In this week’s article I’m really going to challenge every single one of you to look at your own lives, to look at the lives of others and society as a whole and try to understand one of our greatest flaws. I will do my best to not offend anyone as I will also be criticizing my own lifestyle.

So, look around wherever you are right now. Maybe you’re outside and you see cars driving by, maybe you look around and see all of the tiny, perfectly proportioned boxes we call our homes. Maybe you’re inside and you’re staring at a computer screen, your iPhone, maybe there is a television and/or other electrical appliances around you. Look around and what do you see? You see technology. Technological advancement is arguably mankind's greatest intellectual quality, and also mankind’s greatest moral downfall.

Let us start with “Original Sin.” Whether you are religious or not, we are all aware of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. This story is timeless and, in my opinion, quite dated. Adam and Eve are given all of the necessities that are sufficient to provide themselves with a happy, bountiful life, but curiosity gets the better of them. God tells them not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and yet they do. A sly, manipulative snake digs deep enough to play with Eve’s curiosity and tells her this is what you need! Eat the fruit and then you will be like God and feel more fulfilled than you could ever possibly imagine. So, Eve and Adam eat from the tree and become conscious of good and evil and become “like God.”

This is original sin, the God complex. Eve was convinced that knowledge could not possibly be wrong, that God was being selfish, while in reality God was trying to save them the pain. So, how does this apply to technology? It applies because we have still not learned form Adam and Eve. We have corporations which are still the snake telling us we need more: the iPhone 6 isn’t enough you need the iPhone 6s Plus, your television is not enough you need 4K digital LED 70 inch televisions, you need a faster and more sporty looking car etc. you need it all and more and more and more and more. Never stop upgrading, they say, and we listen to them and we take that bite of the apple and it makes us feel good for some reason because for a moment we are superior and we are up-to-date.

We have so many problems in the world: 12% of the world population doesn’t have clean water, hundreds of thousands of children are orphaned every year, we can’t even solve our old problems and we keep making more issues every time we upgrade because the more we have, the more we acquire the more fulfilling our lives will be. We could get a free, cheap, but functioning, phone anytime we wanted but we choose the $600 “smart phone” every time because we are told that is what we need. Just the other day I read online about a woman claiming a welfare check while texting on her iPhone and it astounded me. There are people dying on the streets that wish they could qualify for welfare and you are here sitting on your brand new iPhone while you take free money. And I realize I’m a part of the problem, I have an iPhone and a Mac, and it may seem that I’m biting the hand that feeds me because I criticize this technology and yet I indulge in it as well. I am aware this is something I need to work on. I believe we all inherently, through our culture, have a God complex. We want to create and become more powerful and more superior and we work and work and work day and night for more and more and more that we don’t even stop for one second to ask ourselves: just because we can create something, should we? If you have an iPhone, turn it around and look at the back of it, look at the logo. If you don’t have an iPhone either imagine the Apple logo or look it up.

Do you realize what it is? It’s an Apple with a bite out of it. Even Apple is aware their technology is the fruit from the tree of knowledge, and we must be aware that there are consequences to that knowledge. Like Adam and Eve we have a beautiful world that is more than enough to sustain life, yet, that is still not satisfying for us. And so, we go as far as to killing our planet: deforestation, drilling oil, hydraulic fracking etc. just so we can make more stuff that we don’t need while killing everything that we do need. Now, on to Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) in our world. Take a look at the movie Ex Machina, if you haven’t seen it then I highly recommend it and if you have then watch it again. In Ex Machina’s fictional world you have a Steve Jobs type character, Nathan, who has created A.I. robots just because he can. Nathan certainly has a God complex, expressing many times how he is obsessed with creating conscious, self-aware, and original artificial intelligence. At one point, Nathan even goes as far as to saying he is a God. Unfortunately for Nathan, in the end of the film he ends up being murdered by the very thing he created. Now, take a look at the movie Avengers: Age of Ultron.

In the film, Tony Stark creates the world’s very first Artificial Intelligence with the plan of creating world peace which backfires on him when the robot, Ultron, realizes that the only way to obtain peace is to commit mass genocide of the entire human race. So, how do these two fictitious men apply to real life? Like Tony and Nathan we have this obsession of creating something that will solve all of our problems for us, that will surpass us intelligence-wise and even morally, but, we are so obsessed with this idea that we don’t even stop to try and solve the problems we have now. We have so many issues that we haven’t solved and we keep creating more and more with each and every technological advancement which takes place. We still have race issues, gender equality issues, we still have issues with water and food, cultural bias issues etc. but we have drones, we have nuclear weapons, we have virtual reality. It really pisses me off knowing that these things exist and that we are so intelligent and so advanced yet still can’t seem to get over the same exact issues that should have ended several millennia ago.

It is not right to me and it makes me feel guilty that we produce so many products that only give us material gain and no emotional peace while millions suffer. We have rockets the size of our houses that can destroy an entire continent at the push of a button, but we can’t provide clean food and water for every human being. In America, we have a $600,000,000,000 budget for the Military (not including Veteran’s benefits), but we only have 15% as much as the military budget going towards more beneficial sciences like sustainable energy, agriculture, and healthcare. Why must humans be so prone to destructive tendencies that we veer completely off the moral course? We have a new form of warfare called “drone-warfare” where you can kill someone across the world with the press of a button like a video game, which might seem necessary to combat terrorism on one hand, but at the cost of desensitizing the act of murder? It just doesn’t feel right to me.

Millions don’t have access to clean food, water, and/or healthcare, yet, in America, water is another product which is bought and sold in a plastic battle, completely commodified, wasteful, and destructive to the environment. There are an estimated 143 million to 210 million orphans in the world, yet there is a billion dollar industry in the science of artificial insemination, where people literally look through a catalogue of human beings to find which one they would like their child to share genetics with. It is due to these facts as to why I am very skeptical of the intentions of modern society and why I am so critical of all of us as human beings. I believe that if you fail to help your fellow human beings then you fail to be a good human being. We are all naturally social beings, what is the point of selfish, self-centered, materialistic gain if we can’t even take care of our own kind?

So, I challenge you all, like I challenge myself, to think of all of these issues next time before you decide to buy something you don’t need. Where is your dollar most needed? Not just in your life, but in the lives of others as well. Before we continue to make any other advancements and upgrades in technology we should look to upgrade our hearts instead. It sounds cheesy, I know, but we spend so much energy feeding our physical impulses and our material desires that we don’t even look inwards anymore at our hearts to truly see and feel what is right. So, please, look at the world and listen to your heart.