Electricity and its use was coming in stages: first substituting for our muscle power, then providing the light and so on. While telegraph and telephone extended the distance of our hearing, television did the same for our vision or should I rather say for our "visibility". Radio-waves were first carrying Morse code, then spoken word, later even controlled the orbiting satellites and even the rocket to Mars. Are we happy now or were we more happy then?
What a simple-minded question! Happiness is the feeling resulting from many factors, many of which we tend to forget. Especially when we are happy :-). Our imagination was always carrying us further than any electron could. We invented computers; first to do our calculations, then to do our data processing and lately even as a substitute for our basic thinking. In spite of the fact that our imagination could take us even further - well, let's stoop right here: we could go on and on. Oh yes, we also made some progress in the field of artificial intelligence, but our natural one is still quite ahead of it. One reason for it may be the fact that our thinking is still developing, with us even realizing it. Forwards or even backwards, if you know what I mean.
Our thinking clearly extended in many directions, but at the same time also shrunk, laterally of course. It seems to be quite natural since the more we are specializing - i.e. looking for details and in depth - the less time we have for general overview. That's where the negative trends come to work: we try to handle more information than ever before, but at the same time we think less than ever before (or it looks like it, anyway). Well, we do not have to think that much in many areas, not any more: spreadsheets are doing our calculations, electronic spellers check our spelling, browsers and search engines are picking the facts we are searching for - stock market trends, verses from bible, recent news and even astrological forecasts. All we need to do is to quote - yes, without prejudice and even without verification. Instead of looking for ideas, we are only looking for facts. The facts somebody already discovered and published, the facts which are already there, but nothing new, to be quite honest.
True, if we want to study something we have to start somewhere and more we learn the better. But Web is not the same as printed matter, where author is backing up his word (or facts) with his personal prestige and integrity. What we see on WEB are not always the real facts, only somebody's opinions, sometimes even the transparent tendency to change the facts. For each question we will find on WEB hundreds of answers, mostly contradicting each other.
And then, we do reports. Good reports, excellent reports, nothing but reports. Reports containing very few of original ideas, mind you. But who wants them, who needs them? Is your boss interested in something new, something which was never there, never proven or never found to be financially profitable? Maybe, but would he be willing to push that new idea on his manager's desk? Hardly.
He knows what we all know: originality is actually the violation of society rules. True, the violation of old, sometimes even antique rules, but rules nevertheless. And that is risky. What if the proposal does not succeed? After all, he would risk his warm place, comfortable job, his connection with vice-president's uncle, etc. True, if it works and he is smart enough, he may scoop all benefits and praises instead of you - but is it worth that risk? He already has a warm, comfortable job!
The same goes through the heads of others, too. So instead of trying to improve our world, we are happily yapping into our mobile phones, watching TV and use WEB the way it was never intended for - for business. Well, nothing wrong with little business - but shouldn't I be asked first whether I want all that advertising garbage on my screen? Tings surely will get even worse when everything will go wireless: the network captains will tell us all what we should or rather must like. Otherwise we may become non-conformists, you know, some kind of black sheep . . .
It all started with Adam and Eve and look what happened to them. No, the subject was not an apple of maybe supermarket quality. The sin was their research in things they were not supposed to know like picking fruit from the forbidden tree, the tree of knowledge. And they not only gathered information (i.e. apples), they also digested it (ate it, to be accurate) and even made some improvements later (i.e. they invented first clothing). Yes, they were original - nobody did it before them - that's why we call it "the original sin" :-).
Today, we have mass-media which present us with various information garbage under the pretext of our "right to know". But we have also the right to know better than that. We have a "right to think", don't you think so? Or are we happy with all that prefabricated opinion pumped into our memory via our eyes and ears, conveniently by-passing the thinking part of our brain? Some of us are happy - maybe even most of us, I do not know. Look at the so called "political correctness" - we all know you can be either correct or political but seldom both at the same time :-). Yes, the originality is still treated as some kind of sin and our punishment is the forced conformation to the existing status. Don't rock the boat, we are told by our parents, our friends, our society. Nonsense! The boat is already shaking quite seriously, jumping up and down with waves without ever moving forward. What it needs is to balance it, stabilize it and started to sail again.
Let' not forget one more thing: for their thirst for knowledge, Adam and Eve were thrown from comfortable peace of paradise into this world of sorrow. Not only that - the sentence was rather strange: they were ordered to multiply! The reason is not so obvious, but I believe that it was to make our punishment less severe: we just cannot live on the Earth alone, because we do not have all the comfort of paradise here. We have to help each other just to be able to live at all. So as you see, our mankind is here only thanks to original sin, the sin of originality. And without originality, we may one day cease to exist, at least mentally.