Science has brought about the failure that is modern society. I know many of you will shut me out at this point, but please read this till the end. You don't have to agree with me, I just hope that this makes you think.
The progress of the scientific field has brought us wondrous things. Modern agriculture techniques allow food to be grown in higher quantities than ever before on less land than before. Modern medicine has brought us lifespans that are three times or more than they were two thousand years ago. Technology has allowed people to communicate instantly around the world. Modern travel has allowed people to go anywhere they wish to in the world in a matter of hours. Technology spawned the ability to explore space and later to venture out and explore it ourselves.
In the United States we travel in cars (or other means) to jobs in which we use technology to perform feats that were previously impossible. We keep up with our acquaintances on social media where we can peek into their daily lives without being near them. We can find people with similar interests in an instant online. We can find anything that our hearts desire with the click of a button (thank you Google).
Yet, with all of the advances of the modern day we are the least happy and fulfilled generation to date. The question that no one can seem to figure out is why this happened. Well, the answer to that is both simple and complex. The answer is science!
Now I know that someone reading this, or a lot of you, just rolled your eyes at me right there, but let me explain. Science has brought about advances in combating disease and has increased the health of humanity in general. Many people don't think about it this way, but a hundred years ago the life expectancy was much shorter for all people. If you go back five hundred years the life expectancy was even less. Because of this, society was much different than it is today. Living to an old age was a great privilege and those who were able to do so were revered in every society on this planet. They were considered wise and were asked for their advise on how to proceed. Experience was revered and respected in every culture known to man. They believed in learning from the past so as not to repeat the mistakes of our ancestors. They built a strong foundation on knowledge that was handed down to them by the previous generations. Of course, they usually sought to do things better than their predecessors. This is the story of constant progress that makes up most of human history.
What changed then? Why do we as a society today not respect or revere our elders? Well, first off we have changed the definition of who is an elder. When the average life expectancy is forty years old anyone close to or over that age was considered old. When the average life expectancy went up to around sixty then the definition of old changed. Today, with an average life expectancy in the eighties, or more, we have a different view entirely on what old is. Also, with the increase in lifespan there is also an increase in diseases that were previously unknown. Dementia, growing weak with increasing age, loosing abilities we once had, all of these things were not associate with age when the oldest people in culture were in their forties. Society's oldest citizens now suffer from memory loss and aren't the cherished purveyors of wisdom that they were in the past.
So, what happened when we could no longer respect our elders. When we could no longer consider them wise and full of wisdom? Well, society then decided that it was the younger generation that knew better. We had activists that rallied against the order of things. In the sixties and seventies the culture was changed by the younger generations. They decided that the problem was with us. That we were bad. That history was miss written and that it didn't really happen that way. After all, those who had written the history were now babbling lunatics with horrible memories. How could they possibly have had the ability to accurately recall what had happened in the world before?
We came to the age of the youth. Now, there is an old fable about the fountain of youth. Some of you might remember it. First appearing in writings from Herodotus in the 5th century BC the fountain of youth was a spring whose waters were purported to have the ability to restore the youth of whoever bathed in the water or who drank it. It was rumored that people went to great lengths to attempt to find this fountain of youth. After all the allure of eternal life is powerful and eternal youth even more so. In many of the stories about the fountain of youth there was also a precautionary tale involved. There was always the explorer that went mad trying to find this magical fountain so that they could keep themselves or someone else from death's door. They moral of the story was to not look for the impossible dream of eternal youth and to instead focus on the life that you have.
When we stopped revering age and wisdom we started revering youth and beauty. The problem with this is that youth and beauty are both fleeting. The beauty industry thrives today because of this reverence for youth and beauty. We are taught to hide our gray hair with dye, to keep our bodies trim and fit with vigorous exercise, and to use makeup to cover any of our flaws. We have become a society of impossible standards and a commercial enterprise that tells you that the impossible is possible. We have learned to be fake and to hide who we truly are. We are expected to conform to a specific mold and anyone who doesn't is either crazy or weird. The problem is that none of us conform to the mold.
We are all imperfect! We are human! We are told over and over again that this is bad. We learn to hate ourselves and with that comes a discontent that previous generations never had. My grandparents thought it a privilege and an honor to grow old. Today people will go to any lengths to stay young, or at least seem to be young. We are left chasing after the impossible and because of that we are miserable. How can we age gracefully when we're told that aging at all is bad? How can we respect our elders when we're told not to trust them? The foundations of society for millennia have been undermined by science and we haven't given it a second thought.
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