Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Means to an end


Making a difference in the society where you live is a valid principle only if that society will use your contribution for good; otherwise, a contribution that was meant to have only upstanding intentions and the scope to help the progress of mankind serves, instead as an instrument to increase the level of social injustice and evil in the present and future of the world. An example? The Theory of Relativity and the well-known formula correlating mass and energy (E=mc2), undoubtedly one of the greatest contributions in human history, was used (because of such and such historical situations) to contrive the most destructive weapon human history has ever seen! More recently the herbicide called “Agent Orange”, containing among others dioxin, was used as a “herbicidal warfare program” in a defoliation operation over South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and parts of North Vietnam that also affected US soldiers present in those areas. What is less known is that the idea for Agent Orange came out of research by a scientist who studied a mechanism to improve growth in plants! Once again, something intended for good was reverse engineered for evil. Be mindful when you contribute to a society ready to turn every end into malicious means.

(Sergio Caldarella, Means to an end, in RantRave, April 15, 2014)

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Über die Dummheit


»Wenn die Dummheit nicht dem Fortschritt, dem Talent, der Hoffnung oder der Verbesserung zum Verwechseln ähnlich sähe, würde niemand dumm sein wollen.«

«If stupidity were not confusingly similar to progress, ability, hope and improvement, then no-one would want to be stupid».

(Robert Musil, Über die Dummheit, 1937)