5G AND THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY: A COMMONSENSE APPROACH

5G and the Future of Humanity:

Technology is advancing at a scary pace. Just decades after the advent of mobile phones, something impressively big has emerged. You know its name—5G. We can pretend for a moment that this is nothing, and that this, if it is anything, has nothing to do with us, that whatever the “people of the world” decide to do with their rotten lives  is none of our business; but it is not their lives they are playing with, it is our lives. And in the end, this very “business” of technocrats and bureaucrats, which looks far away from us, will become everyone’s business. Whatever blessing or curse lies ahead of us, shall be shared equally to all. 

We may not know all that 5G is and isn’t, but we know enough to talk about it: we know of its scientific grandness, we’ve heard that it is like heaven on earth, we know that it’s over twenty, perhaps fifty times, maybe a thousand times better than anything we’ve ever known or heard about. We can download eternally long movies or songs with the speed of light, and float from one end of the internet to the other in just minutes.  We can do the unimaginable and imagine the undoable. And in the end, we would have turned our world into paradise before God thinks of doing so. You can feel excitement in the air, only that, some of us have killed that excitement with entirely different pictures. And the world has hurriedly labelled them liars and thieves and masters of conspiracy theories. They have not come to us with dungs and rags only; they have come with reason and facts, have warned us of deadly rays and unspeakable plagues and long-term health crisis; they’ve told us stories of steady degradation of the entire race, the complete alteration of human DNA, the ultimate elevation of cancer to an entirely new level, and the scary possibility of using the strange new tech to control the human race.  

Prophets of doom, we call them; cynics, enemies of progress, enemies of humanity:

We hurl at them and throw stones and delete their posts and videos, and stop their articles from seeing the light of day. But they are not our greatest enemy. Our technology is our enemy, our inventions are our own demons: all the carbon emission, the years of exposure to deadly rays and chemicals, the ungodly proliferation of cancer, the steady degradation of our echo system, the daily invitations we send out in large numbers to earthquakes and hurricanes in the name of development; the unending destruction of our lives in order to make life better.  The prophets of doom and darkness may rant all day about antichrists and one world order and some secret “mark of the beast”; they may tell us about an ongoing scheme by men of the underworld to depopulate the world, and many other senseless things, but they still have some sense left in their brains; they carry, amidst all the trash, a message for our future, if we care to listen.

 They come to our doorsteps with the gospel of caution, they ask us questions we have refused to ask ourselves, questions we must not hesitate to ask ourselves: were 3G and 4G and all the other countless Gs completely safe? And will this one be safer? Or riskier? Aren’t the answers clear as day? And why have we given blind eyes to intensive research into all that could possibly go wrong? A US senator, just recently critiqued the FCC and FDA for insufficient research into the potential risks of 5G. And what was the response? We heard things, strange things, they said it with their own mouths: “research into radiation risks is difficult and can take a long time to make real progress.” And because research into radiation risks is difficult, we’ve thrown away research altogether; because it can take a long time to make progress, we prefer to act as though all is well and choose to move headlong into the abyss.

But where are we running to? And why are we even running? Why fly into danger when we can take our time and cross all our ts? What beauty lies in rushing into an uncertain future? Of what use is this great connectedness that lies ahead, when there is so much in us that keeps us apart? So much degradation, so much corruption, so much fraud and decay. They tell us how smart our lives will be, and forget to mention how safe. They preach progress and forget also the progress of terrorists and scammers through our countless progressive technologies. We desire to advance in science but not in manners, not in matters of right and wrong. We forget so soon about Hiroshima and the gas chambers, and the sudden ascent of terrorism in countries of the veiled and the bearded.  Our diverse men-pleasing laws have brought to us liberal chaos and confusion, and yet we still speak of order and greater connectedness. What senseless order? What useless connectedness? We lie. We lie to ourselves again. For sooner or later, all our progress will be swallowed up by the chaos in our own heart.  

We must move forward, but not into doom. We must make progress but not at the expense of our already wretched existence; for of what use will our advancements be if we destroy ourselves in the end? We must think, and make plans, and bring our selves lowly enough to accept truths that taste sour and bitter, and not keep wallowing in names calling, labelling all who think differently “conspiracy theorists,” writing off all whose opinions differ from ours. We have become cynical towards the “cynics” in our midst, we have behaved as if we or our imperfect technologies are flawless, as if all these innumerable opponents of our “progress” are altogether retarded, as if all these protests and complaints in the world mean nothing to us. The cynics say there is something fishy to all this, that all this, even the virus in our midst, are but products of a big, bloody conspiracy, and we have behaved exactly so, as though they have divined the matter well.

Our big brothers tell us to calm down, that all is well, that nothing can go wrong. But we forget who they are, these big brothers, these lovers of peace and progress in our midst; we forget about their high and lofty profiles, we forget that they are rulers of nations, masters of philanthropy, sponsors of all that is good and perfect and “progressive”; we forget that they are giants of telecom, the very brains behind the big package. They’ve told us nothing. They’ve only come to us in their true colors.

5G is ready, adorned, ready for us; but are we ready for it? Have we put our broken houses in order? We have educated the human mind on the need for speed and smartness and connectedness. Have we also educated the human heart? Are we as enthusiastic about matters of morals as we are about scientific progress and progression? The answers are as clear as day: we are not ready; we will be ready, we can be ready, if we are willing enough; and someday, we must be ready, for this technology must not pass us by, this great connectedness, and speed, and smartness, which 5G promises to bring our way, must not come pass only after we have left the face of the earth.