L'évolution est-elle toujours positive ? (en anglais)

Charles Darwin once said: “it’s not the strongest of the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change”. Darwin developed the theory of biological evolution as known as Darwinism. This concept is one of the classical ones if we may call it that and is practically the base of the idea of progress, because Darwin believed in change so much that he thinks it’s the reason behind the humanity. So we are in fact living proof of evolution, progress, change, modification, and so on. How can a human, who exists because of or due to a biological and natural progress, question improvements? I am going to talk about the pros and the cons of the recent progresses in the human life. Even though we are constantly evolving, are we improving as human beings or is technology, science, or our way of being, thinking or acting, taking place over our lives?

The idea of progress is a very vast subject so I’m going to try tackling most of its aspects. First of all, when we say “progress”, the first thing we think of is technology (from computers to phones to tablets). We are in an endless loop of new products that grow out of style instantly. The consumer has infinity of choices and most of them are not in his price range but he buys them anyways to feel included in our materialistic society. Technology is something interesting and always evolving which is the beauty of it. But just like Einstein so cleverly predicted, the technology did surpass our human interaction and the world solely contains generations of shallow and narrow people. Second of all, we can take the scientific aspect of progress and the most recent studies that develop the whole cloning process. For example, we are astonished by the advancement of medicine at first, and then it strikes us how this whole concept of creating an exact replica of an existing human out of “scratch”, goes against all humanitarian beliefs, and of course religious beliefs. But let’s not get into that never ending debate. On the other hand, we have well evolved in the cohabitation department. I am referring to discrimination such as racism, sexism and so on. They still exist, that’s granted. But open minded people exist as well. Women no longer obey their husbands. They are now equal, independent and socially active. The same goes to the different races, religions, sects, or ethnic groups that are no longer in a constant conflict between one and other.

Anyway, we should be thankful that we live in a time where the medical evolution saves us from dying, from cold, or where, by dint of technology, we can all get a hold of each other in an easy and simple way that was supposed to enhance our communication and not the opposite. And we sure owe it to all the past philosophers who are now against discrimination and who fight for classes, sexes and equality as a whole. So progress is a complicated matter, just like everything else: it has its advantages and disadvantages.

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