"Are the best days for humans to come?" ... a debate about progress in the time of the pandemic

Imran Abdullah

Since the era of European Enlightenment and its aftermath, the western world has had a constant belief that the conditions of humankind are constantly improving through the development of new institutions, ideas, innovations and lifestyles. In the modern era, progress is supposed to accelerate with new technologies that empower individuals and societies, but is progress really inevitable?

Critics of this idea claim that human civilization really differed but it did not progress and did not become better. Over the past 2.5 centuries, some philosophers and thinkers view progress in another way as an "ideology, not a reality" or a way of thinking about the world rather than describing it.

"Are the best days for humans to come?" This Arabic translation was recently issued by the Iraqi Nabo Publishing House, these questions are from different intellectual, social and philosophical perspectives. The book represents a kind of debate between four different opinions of Swiss authors: Alan de Button and Matt Ridley, both American linguist and cognitive psychologist Stephen Pinker and British journalist Malcolm Gladwell.

In the book and the debate, Alan and Ridley illustrated their optimistic viewpoints with a set of statistics that show a steady improvement in the well-being of modern humans.

The main optimists' argument can be summed up that the indicators of human progress - such as wealth, health and inequality issues - show great improvement, while British journalist Gladwell acknowledges this, but stresses the possibility of a major catastrophe (nuclear war, etc.).

The discussion of the pandemic
In his talk to Al-Jazeera Net, Iraqi translator Naseer Falih said that the Corona pandemic transformed the subject of the book from a very important classification to the topic of the hour as well, and continued that "fears of the threats of human existence due to climatic changes (which some still consider most dangerous), or wars The electronic, or even nuclear conflicts (which were about to erupt in the last moments of the past), are topics that occupy the world heavily. "

Falih added, "But in our Arab world we are usually less concerned with these issues, because our preoccupation with political, military and economic struggles continues, and we - on the other hand - even if we care about any of that, it is difficult to present what is important and useful about it."

When the Coruna epidemic came, it became clear that epidemics too should be included in the list of existential threats to humans in today's world. In other words, it is "a strongly worded warning of nature to man."

Falih - who translated the written debate into Arabic - says that each of the four contestants has strong justifications, supported by statistics, numbers, and solid arguments; but it seems that the Corona pandemic has strengthened the arguments of the pessimists and the soundness of their logic a lot.

In quarantine, the method and meaning of reading seemed to change, since the great existential crises bring people back to what we might call the "infrastructure" of normal life in which they used to walk and live - according to Falih - and return them to the questions of existence, life, death and meaning.

Consequently, much in his feelings and ideas changes in such situations, including the meaning and manner of reading as well. In the case of a book dealing with the future of humanity at a time like this, the topic is no longer philosophical, intellectual or predictive, but rather a living reality.

Weapon-edged
Singling contemporary progress, is Flaih that double-edged sword "has a good standard of living , for example, and spent a lot of well - known diseases, and increased innovative capacity, and other aspects, but it also increased spiritual problems, psychological and become anxiety - called disease age."

Contemporary progress has also made the potential for unforeseen or calculated risks more comprehensive and radical. This falls within the thesis of "risk-taking society" or "risk-taking society" that some theorists and thinkers put forward decades ago, and they said that mankind began to actually enter it after the Second World War, due to the continuous intervention of man in nature, which reached an unprecedented degree.

And there are "dangerous possibilities", even if they are few or rare occurrences, because the occurrence of one of them may pose an existential threat to the whole human being, according to the Iraqi translator who sees in Corona, climate changes and Australian fires, increasing signs of humans losing control of their environment as a result of their continuous interventions. In which. 

In the debate, Gladwell claims that history is not necessarily a repetition, while Pinker claims that history can properly dictate what is likely to happen in the future.

Nostalgia for the past
and the translator of the corresponding debate in Arabic believes that nostalgia for the past has more than one perspective that can be approached with it. From this, human beings always tend to feel that the past is better than the days in which they live, and "especially since our present age is distinguished from all previous eras and disasters that have gone through, as the underlying threats - whether from the environment, climate changes, or conflicts of mass destruction - have become Existentialism, because of the interconnectedness of the world that has become what is said: a small village.

Also, one of the characteristics of the risk society in which we live is that nature itself has become unable to correct the paths resulting from human intervention, and every new human intervention to address a specific problem may in turn lead to new, uncalculated consequences.

Falih believes that debates often turn into sterile debates in our Arab reality, and this is explained by social, cultural and political reasons "related to the nature of society and the intellectual and psychological structure of man in it," saying that Arabs are far behind culturally in relation to the world as statistics confirm. 

Falih warned that the conflicts in the Arab world are due to intolerance and the interference of the major powers as well, considering that we should not assume that the great powers will not resort to force and military conflict, because if they did not resort to that directly in between them during the past decades, it was only because the conflicts Directness now includes the ability of total destruction, that is, destroying the victor and the vanquished together.

And the arrival of any fundamental threats to the interests of these major countries - that is, the red lines - will remove many of the masks or allegations it says, such as their interest in world peace and the like.

Falih concluded his speech on Al-Jazeera Net with regret, "Unfortunately, the man who made important progress in certain aspects, is still deteriorating in many other aspects, the most important of which is the moral aspect, as is the case since ages, only the tools in his hand have become more dangerous and destructive."