Is society moving forward in any regard?
I recently had an interesting conversation with my husband about air travel. More specifically about how commercial airplanes have regressed since the 1970s. And it got me thinking about that question.
We were discussing air travel as part of a larger conversation, and my husband brought up the Concorde Jet flown by British Airways. My husband, who is British, pointed out that nowadays the trip from New York City to London takes about seven hours. But it wasn’t always that way.
After completing its first test flight in 1973, the Concorde then launched its first passenger jet in 1976. The plane could fly so fast it could take you from New York to London in just under three hours. His father did it for business all the time.
I mean, that’s crazy! It’s faster than you could get to Los Angeles today. Air France had a similar route.
So what happened? How is it plausible that we have passenger jets today going slower than they were going in 1973?
Following an Air France accident in 2000, due to debris on the runway, which killed all 109 passengers on board, plus some people at a nearby hotel, all Concorde flights were suspended.
It seems like a very bizarre thing, right? We know now that all passenger jets can have a horrible accident, even the ones we have today, yet we don’t retire them.
Yet we retired a supersonic jet that could get you to London in under three hours.
Why?
It made me think of other areas of life where society has gone backward. And then it led me back to the question I posed at the beginning: is society going forward at all?
Think about it.
In what way would you say society has moved forward in the last 50 years? How have we become better? Or stronger? Or smarter? I’ve already given an example of how we are going backward in terms of travel, so what’s another area?
You might say, phones, right? “Oh let’s look at the cell phone, obviously, that has led society and humanity forward!”
No, I would rebut, actually, our phones are enslaving us. It’s because of our phones, that we have less capable human beings. We can’t do anything. Social media has certainly sent us backward.
You might say, “Oh, well, at least we live in a society that has had more racial harmony since the seventies.”
I beg to differ there as well. Look around you. We’re being painted a picture we keep calling progress, but obviously, we are digressing.
We are actually having to argue and explain why it’s wrong to put in place policies that disadvantage white people and Asian people.
That’s not progress. That’s actually just saying, “It’s upside-down land. And because we used to be racist towards these people, we’re going to be racist towards these other people.” It makes no sense.
People might say women’s rights!
Yet women’s rights are also facing a catastrophe and we are going backward. Women used to want to be on equal footing with men. Now we are suddenly saying we want nothing to do with men and we are tearing families apart.
All in the name of progress, right?
So what is actually happening today? Is society moving forward? I’m asking you this question. And I’m interested in your answers because I don’t have the answer.
The only answer that I can come up with is that our government is moving “forward.”
Our government has amassed a lot of power during this time. Our government, of course, is still using these sonic boom jets. We know our military has tools like these which give our government more power.
And of course, as families break apart and the women’s rights movement forces us to digress at the personal and household level, the government is moving forward because of the absence of strong households.
You instead have a strong state, a strong state that is stepping in and saying, “We will be your family. We will create the Department of Education. We will raise your kids to think in a manner that guarantees us more power in the future because they turn to the state for solutions.”
Obviously, we have gone backward. It is volatile.
Of course, this regression gives the state more power because the state tells you that it needs to offer solutions.
And its solutions, of course, are ideas that just create more division — especially never-ending racial strife.
The solutions create more government, departments, and compartments of government. Government is the only area I see moving “forward.”
So, no, I would say the government is not doing us any favors by growing itself. The individual is shrinking as the government grows.