I must say, I agree almost entirely with Asimov’s predictions. While some of his points seem almost to be a joke, if one looks beyond his sarcasm a greater meaning is uncovered. Our world today is on the brink of collapse: over-population is taking a toll on our food supplies and the number of starving mouths continues to rise, natural resources are nearing depletion and our climate is changing very swiftly, all things covered by the topics in his lecture, all foreseeable from quite a while back.
This is the point of his sarcastic comments, because Asimov is merely pointing out the obvious, something we have known is coming and yet is still not being addressed. We have yet to find alternative means of energy and cannot seem to control our population, and the ensuing problems that were long ago predicted have arisen. Nature is doing its best to address the problem, and knew diseases have spawned. Asimov makes good a point, and we would do well to consider his ideas.
As well as pointing out the dangers of recklessly continuing on our destructive path he makes good a point about our society. In his lecture he points out that to control our birth rates we would have to find alternative tasks for women to perform asides from being mothers. While this is said jokingly, and many women already fill roles that in the past have been that of men, it is quite true that even today we fail to fully integrate women into our masculine society: they are still taboo to some extent and old prejudices remain even in our modern world of today. The way in which he refers to education, and also on that note the elderly, also is spoken of sarcastically, most probably to mock our stupidity on over emphasizing youth at the disregard of wisdom. For it is very true that many of us view education as a weight, and see our elderly as unchanging hulks, relics, useless to our progressive society, meaningless in that they hold true to a past that is forgotten in favor of a naïve future. Those that are past their youth are far from useless, as they have much to teach in experience, and still much to learn from the world, and it is best we do not forget that to learn is in all things and moments of life. Also, Asimov makes a point that we are a world without war. To some degree this may seem untrue, as conflict ensues in all parts of the world, but I believe that what he means is that with all the balances created in our world devastating conflicts are behind us, and in any case the problems that we will face as a species will be far greater then our small wars, that do not have the power to shake the human race all that deeply.
Asimov presents us with a heavily synoptic view of the world: this can be seen by his regard to the human race as a whole and his disregard for nationality, sex and age. He sees us all as one entity, that either survives as a whole or perishes together; in other lectures he makes a clear point that damage to the earth affects everyone living on it, nothing is seen as unimportant, and this holistic spectrum of thought is a wise one indeed, for the more we concentrate on singularity and the more we lose sight of the big picture the closer we are to disaster, breaking off from the knowledge that he longer we put off what must be done the more precarious our situation becomes.
We should give it a try, after all, what do we have to lose?
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Though I appreciate the optimism both you and Asimov present, I cannot say I agree with it. For two reasons, both centered around what you described as the "one entity".
ReplyDeleteOne: the social taboos and implications of words, from as simple as "woman" or "man" ranging to words like "good" and "productive". To say we are all one, and simply disregard nationality, sex and age seems like a good plan; a possible plan. But disregarding those ideas also forces us to disregard the social implications behind the words. And I mean, I'm sure thats possible, but take for example women. For the last 100 years they have been fighting for their rights to be treated as equals. And society has accepted this and today women are a key part of the workforce. However, the average woman makes just about 75 cents to every dollar a man makes. Yes, I think as human beings we are trying to reduce the social (sometimes negative) implications, but I don't think they will ever be gone.
Two: to be a cohesive, well working "entity" I believe that all the parts have to work together, highlighting the good and bad, always striving to be better. But throughout the whole world, what I think is good and what someone else thinks is good could be two totally different things. With one single entity representing everybody, there will be too many voices left unheard.
I totally agree with your idea on his sarcasm and comic, that there's a much deeper meaning behind all of it.
ReplyDeleteYour second paragraph is totally correct. All of these things wrong with the world HAVE definitely been predictable and forseen decades ago, and people don't do anything about it. As you said, we would do well to consider his ideas, but do you think that we can really make all the necessary changes now that we are so far into the disaster?
Your last paragraph is just awesome. (I honestly didn't know how else to respond other than to say that. )
I disagree. Asimov approaches realistic problems with idealogic solutions. He says that the solutions are possible however, I disagree. Humans are not yet ready to band together to save the world. Differences between peoples will stand in the way to the bitter end and there are those out there that would rather perish than deal with one another. Asimov is simply a doom-sayer. He tells us if we don't change we will eventually die out which is much more likely to happen than everyone growing a conscious and saving the world. He says nothing new and offers ridiculous solutions.
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