Amplifier of the Human Ego

My old friend PC meets up with me every now and then for coffee. Usually we catch up at our favourite cafe in Puchong. PC is an entrepreneur who has built a quite successful company providing IT and automation solutions to enterprises. Even though he is the CEO of the company, he is still very hands-on in dealing with technical issues that crop up on his on-going projects.

He seeks my advice sometimes and I would try to help him in whatever way I could. I admire PC for his energy and drive. Usually people of his age would already be thinking about retirement and enjoying the hard-earned fruits of their labour. Not PC. He has a vision of bringing his company to the next level. And unlike me, who is still happily single, he is equally happy being married with 2 children.

Like me, he does not believe in retirement. While I work as a form of spiritual exercise, he works because he has a vision for his company. He is worldly in the positive sense. But even a worldly person can also be driven by noble goals. He has a vision of transforming the world using technology for the better.

My relative 'other-worldliness' is actually not in-congruent with his temporal quest. I see technological advancement as an inevitability. The human mind is forever innovating and my friend and I are just part of this grand play of cosmic evolutionary forces. Technological advancement is a game that I partake in. The only difference is that I do not have any personal attachment to its consequences.

Some of the consequences of technology will inevitably be bad. Technology is always a double-edged sword. It is an amplifier of the human ego. Take social media for instance. Facebook and Twitter allow us to amplify our thoughts and emotions to a degree that was unimaginable before. Everyone has a global broadcasting station. Inevitably every tiny virtue or vice that lurks within the deep recesses of our minds will be magnified and projected to the world outside.

All medication has its side-effects. The side-effect of technology is cyber-bulling, pollution, spam, scams and alienation from nature. We as a global civilization has never been as connected as we are now, yet the closer we are electronically to each other, the wider the gulf it is between us when it comes to politics and religion.

Like it or not, we'll have to live with technology. Once some innovation is introduced into the world, you cannot put the genie back into the bottle. So let's learn to live with it. One thing that I take comfort in is that, all enduring systems, if not stretched to a breaking point, are self-correcting.

Society will readjust itself, put in place the necessary checks and balances and forge an optimum path forward. That, I would take, perhaps for the sake of sanity, as an article of faith, in this world where technology is as ubiquitous, and at times, equally as noxious as the air we breath in.