A World With No Personality (1)

Every Egyptian student has to encounter, at least once, in the exam paper, this Composition Topic:

     Technology has greatly influenced our lives making them much more comfortable and easier.

     Write in this topic expressing your opinion of how Technology has changed life to the better.

  There of course comes my mental sarcastic smile asking, "And what if I do not exactly think Technology has made life all that good?!" But, quickly, I halt that opposing pattern of thought to conjure up the best ways of betraying my beliefs in order to fill three pages praising how fantastic life is because of Technology. Now, though, I am at complete liberty to express my genuine anger at the technological world we are living in.

   The common belief is that we live in a "progressed" society. Let me just ask one basic question: From what aspects? Why do we always assume that how Time is in relation to us as humans goes in a shape resembling a stairs where you are always going to be going from good to better? Why are we not realistic enough to grasp that the future is not necessarily better than the present, and the present is not necessarily better than the past? In fact, I feel like that the more we progress in time, the more everything deteriorates, and I believe others share this belief with me. Judging also by another common belief, it is easy to deduce that most people make a mental connection between progression and Technology making them both the closest thing to being synonyms. But, is it really so?

    I once made a comparison between us with our Rockets and bombs, and our Stone Age ancestors having only caves. I found that we are both the same: most of us both have no purpose in life other than securing food clothes and shelters. It might sound like unreasonable, but just think of it with me for a while and you will find that we are only a more refined version of them. We go to school, then to college, to learn? No, to be qualified enough to find a job. When we work, are we doing it for the sake of some great cause? No, to get money. And what do we buy with money? Food, clothes and houses. Then, will somebody tell me what is the great difference? But no, there is one: the Stone Age man saw himself for what he is; we don't.

  I asked myself once if it has always been like this. I am not well read in history enough to answer this, but I do know, that in past times, there were people who lived not just for the abstract purpose of staying alive; they lived for more: they lived for a belief. They are Prophets; they are Philosophers; they are Artists, and they would be changing lives, and with lives, changing life itself. The sad thing is, we do not see any of these anymore.