Morals, Travel, Technology and of course rats

                What has become increasingly apparent and disturbing recently, to me, is that our society has no guidance. We are a part of such a complex system that we destroy without real conscience of our actions, and without any kind of moral guidance.

                Looking at travel: I’ve been extremely fortunate and gifted with having parents who love to travel. Really fortunate. I’ve been through Brazil, America, Vietnam, Southern Africa, Norway, Denmark, and so forth. I’ve seen countries which seem relatively untouched by tourism, and ones where it has become the sole provider of resources. And of course, tourism is extremely important for these countries, and it is in no way my place to say “we must hinder these countries development from poverty so that they maintain their status as genuine specimens of a working culture!” because that’s totally unfair, and if anything only consolidates the idea that the rest of the world is a freak show for the wealthy westerners, with their silly fanny packs and bottled water.

                What I’ve noticed in the last few years in which “moderate adventure travel” has become more popular is that the countries really change. When I went to Jordan only eight years ago, we drove out in a shitty jeep, frequently having to dig ourselves out of the sand, and lying on a rug in the middle of a Wadi for a few days. Now, in the last few years, the price for holidays there have skyrocketed, and you sleep in hotels that have been dug out into the ancient rocks which have been their many many millennia before ourselves.

                And the same is felt elsewhere. For example, Angkor Wat in Cambodia: what was one a genuine cultural fountain with kings and kingdoms is now a place for selfies and sun cream – at the expense of the landmark itself, which is beginning to chip away with each tourist. It’s so pathetically Post-Modern: that places that once had meaning now have less than a postcard for $1 at the giftshop.

                Everywhere you go, people are becoming the same: same phones, same shirt brands, same music taste. And maybe that’s good. Maybe we need similarity to survive in such a huge society. Or maybe this is the beginning of the end of culture, and the start of the rise of mass corporations feeding us ideologies with that order of chips.

                And where this is ultimately leading: if you ask anyone in travel if this loss of culture is what they intended, they will likely misinterpret the question and disagree with you, they’ll agree, or they’re stupid and misinformed. This loss in culture cannot be anything worthwhile.

                And where is our use in technology going? To make life more sedate and easy? Sure, in some ways that’s good. But anyone that’s had a summer holiday before knows that sitting down aimlessly is only fun for about a day. Hard work keeps the body and mind healthy. Stops you from becoming a Mississippi racist homophobic Baptist housewife. People should have livelihoods, and not just jobs for money for computers for… For what, exactly?

                I deeply worry that technology is taking us somewhere, at an exponentially fast rate, and that we have no moral guidance taking us there – instead only a scientist’s curiosity and a tired, unfulfilled worker’s boredom. We should be striving towards an ideal, or at least have some kind of moral compass in mind before we start driving towards a horizon in self-controlled cars (does it count as driving if it’s only a computer doing it? Where does the sense of accomplishment come from?)

                I heard an interesting thought today in an old broadcast of the “Radiolab” podcast, from the episode “Limits”, in which they met the man who designed a very intelligent computer which could derive physical laws from data which we humans are unable to comprehend due to the size of the numbers involved and complexity of the system. This computer could create equations describing how a system inside a cell worked (when humans had drawn a blank pretty early on), but gave no reason why it worked. The episode ended with the sombre thought that perhaps machines like “Eureka” are taking us to the great secrets of the universe that we, as monkeys, are simply unable to comprehend. And I ask, what will happen when we try to utilise equations describing laws we don’t understand. Who knows what the aftermath will be. And furthermore, how much value is there in knowledge that we don’t actually understand?

                Some thoughts to end with: should, or can, morals be taught? Have morals changed? And where is the modern world, governed by seemingly inevitable advances in technology, seeking to find fulfillment?