Victims of our own what now?

Victims of our own what now? Success. Yes. Success

Let me explain. In the last week, I’ve read/seen three news items that have led me to examine more critically my tendency to condemn the modern and to romanticize the past.

You see, the phrase “Mo’dernity, Mo’problems” has always wrung true to my ears. I’m quick to point out all the ways in which new technology robs us of our possible virtues and to look towards “indigenous” cultures for guidance on how I’m supposed to be living my life – how I’m supposed to parent and eat and commune with something larger than myself.

On Monday I read an article in Foreign Policy arguing that the organic, local, slow food movement is the wrong answer for most of the world’s poorest. In fact, we should be grateful for the newer and safer fertilizers and pesticides, whose antecedents sparked a food revolution making it possible to feed the world several times over and to endure the inevitable periodic droughts and floods. The author points out that the poorest of subsistence farmers couldn’t eat more organically, locally or prepare food more slowly than they do but that this is thankless, arduous and sometimes fruitless work which cements their place at the margin of existence.

Last night I saw a PBS special on the vaccine controversy. Despite protecting the population from 16 known diseases, many of them killers, vaccines have recently become a bogeyman for the more organically inclined and parents of autistic children looking desperately for answers. And these outcries have been stubbornly resistant to an overwhelming preponderance of evidence contradicting their assertions.

On Tuesday I read an article in Harpers about the cadre of die-hards dedicated to uncovering the science showing that EMF waves, mainly from cell phones, are leading to a proliferation of brain tumors.

We make all these arguments: pesticides bad, cell phones bad, vaccines bad, from a place of relative comfort and near total amnesia about the original problems that these advances made disappear. The terrifyingly indiscriminate nature of the polio scourge and the physical ache of hunger are simply not a part of our collective consciousness. Cell phones certainly haven’t helped feed the hungry and heal the sick, but they have connected us in a way that is easily taken for granted. Gone are the days of wondering why your dinner companion (or even child) is late or stopping long distance phone calls before they get “too expensive.” Would we go back to a world without cell phones?

This is not to diminish the very real concerns with the environmental impact of chemical agents on our food and therefore bodies and the unknown long-term threat of new electronic technology. The fear of vaccines causes autism is probably the best example of outsized concern with a perceived threat compared to a proven benefit. But even here, consumer vigilance has steadily made vaccines safer.

I guess I’m just taking time and see the world through an antique monocle and to be grateful for all those things which I now have the luxury to complain about.