Who should pay for our progress?

What we see of human civilization today is not achieved in a day or two. If we think ourselves as reformed, evolved, transformed and much more progressive version of what Homo Sapiens used to be 200,000 - 300,000 years ago (which we do!), then we also need to believe that we have really come a long way ahead in this time duration (which is not insignificant). Once, we were scavengers. We could only eat what was left off after big predators have their meals. Gradually, we became gatherers. We started gathering stuffs- mainly started with foods but time to time other things as well. And we understood, the only advantage we have compared to other animals of this planet is our brain. We became smarter and smarter. We learned things quickly. And then, we understood agriculture. We became producers (I know...we are really not ‘producers’ since it’s plants who still actually produce, but let’s not try to be complicated and technical here! 😝😝). Now, we have the ability to genetically engineer or modify crops to enhance volume, quality etc. (who is being technical now!!🤦‍♂️)

 

It is a long and challenging journey and we have made such tough journeys in other sections of life. All such progress required time, curiosity, learning and failures. A lot of failure in between. Even if we focus on recent history, just think for a while. 125 years ago, we couldn’t fly. Period. Now, we are not only roaming this planet, but we are roaming around the solar system. We are on the verge of commercial, civilian space expeditions. It’s a great marvel to reach such distances, pun intended, in such a short period of time. These achievements wouldn’t have been possible without some unconditional encouragements. Encouragements of moral sorts as well as financial sort. But now, as we are coming to an end of ‘not so good’ 2021, with pandemic, economic and political turmoil, one question remains at large. “Who will now pay for our progress?” 

 

Apollo 11 is the first successful manned lunar mission. Through, Armstrong and Aldrin, mankind put their steps in the moon and unknown. The whole Apollo program, including Apollo 11 was a very costly program funded primarily by US government (NASA being a federal agency). It’s a subject of debate for decades now that whether Apollo program and the missions were worth the spending or not (adjusting inflation, the program costs approx. $500 billion at today’s valuation). Someone can argue, that similar or even a portion of it could have solved many of the direct problems we face as a society- which is a valid point. Also, it might not have been incurred if USA were not in a cold war with Soviet and involved in what people term as, ‘Space race’. But, why then, it’s still a topic debate, purely comes down to the fact that not everything can be measured with immediate expenditure or profit. Many experts argue that in building everything from scratch for these missions, engineers, scientists and technicians had to learn their way out, invent new techniques, processes and so many such things. After the mission was called off, all these field experts now with increased knowledge in their domains started the technological explosion (or revolutions, any way you see it!) the years afterwards. That’s why, many experts map US’s economic progression and superiority with Apollo program.

 

The reason, I talked about Apollo 11 is because, similar analogies can be drawn from other subject areas as well. Progress comes at a cost. It is riddled with costly failures. But in the long term, there’s an uncertain prospect of hope. In recent times, we have seen economic and political turmoil. These have already put big question marks in our future. There are so many challenges ahead- energy crisis, water crisis, climate change, species extinction… the list goes on. To battle this, we have to take hopeful, uncertain steps through science. But who would do that? 

[N.B. Some ideas that I discussed here are more elaborately explained in some portions of the book, Human Universe by Professor Brian Cox.]