Powerlessness at our Own Hands

With great power comes great responsibility. These were my first thoughts after viewing Ju Guang's award-winning photograph series "Pollution in China" as featured in yesterday's New York Times' photography blog. Mr. Ju, a freelance Chinese photographer, has a history of documenting struggle and injustice, and uses his camera to educate others on perspectives to which the world seems indifferent. In this photo series, he depicts the waste, environmental devastation and human suffering that results when massive commercial, technological systems are produced without concern for long-term management.

I immediately want to share this series with everyone I know and everyone I don't know. But as an educator, I am geared to hesitate and consider the myriad messages that readers might extract from a series like this.

The potential message that concerns me the most is that this is a far-away problem, committed by some other country that is either backward or way less sophisticated than our own. But that would be very wrong. We exploit our own people and water supplies, it's just easier to see other people doing it.

Treating our earth and people well in the face of technological advances is truly a global problem. It's a problem of attitude more than location or capability. I think part of what hinders us from being measured in our actions is a lack of the kind of clear purpose that comes with long-term goals. In a sense, we have the discovery of evolution to thank; since Darwin removed first and final causes from our nomenclature, we've had to tear down and then learn to reconstruct our standards and moral boundaries, rendering our goals and futures variable and unfocused. One hundred years of (understandable) confusion has passed, but we are steadily rebuilding our ideas and notions of self, and have new perceptions to bring to the table.

At this point, allow me to draw your attention to such a perception that I believe will help us if we are to stabilize our futures. Susan Blackmore argues that our ability to construct technology is actually a dangerous step in the evolution of the human (watch her explain this here). The rationale here is twofold. First, we must consider that so much of a species' energy is exerted in surviving any kind of change that only a very small percentage of a species can be expected to find the exact balance required to survive a drastic change that affects both body and environment. Second, we must consider how "addictive" technology is; once a new, good idea begins to spread, there is almost no containing it. The combination of these two ideas form the understanding that technological ideas can spread so fast and cause such drastic changes that our survival cannot keep up.

Blackmore argues that our species' last drastic change was the development of our big brains, which may have caused the termination of many species that were not able to adapt to the new requirements the shift demanded (such as changes in the body that allow for babies with bigger heads to be born, or the change in lifestyle that allows for the prolonged care needed to raise emotionally and culturally-adapted offspring). Our current shift, the one we are not yet assured to survive, is that of the development of technology that leaves no part of our environment unchanged. Regardless of how fast or tiny we can get our computers to become, and regardless of how cheaply we can manufacture steel, we still need oxygen, water and many other essentials to survive; we have but one choice - physically adapt to be able to breathe and drink whatever chemicals we keep spewing into our environment, or change our goals from purely commercial interests to that of our physical well-being.

The pollution as depicted in the link above is not a localized problem. It's not even accurate to say its a global problem, because the globe will, technically, continue without us. It is very much a human problem, one for which we knowingly risk most known species' extinction.

Blackmore's message is clear - there is no reason to believe that our futures are secure. I am inclined to agree, and would further posit that our species is on the losing side of this conflict with our own ambition. We must open our eyes to this and implement some real changes.