Thoughts to ponder…

Imagine the streets bustling with excited protesters. Imagine their placards: anti-GMO, anti-wifi, anti-vaccine, anti-western-medicine. A collection of sentiments that is tied together by a common ethic: a sense that modernity poses a looming threat, that science and progress has run amok, and that humanity is on the verge of great calamity, disaster even, if we do not stop progress dead in its tracks, reexamine the foundational assumptions that underly our understanding of the world, and apply an extreme caution to any further exploration or development.

Amongst that diverse assembly of humanity, earnestly waving their placards in defence of Mother Nature against the callous onslaught of modernization, how many of them would not exist today if not for the very same technologically driven advancement which they bemoan?

How many would have never been born if their parents or grandparents had succumb to any of the many deadly childhood diseases which have now been eradicated by vaccines? One in six?

How many would not exist today without their grandparents who emigrated from the developing world, having been among the one billion humans who survived famine due to the agricultural advancements of the 50s and 60s? One in seven?

How many are alive today because of insulin, produced by genetically engineered bacteria? Or how many survived infections, historically fatal, with a simple dose of antibiotics? One in every five?

How many of them rely on wireless communication technologies to get their anti-technology news? To share that information? To organize their rallies? How many would have missed the event without smart phones, cell towers, and free wifi at Starbucks?

I find it ironic to think how sparse the crowds would be. How few placards would be seen. How few anti-modernity protesters would exist, we’re it not for the very products of modernization which they despise.

We stand at the edge of the warm sunrise of the springtime of our civilization. Stand aside please. Don’t block my sun.

-D. Nelson Caswell