Are the best human days coming? Post-pandemic debate in debate on progress

From the European Enlightenment onwards, the Western world had a perennial belief that the condition of humankind was 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 has indeed changed but has not progressed or become better. Over the past 2.5 centuries, some philosophers and thinkers view progress in another way, as an "ideology rather than a reality" or a way of thinking about the world rather than describing it.

The book "Are the best days of mankind coming?"

His Arabic translation was published recently by the Iraqi House of Nabu Publishing. These questions come from different intellectual, social and philosophical angles.

The book represents a kind of debate between four different opinions of the two Swiss writers: Alain de Botton and Matt Ridley, and both the American researcher in linguistics and cognitive psychology Stephen Pinker, and the British journalist Malcolm Gladwell.

In the book and the debate, Alan and Ridley cited their optimistic views with a set of statistics that show a steady improvement in the well-being of modern humans, and on the other hand, the pessimistic team stressed the seriousness of contemporary environmental problems and the fatal prices of progress, and they looked with a kind of concern or caution to the expansion in the use of robots and their threats to humans.

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

Pandemic discussion

In his interview with Al-Jazeera Net, the Iraqi translator Naseer Fleih said that the Corona pandemic has transformed the topic of the book from a very important classification to the topic of the hour as well, and continued that “fears of threats to human existence due to climate change (which some still consider the most dangerous), or wars Electronic, or even nuclear conflicts (which were on the verge of erupting at a moment in the past) are topics that concern the world with great concern.

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

And when the Corona epidemic came, it became clear that epidemics also must be included in the list of existential threats to humans in today's world.

In other words, it is a "stern warning from nature to man."

Fleih - who translated the written debate into Arabic and wrote the introduction to the book in its Arabic version - says that each of the four debaters 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 reasoning a lot.

In the quarantine, the method and meaning of reading seemed to change, as the major existential crises return a person to what we can call the "infrastructure" of normal life in which he used to walk and live - according to Fleih - and return him to the questions of existence, life, death and meaning.

Consequently, much of his feelings and thoughts change in situations like these, 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 a philosophical, intellectual, or prophetic, but rather a living reality.

A double-edged sword.

When asked about contemporary progress, Flaih considers it a double-edged sword. “It has improved living standards, for example, eliminated many known diseases, and increased innovation capacity, and other aspects, but it also increased spiritual and psychological problems, and anxiety became called the disease of the age.”

And contemporary progress has made the potential for unexpected or unanticipated dangers more comprehensive and drastic.

This falls within the thesis of "society of risk" or "society of risk" proposed by some theorists and thinkers decades ago, and they said that humanity began to actually enter it since after World War II, due to the continuous interference of man in nature, which has reached an unprecedented degree.

And there have become "dangerous possibilities", even if they are few or rare, the occurrence of one of them may pose an existential danger to humans as a whole, according to the Iraqi translator who sees in Corona, climate change and Australian fires, increasing signs of people 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 correctly dictate what is most likely to happen in the future.

Naseer Falih believes that the future may not be as bright as the technology optimists imagine (Iraqi Press)

Nostalgia for the past

The Arabic analogue translator believes that nostalgia has more than one perspective with which to approach it.

From that, human beings always tend to feel that the past is better than the days they live in, and “especially since our current era is distinguished from all previous eras and the disasters that have passed through them, as the latent threats have become - whether from the environment, climate change or conflicts of mass destruction - Existentialism, due to the interconnectedness of the world, which has become, as it is said, a small village.

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

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

Falih warned that the conflicts in the Arab world are due to fanaticism and the interference of major powers as well, considering that we should not be under the illusion that the great powers will not resort to force and military conflict, as if they did not resort to it directly between them during the past decades, it was only because the conflicts Directness now includes the ability to comprehensively destroy, that is, to destroy both the victor and the vanquished.

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

Falih concluded his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, lamenting, "Unfortunately, the person who has made important progress in certain aspects is still deteriorating in many other aspects, the most important of which is the moral aspect, as has been the case for ages, only the tools in his hand have become more dangerous and destructive."