Live and Prosper
This question was asked to me on Quora Hindi 'How can science systems be strengthened to be better prepared to deal with future global crises?'
I understand that firstly, we have to define what the future global crises and what the scientific systems are in a nutshell. People should have an essential understanding of Maslow's pyramid. With the ever-expanding population, the first thing we all are running out of is essential resources.
Humans need to survive, and survival in civilisation exists on the cornerstone of essential psychological needs. As Maslow depicted, biological requirements will always be essential for human survival. I will theorise that with the increasing population, even in a distant future of the next 100 years, we will have a shortage of food, water, clean air, shelter, sleep, and clothing.
Poverty is a man-made phenomenon that helps the elite and people in power dictate who and whom should be in power and control. Essential food will be provided to survive, maybe within 100 years, but what you will be eating will dictate where you belong, as it does today. Today, almost a million children are forced to sleep on empty stomachs all over the world, yet the privileged in these geographical areas rant about animal cruelty and going vegan. In places like India, where millions of people sleep and millions survive on the government's food subsidy and food security schemes, protecting them from hunger, people living in a different realm urge others to eat selectively because dairy is cruelty.
Similarly, drinking water has been the key to growth and prosperity throughout the period of history and human civilisation, and it will always be. India is still an agricultural economy, mostly dependent upon the natural rain cycle known as the monsoon. Yet compared to western economies, which heavily rely on industry, our governments negatively support the farmers. There are places solely dependent on natural water reservoirs where women walk miles to fetch clean drinking water for daily use. Not only this, in the summer, there are places in Maharashtra (i.e., Latur) notoriously known for intense drought. Farmer suicide was and still is an issue governments tackle yet fail to resolve properly due to the lack of infrastructural development, bureaucratic incompetency, political agendas, and civic insufficiency.
Water scarcity is impactful to food and famine. Within 100 years, we must tackle the situation through scientific development. We need to upscale our budget into the development of compact rainwater harvesting. We must develop cheap units to install at every home to develop the individual capacity of each household to recharge groundwater.
We need constant soil testing and modern methods to reproduce more within a resource-constrained environment to feed our masses. We need to educate our farmers and do many things that all come down to one individual phenomenon which is a better educational model and system. What an irony in this country that everyone is a good teacher except the teachers in this country. They are the only ones who have no idea how to teach.
I think I have lost the essence of the article since I have been postponing this for so long and put it somewhere on my to-do list. However, let's try and squeeze more in the next couple of hundred words. So in the period of the next couple of hundred years, humankind will evolve technologically but the consciousness of a developing human will be in stalemate. As Asimov once said, 'We are gathering knowledge faster than humans' capacity to evolve and process.'
We will be more secure from diseases but not from conspiracy theories. We will be safer from predatory attacks by other species but not from political disputes and communal riots. Humans need psychological belongingness and love, intimacy and relationships will evolve, friendships will have new parameters, and the idea of sex and gender will be discussed more by the privileged enough while masses will survive for basic needs. Science can provide gadgets for ease of life but cannot provide you a consciousness to live harmoniously with not only other species on the planet but with each other too. Look at people now, do you think they understand how complex the world is and how insignificant their part is! Prestige, on the other hand, is another matter. People want to feel accomplished so, in the process, mediocrity rules. Anything that is out there is acceptable. Social media is a fantastic example of this nonsense. Teenagers are embracing racism and discrimination because it gives them a sense of belonging to something better. What it is, I don't know and I don't want to know.
As a civilization, we must set up our priority of what we want ourselves to be. Everything is meaningless. The Universe in itself is meaningless. There is no meaning in its existence. Despite this, it will continue to exist for billions of years. Ultimately, only meaninglessness is meaningful and this meaninglessness is beautiful.
War, famine, disease, economic and political inequality, misinformation, misguidance, everything will exist even if we become an interstellar civilization because it's all in our nature. It's what makes us who we are, humans at the core driven by our meager, meaningless nonsense, and to achieve it we can be genocidal. So while we are investing in our scientific progress more and more to provide people essential needs of food, shelter, security, and even have outsourced intimacy through the means of VR and toys, the future won't be much different from what we have today.
Technological progress will happen at its pace and every generation after 1900 has seen a significant revolution in technology, medicine, research, geopolitics, cinema, and education. While they impact everyone around the world directly and indirectly, only a handful always comprehend the depth of these events. Of course, evolution happens; it's an inevitable and undisputed fact not only with biology but technology and civilization too. Things get replaced by more advanced and new methods but the people mostly remain the same because emotions are the same. We are immersing ourselves in the quantum realm and understanding the subconscious through scientific rigor but are not working consciously on ourselves. What is the meaning of being an apex superior species on the planet when you are not seeking active harmony with the thousands and thousands of species whom you are supposed to look over, not extinct them. Maybe it's a phase, we are on the right track just a little slow, it's a phase where we have to find harmony first with ourselves and then we will seek it with others. I hope we won't be late to this awesome party.
Do I have hope for the future? YES. The world will always revolve and we all play our insignificant part on the world stage. The only thing that matters is that have you played it well and was it meaningful and for this exact reason I always quote the following, 'Have I played the part well? Then applaud as I exit.' -Caesar Augustus
-m. Dinesh
-Dinesh Mandora
Dinesh Mandora All rights reserved ©
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