The Character Of Technological World

Peace and Permanence

      The character of Modern Technological Society

The world that we are living in, is a complex multi-dimensional world, with astonishing technological advancements. Together with capitalism, these technologies have altered the way people interacted with each other. The complex character of today’s society can be described in two words: rich in material, poor in moral.  
It is a common expression that money doesn’t buy happiness. But nobody really means it. Everybody is relentlessly pursuing a job or a career to make money, and lots of it. This drive has replaced a lot of spiritual values that we humans have cherished so dearly throughout ages. We are told that prosperity brings peace and permanence, but according to Schumacher, it is not the case.

E.F.Schumacher, a German economist and statistician, is one of the influential thinkers of the twentieth century in the field of economics. In “Peace and Permanence”, which is a chapter of his famous book- Small is Beautiful - Schumacher assesses and analyses the belief that prosperity is the key for a permanent peace. He begins his argument with some quotations from Lord Keynes as saying the pursuit of wealth should overshadow all human virtues, and “fair is foul and foul is fair.” Keynes says that ethical considerations are not merely irrelevant, they are an actual hindrance. Schumacher discredits this kind of approach to life by saying cultivating greed as a means of accumulating wealth, and therefore achieving peace, is in conflict with the very peace that it is designed to achieve. One of his principle points in this chapter is the fact that the world’s resources are limited, while greed and the single-minded pursuit of wealth knows no boundaries. As an example, he discusses the consumption of fuel in the rich and poor countries in two different eras. He concludes that the rich, who consumes most of the fuel, are in the process of “stripping the world” of its cheap and simple fuel....