Breadcrumbs: A Collection of Spiritual and Philosophical Essays - Francis J. Shaw (dark books to read txt) 📗

Many countries favor using Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a way to measure the economic health of a nation and an implied link to population well-being. Overall, we appear to be doing quite well with some nations growing every year. GDP measures the market value of all goods produced, but it’s good to remember that the ‘G’ in GDP stands for gross. A calculation for net isn’t included, which means it only measures what is produced and not the costs it takes to produce.

That doesn’t sound quite so good. GDP also counts crime as a benefit as it includes costs for legal and medical fees and repairs to damaged property. Another inclusion with GDP is pollution. What it costs to create and what it takes to fix, are both included. Also, GDP does not count work that is done for free, like volunteering, or take into account the harm that some economic activity can do to an economy. GDP does not take into account the distribution of wealth in a country or the amount of leisure time people have.

When we are sick and go to the doctor we are often measured. Depending on our symptoms, this can include blood pressure, pulse, weight, heart rhythm etc. To fully diagnose what was occurring with progress, I would need to look beyond one measure. The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) assesses variables related to economic, social, and environmental progress. As GDP and the GPI are both measured in monetary terms, they can be compared on the same scale.

Unlike GDP, GPI counts all work; paid or unpaid as having value. It subtracts the cost of pollution and increases as the poor receive a greater portion of national income. Leisure time is included as having value and low crime rates and other factors, such as the cost of unemployment, the value of housework and education, and how the environment is impacted, are also evaluated. GPI attempts to measure the quality of life and not just economics.

The small Kingdom of Bhutan went even further, launching the Gross National Happiness Index (GNH) as the measure they would use to evaluate their political, economic, cultural, and environmental positions. The Nine Domains of GNH are: Psychological well-being (includes spirituality), Health, Time use, Education, Cultural diversity and resilience, Community vitality, Good governance, Ecological diversity and resilience, and Living standards.

In 2012, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), using data from Gallup, conducted its first annual World Happiness Report, building upon the concept in Bhutan to assess overall well-being. Switzerland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, and Canada composed the top five countries in 2015.

On one side, were GDP and its friends: productivity, the merits of multitasking, and accessing the striatum, where new skills would be the key to lead us forward. An upward line of progression, just as the graphs reported. On the other, GPI and its friends: sustainability, focusing on single tasks, and accessing the hippocampus—recalling information.

No doubt ‘experts’ will argue for and against the merits of different models, but the graphs of GPI were not showing the climbing observed in GDP. Most reported drops, or at best, a flat line for quite some time. It was a close match to what I had seen in the decline of the usage of progress in written form. Coincidence? Perhaps, but we don’t get out of bed each morning to chase productivity—we are in pursuit of happiness.

Learning new skills is a worthwhile endeavor, but to adapt to new places and environments we require spatial memory. This helps us to understand where we are now, how we got there, and how to reach the next destination. It’s our road map and without it there isn’t progress...we are lost.

As of 2015, 46.8 million people worldwide are living with dementia. A number predicted to double every 20 years. If global dementia care were a country, it would be the 18th largest economy in the world, exceeding the market values of companies such as Apple and Google.14 Growing evidence links shrinkage in the brain, especially in one area, to an early warning of Alzheimer’s disease, long before other symptoms appear. The affected area is the hippocampus—the same part of the brain that processes spatial memory.

A paradox was forming. As connectivity, the heart of the online world, grew stronger, links to certain areas in the brain were losing their grip. Despite the potential risks we have surged ahead. Pushed by web distractions and the increasing speed necessary to deliver on our multitasking outcomes, we are moving ever faster into a cave lit by neon bright lights we never imagine will be extinguished. To cope with the augmented communication channels, we no longer have time to pause and reflect, as new skills present themselves to be devoured. To contribute to this new connected world we have to be brief. We communicate in abbreviated text speak, tweet with 140 characters or less, and post our blog contributions as the ‘five best…’ or in bullet points, because it’s all people have time to read and digest. Perhaps some of you stopped reading this essay 10 minutes ago because it’s long. A variety of devices: laptops, tablets, phones, and watches, demand our attention, and provide some relief that we no longer need to trust only in our own judgment and can focus on the task of being more productive.

Behind this ‘online curtain’ is a world more troubling, which the wizard doesn’t publicize on his web page. The very connectivity that requires our worship is pushing us into a blind allegiance to the technological supernatural. The very tools we so readily embrace have side effects—the reliance on spell check and calculators is dumbing down our ability to trust our own learning. GPS is creating a blind faith that it knows best, sending people driving into rivers and lakes, even when the obstacle is right before their eyes. Before GPS, we knew we couldn’t cross a lake in a car without a bridge. Perhaps it’s no surprise that research is beginning to demonstrate that excessive reliance on GPS is causing problems—where?—in the hippocampus.

And our children? We used to fear them falling from a bike or fending off a bully in the school playground, but that was in the old days (when I was a boy). Now, with no need for outdoor calming zones, they are tucked away at home behind closed doors, Skyping with friends they seldom see outside of school. It’s there they encounter the world of digital predators and bullies who pursue their destructive agenda on social media. There, with controllers at the ready they learn how to be violent as adult counterparts sit in an office, using a joystick to direct drones to kill the declared guilty, along with the innocent. The ‘collateral damage,’ thousands of miles away.

Pursuing our connectivity deity, collecting our digital friends along the way, we are oblivious to the straight line thinking we support; just like GDP, driving the graph of electric impulses ever upwards. The paradox is laughing at us across the wires and web. The very basis of this new connectivity circuit is driving us to become aloof and disconnected from each other. Ever one click away from anonymous, we surf the ‘net’ to find the one app that satisfies our needs. Desensitized and without the boundary of real presence, we spew out our opinions without pause for reflection or impact.

No one talks about the future if the iCloud bursts and electrical impulses disappear. We should hope it happens soon, while there are still those among us who remember humanity before the World Wide Web and can lead the way, because the warning signs are beginning to emerge. More work time is not equating to increased productivity. Many workers, under pressure to perform and deliver are not taking their full annual leave entitlements and even those who do are unaware of the countless hours spent connected to work via handheld devices. Increasingly stressed, the effects, once again, are resulting in an opposite to the desired outcome, as productivity decreases and new health issues emerge. The young exhibiting emotional problems when WiFi is unavailable, is nothing compared to the possibility, as the hippocampus becomes unnecessary, within a few generations the brain chemistry of the new children will change—without a map to find their way.

It may sound like I am just technology bashing. An old fogie stuck in the past. The young might say I just have to get with the program, and perhaps you might say I should also focus on the good things we have accomplished. But does progress mean we are supposed to surrender our capabilities and destroy our well-being?

Perhaps subconsciously, we are aware. Despite the benefits, the deal we have made with the voltage God is not going to take us forward as much as we have been led to believe. It’s why it hasn’t been the spark to make us feel we are progressing upwards again. Although there have been huge gains in science and technology, there are echoes of parts of the past there has been no rush to change. I find it curious that we have retained such attachment to the internal combustion engine. When the landmark American civil rights legislation passed, taking 14 years of unbelievable struggle and loss to be accomplished, we might have expected the remaining walls of inequality to tumble. Yet, why are women still paid less than men for doing the same work? Perhaps women should start the long march to change, now.

I felt certain by only focusing on our current path we are chasing the wrong signal and the road map to what we are meant to be remembering and connecting to, in the depths of our hippocampus, is located somewhere in the past. Not back to 1993, when there were only 131 web sites (not the 700 million we have today); not to 1967, before the tumble began in ‘68, but aboard ship with Timothy the tortoise, as he journeyed back from the Crimean War in the 1850’s.

The technical leap forward of the age, the industrial revolution, accelerated change to the same degree we experienced with the digital world over the last 20 years. What wasn’t clear, were other changes creeping toward a conclusion as the 21st century approached. For thousands of years the mightiest had sought to spread power, control, and influence. The coming of the First World War was the ‘war to end all wars,’ but not in the way we imagined. The Greeks, Romans and many others had all faded and on the First World War battlefields the age of kings and empires ended for many. For the British Empire, what had been unthinkable fifty years earlier was now the slow death march into relative obscurity. Although it would still be many years before in sunk beneath the waves, the stubbornness to let go was overshadowed by a bigger question—what would replace Empire philosophy?

The signs appeared before the last shell exploded, as the Russian Bear discarded its Czars, and it continued, as autocrats in Spain, Italy, and Germany came to power. We had entered a new age of rival political philosophies, which all offered freedom from the bonds of the regal past—an end to the Royal