizing here that debates over technologies are mostly moot; once a technology has been in place in a society for a short while, going back to the old way of life is nearly impossible. New technologies create new physical and social ecosystems around themselves. Former forests become tilled fields. Squalling about the evils of technology is, thus, a waste of time; even hard luddites soon move on from the old ways.  

Technological advances increase the complexity of the cultural ecosystem in the society that first adopts them in a way similar to the way introduction of a new species into a biological environment changes that environment. Some species introduced into an ecosystem cause great harm; some technologies introduced into a society do the same. Horses and guns changed the cultures of many indigenous American tribes. Buffalo hunts became easier, but so did war. The Comanche, especially, saw and exploited the power of horses and guns for over a century.

Thus, the answers to the big hazards that our species faces – nuclear war and climate change – will not come by our trying to roll back technological progress. And they won’t come by luck, nor by giving up or hoping for the best. We must take up the challenge and volitionally, intentionally strive to re-shape ourselves.

On the hopeful side, it’s worth noting about technology that poison gas intended to be dropped on enemy soldiers and civilians was manufactured during WWII, but never used by any of the combatants. The nations had made an agreement not to use poison gas, and they honored that agreement. World War One had shown them enough horrifying evidence of what poison gas could do so they all chose not to use it. In this fact of history, I believe, there lies real hope for us. By observable evidence and rational decision making, we really can do better than what we have been doing for so long.  

There is no news in any of this new moral model. Forms of Moral Realism have achieved great things in the past. But now we can say why. Now we can grasp the mechanics of the process. In reality, entropy and uncertainty never go away. They decree Moral Realism onto us. Morés and values that are going to work over the long haul of generations are going to be the values that arise through experience with the forces of physical reality that are “givens” for all tribes: entropy and quantum uncertainty/probability.

Some ideologies and religions prescribe a lifestyle. If you adhere to the ideology, it may even tell you the position in which you should sleep, how to get up and wash in the mornings, how to dress yourself, what to prepare for breakfast and how to prepare it, what to wear, and on and on for every activity in life until you die. Moral Realism offers a different picture.

Moral Realism tells us, gently, that probably the wisest course, the course with the best survival odds, for us to take is to practice personal discipline, life-long learning, pursuit of our dreams, and love for our neighbors – all in balance across whole societies. It also is wise to teach all citizens the basics of democracy – how to stay informed, how to vote, how to serve on a jury, and a few other roles they should be prepared to fill as citizens of a democracy.

And that’s it. Go out and live. You serve your fellow citizens best when you pursue your dreams, your visions of what could be.

I’ll close this chapter with two admonitions. First, we must keep constantly in mind that we must have some code to live by. We all have codes in our heads now. If we didn’t, we would not be able to respond to the sense data we get every second from the world around us. We’d sit and stare. But we don't. We follow the mores and customs taught to us by our parents, teachers, and media, balanced with our own best reasoning. The crucial problem is that our old moral codes are obsolete. Their flaws are being exposed in all lands.

Second, we must not rely on moral relativists to guide us. They are useless; they tell us that constructing a new moral code is impossible. This essay proves otherwise. We must get a whole package of new moral coding installed to replace what we are losing. Humans can’t function in a moral vacuum. If the wise men and women of our society tell ordinary folk that right and wrong don’t exist, that pronouncement is tantamount to handing the frightened minds of ordinary folk over to the tyrants of the world. And those tyrants are lurking near. Always.

                                                       Dictator, Adolf Hitler

                                (credit: Heinrich Hoffman, via Wikimedia Commons)