{"id":89486,"date":"2017-04-03T12:00:22","date_gmt":"2017-04-03T11:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=89486"},"modified":"2017-03-27T11:50:14","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T10:50:14","slug":"can-our-social-institutions-catch-up-with-advances-in-science-and-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/04\/can-our-social-institutions-catch-up-with-advances-in-science-and-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Our Social Institutions Catch Up with Advances in Science and Technology?"},"content":{"rendered":"

3 Apr 2017 – <\/em>H.G. Wells, one of the most prolific and prominent novelists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, consistently warned his contemporaries that social institutions were not evolving fast enough<\/a> to cope with rapid changes in science and technology.<\/p>\n

Since Wells\u2019s death in 1946, the scientific and technological advances have certainly been enormous.\u00a0 Thanks to breakthroughs in international communications, millions of people around the world routinely conduct live, visual conversations with one another.\u00a0 In medicine, replacing damaged hips, knees, and other parts of the human body has become commonplace. In biology, scientists have mapped the human genome and are well on their way to understanding the structure of the brain.\u00a0 When it comes to transportation, it is relatively easy to jet around the globe, while spacecraft are now able to blast off to distant planets.\u00a0 Computers have become omnipresent, and have dramatically improved the acquisition of knowledge, the storage of information, and the speed of communication.<\/p>\n

And yet there is a glaring discrepancy between these kinds of advances and the social institutions that can ensure that they are used for the benefit of humanity.\u00a0 Despite very substantial progress in modern medicine, vast numbers of people receive no medical treatment or, at best, inferior medical care.\u00a0 Television\u2019s marvelous ability to transmit knowledge, culture, and understanding around the world is employed primarily to distribute mindless, coarse entertainment and peddle commercial products.\u00a0 The ravages of climate change are ignored by many governments; instead, corporate plans roll forward to further destroy the environment through additional extraction and use of fossil fuel.\u00a0 Stimulating consumer demand through the latest advertising techniques, corporations also churn out a vast number of quickly-discarded gadgets whose manufacture fills the air, the water, and the soil with dangerous contaminants.\u00a0 Meanwhile, drawing upon the science of robotics, business enterprises are beginning the displacement of millions of workers, condemning them to unemployment.\u00a0 For their part, governments press into service the latest scientific and technological knowledge to spy on the general public, as well as to produce new nuclear weapons, drones, and other high tech means of destroying millions of lives in war.<\/p>\n

\u201cModern man,\u201d mused Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/a>, \u201csuffers from a kind of poverty of the spirit, which stands in glaring contrast to his scientific and technological abundance.\u201d\u00a0 People have \u201clearned to fly in the air like birds,\u201d but \u201cwe haven\u2019t learned to walk the Earth as brothers and sisters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although King attributed this social backwardness to spiritual failure, alternative explanations for it have been advanced.\u00a0 Leftists and other social critics have blamed greed, especially capitalist greed, for the stunting of social impulses and institutions.\u00a0 Educators have emphasized the problems of ignorance and superstition.\u00a0 Still other observers have pointed to varieties of tribalism (based on religion, race, region, or nation) and to the persistence of stone-age brains.\u00a0 All of these factors have probably contributed to undermining the development of social institutions that might see to it that scientific and technological advances promote the general welfare.<\/p>\n

Of course, this is not the whole story.\u00a0 There have been significant efforts to foster more rapid social progress, as illustrated by social movements working for greater social and economic equality, civil liberties, environmental sustainability, and world peace.\u00a0 Also, on occasion, some governments have followed their lead.\u00a0 In numerous countries, governments have acted to strengthen women\u2019s rights, labor rights, and civil liberties, provide healthcare for all, pass anti-discrimination laws, establish environmental regulations, and restrain militarism.\u00a0 On the international level, too, more advanced social institutions have arisen, including the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the UN Refugee Agency.\u00a0 Most nations of the world community have also signed treaties upholding human rights, limiting environmental degradation, and outlawing particularly destructive weapons.<\/p>\n

Even so, there is little doubt that scientific and technological change has been outstripping the ability of social institutions to cope with it, often\u2015as in the cases of climate change and the nuclear arms race\u2015resulting in extremely perilous situations.\u00a0 The real question is whether people and nations can muster the political will to reshape their behavior and social institutions to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Dr. Lawrence Wittner<\/em><\/a>, syndicated by <\/em>PeaceVoice<\/em><\/a>, is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY\/Albany. His latest book is a satirical novel about university corporatization and rebellion, <\/em>What\u2019s Going On at UAardvark?<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a glaring discrepancy between technological advances and the social institutions that can ensure that they are used for the benefit of humanity. The real question is whether people and nations can muster the political will to reshape their behavior and social institutions to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}