by John Moore
Staff Writer
The world has seen a lot. In the past hundred years, remarkable things have taken place in history. In vast regions of the world where communism’s brutal reign was established, it was brought to a halt; where dictatorships grew, free republics sprang up. Rights long withheld from minorities were finally given; women viewed as inferior to men came to be seen and treated as fully equal to men.
Advances in modern science and technology gave rise to life-saving medicines, health-improving conditions and overall care for our bodies. Science led to the ability to control our environments and our lives more than ever before. We produced more than we ever had, and all that we built we made more and more efficient.
In all of this progress, our world was turned on its head. We created not merely control but convenience, not simply production but efficiency, not only consumption but also choice. Today we hold that we have attained the greatest freedoms ever felt.
Yet, in all of these forward movements, other things were lost. Perhaps we’ve forgotten essential elements of our own humanity.
As history continues, we find our world staggering, short of breath. While we’ve nearly saved ourselves with modern invention, we have fallen short of being capable of explaining the meaning behind our own existence. While we may have been able to make sense of how things work, we have misunderstood why they work.
Without a sufficient answer, the empires of our fathers cave in on themselves as our generation is given convenience and choice but does not understand its own significance outside of what it can achieve. There is a human quality we are now searching for.
All things have been boiled down to two essentials: progress and efficiency.
Simply put, I say that we are better than that.
In this column, I hope to examine news stories from around that world that deal with the struggle to find our humanity.