PureInsight | June 3, 2002
“How many people have indeed benefited from the development of science?” Ismail Serageldin, the director of the Library of Alexandria in Egypt, wrote an article to pose this question. The article, published in the April 5th issue of Science Magazine, says that we are living in the age of science. Science has moved human beings to a New World that is “full of promise” as well as of peril. The paradox of our times is that on the one hand, we have made abundant and remarkable scientific achievements, but on the other hand, violence, conflict, uncertainty and poverty overwhelm the world.
Serageldin’s article states that the digital language of computers has merged into our human words, music, images and data. With a click of a mouse, billions of dollars move from one part of the globe to another. Science has provided many improvements for human life, yet in today’s world we still see the following situations: (1) 1.2 billion people live on less than one dollar per day, (2) 1 billion people do not have access to clean water, (3) 2 billion people have no way to get adequate sanitation, (4) 1.3 billion people are breathing polluted air that is below acceptable standards, (5) 700 million people (mostly women and children) are still using coal-burning stoves and suffer from breathing the polluted air that this environment creates, the equivalent to smoking three packs of cigarettes per day, and (6) 40 thousand people die from hunger-related diseases every day. The ecological environment in which we all depend is steadily worsening. Soil is being eroded, our clean water supply is dwindling and becoming insufficient for our needs, forests are disappearing, more and more green areas turn into desert every day, the climate changes unpredictably, and certain species are dramatically decreasing in numbers. In the past few decades while science has been developing with unprecedented speed, more and more issues considered to be threats to human survival have become urgent topics to resolve.
The author thinks that advanced science widens the already widened gap between the rich and the poor. In today’s world, the top 20% of the world’s wealthiest population consumes 85% of its income, and the remaining 80% population live on 15% of the world’s income. The bottom 20% lives on a mere 1.3% of the world’s total income. And these disparities are still growing. A generation ago, people in the top 20% were 30 times as rich as those in the bottom 20%. Now, they are more than 70 times as rich.
The three wealthiest people on the earth have more money than the combined gross domestic product (GDP) of the world’s 47 poorest countries. The richest 15 persons have more wealth than the combined GDP of all of sub-Saharan Africa with its 550 million people. Moreover, what is most worrisome is that we cannot control the trend of this widening gap. The more wealth a country has, the more advanced its science will become simply because it has sufficient capital to invest into developing new technology; new products and such investments will in turn bring more gross income for the nation. On the other hand, a poor country cannot even overcome its hunger, let alone invest in science and technology. Therefore, the rich become richer and the poor become poorer. The rich population will consume most of the world’s resources whereas the poor people have to face more hunger-caused deaths.
Looking at telephone lines as an example, in 2000, there were 567 telephone lines per one thousand persons in high-income countries, and only 37 phone lines per one thousand persons existing in middle- or low-income countries. Personal computers per 10 thousand persons stood at 1,800 for the rich and only 1 for the poor. In 1980, the school enrollments in the low-, middle- and high-income countries stood at 4, 11, and 34%, respectively. By 1996, these figures rose to 5, 15, and 58%, respectively. Hence, the improvement of education mainly occurred in the wealthy countries, and the difference in the quantity and quality of education has enlarged the gap between the rich and the poor.
In science, the trend is clear that high-income countries possess scientific products without sharing their benefits with the poor. Patents are taken out not only for finished products, but also on processes and intermediate inputs. Hence, the scientific achievements can only benefit a few people, i.e. the rich persons, but not the poor, or low-income countries because the citizens of those nations cannot afford to pay for those achievements.
In the article, the author states: “Today, I say that a world divided cannot stand; humanity cannot survive partly rich and mostly poor.” It is inconceivable that there should be some 800 million people going hungry in a world that has the resources to provide the most basic of all human needs. What a world that we are now living in!
Despite so many troubling issues in our human society, most people wish for science to develop and advance faster. They see science as the God for all human beings. But, is science capable of solving all these problems? What we find is that all the challenges that we are currently facing are beyond the control of science. Even though the rice genome has been fully sequenced today, there are still more than 800 million people suffering from hunger. How many people will think of it and help these hungry people after they themselves have a good meal with plenty of wine? How many people will think about the scarcity of the earth’s resources after they have consumed wildly? How many people will worry about the pollution and deterioration of the air and water and the erosion of soils? Even if science advances further, can it change the corruption of human moral standards? Even if science develops at a higher speed, can it prevent the rich from consuming less?
Even if science develops ever faster, can it stop violent politicians from abusing human beings and killing innocent living beings? If human beings are controlled by their never-ending desire for profit, the advancement of science can do nothing to help maintain our ecosystem. Is there a better way than science to efficiently help maintain our living environment? Yes, there is. That is, hearts returned to all of the high moral standards and traits such as kindness, diligence, gratitude, loyalty, politeness, and so on. Just think about this: If all these good moral standards returned to human beings and to social communities, and if everyone completely follows them, human beings will instantly solve all those troubling issues such as environmental pollution, the growing gap between the rich and the poor, man-made destruction, violence, wars and terrorism. Isn’t it so? When human moral standards rise up again, the ecological environment that we depend upon will improve as well.
Translated from
http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2002/4/22/15622.html
