Have you ever wondered if the time will ever come when mankind might say, “Maybe we’ve enough of science? Having already achieved quite a lot through the ages there is no reason why we couldn’t live with that. As times pass science is being used not only for the benefits of mankind but also against it; more for destruction rather than construction. So since the trend seems that science is being manipulated and being used for all the wrong things maybe, just maybe it’s time for complete overhauling of priorities.”
Well, that would sound the most misinformed, brazen and outright stupid of suggestions. But then when you find yourself in some limbo and unable to choose which direction to take even the most stupid sounds the most legitimate. Nightly we watched on the networks and social media about the war between Russia and Ukraine. And the daily reports of battle conducted are so contradictory no one in their right mind would believe any side fully. It has been said over and again that there is so much misinformation and disinformation out there no conflict in recent times has left the world in total confusion. Call it bias or anything but the media, especially the mainstream media all the way to make the side they’re rooting for is winning. Of course time will tell the whole story once the guns fall silent and the finger-pointing would resume with zeal.
However there is one factor which puts on the same plane. When they talk about the sophistication of weapons the side they support uses you sometimes feel you’re
hearing the reading of a sci-fi film script. Every side is armed with such devastating weapons the other side has left only a couple of weeks left to be totally annihilated. The conventional wisdom here is that the more sophisticated the weapon is the more combatants it would annihilate. It is always directly or indirectly, about human lives. It is about the thousands killed in a single day. “Two thousand soldiers killed today.” “As the…used the most modern weapons more than one thousand five hundred soldiers have been killed. Reports said thousands more have been wounded.”
We are in times when such lines loudly telling the world about the number of soldiers killed on this side or that side are the juice of the story. So when we are talking about the long range missiles, the fastest warplanes, the devastating guns of the latest tanks there are always behind the narrative human beings. It is almost always “They’ve been killed…” and not “They’ve lost their lives, which while it doesn’t change the ‘reality’ sounds easier on the ears. And behind the modern, devastating weapons wrecking so much havoc is ‘science!’
By the way, while we’re at it, have you ever noticed anchors or newscasters who while reading news of thousands of soldiers of the side they ‘don’t support’ killed, maybe for practically nothing, show no signs of remorse or even any sign of that slight humane frown which says, “After all we are talking about human beings and not wild animals!”
They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Scientific inventions, so the conventional wisdom used to have it, are about solving the world’s problems; about making life easier and worthwhile; about creating fair and balanced atmosphere so that mankind would enjoy the discoveries without bias and favoritism. But as the centuries come and go one by one the situation we’re presently confronted with happens to be in direct contrast to this age-old conventional wisdom. To the extent of denting the hopes mankind had in science and scientists things are taking the roads which should have been sealed for the good and protection of mankind.
Take the raging controversy in the scientific (and political) world about the COVID pandemic and all the conspiracy theories surrounding the issue. Now some loud voices are being heard that all that has happened was planned by the powers that are. Some are saying the Covid virus has been around for a couple of decades and there was nothing new about its existence.
They are even saying the lockdowns had nothing to do with containing the spread of the virus and have actually produced no significant results. Well, well, well! The shocking thing about these controversies is that it is the scientists that are going for each other’s throats. Of course politics, like usual is said to be managing the remotes. How can we trust science and scientists with the passion of yesteryears when so much accusations fly around and we’ve no way of verifying the truth as all sides have their ways of trying to convince us.
They are also saying this time it isn’t about conspiracy theories, even telling us what we thought were only conspiracy theories are actually realties! Realities which remained wrapped in the veils of secrecy and are only now coming out of the boxes a paw at a time. I mean most in the scientific world being people who are thought to have, as the saying goes, good heads on their shoulders, to think some of them actually act like some cartel bums out for the kill is too much to take.
Good science isn’t, so we think, about destruction! Good heads on shoulders aren’t about devastation! Real good intentions aren’t about wrecking damage! No wonder the so-called extraterrestrials are said to be paying us repeated visits. A recent report had it that villagers in some remote Peruvian village actually witnessed seven-foot extraterrestrials floating in the air! Seeing video footage of shocked and scared villagers making all the noises in the night you’d think that they wouldn’t have gone this far had they not seen what they claim to have seen. Waiting for the ‘scientists’ to tell us their versions!
So the alleged repeated visits must be that they‘ve decided that mankind had never been weaker and this was the time to strike! Hmmm! That would be some real headache, wouldn’t it? On the more positive note maybe if such a scenario ceases being science fiction and plays out in real time maybe then we’d wake up to the fact that on whichever side we might be we’re all human beings; that’s unless the meaning for human beings has been altered!
Ephrem Endale Contributer
The Ethiopian Herald August 13/2023