Humanity constantly invents new technologies in the hope of making life easier, freer, safer, and more comfortable. We free ourselves from wires, increase our mobility, accumulate knowledge, develop new sources of energy, and create devices that previous generations could not have imagined.
Yet there is a simple question we rarely ask: Are we becoming happier?
The answer is increasingly clear. The more technologies, conveniences, and possibilities we create, the more confused we seem to become about what to do with our lives.
This does not mean that technological development should be stopped. We could not stop it even if we wanted to. Human egoism, i.e., the desire to enjoy at others’ expense, constantly drives us forward. We want greater comfort, wealth, knowledge, freedom, and control. We therefore invent one thing after another, always expecting the next development to bring us closer to a good life.
But again and again, the result disappoints us.
Nearly every development that promises to benefit humanity can also be turned against it. We discover powerful energy sources and then use them to build weapons. We create technologies that connect the entire world, yet human beings become increasingly divided and isolated. We accumulate enormous amounts of knowledge without learning how to live peacefully together.
Why does this happen? It is because we are trying to correct the world without correcting the human being.
Our inventions themselves are not the fundamental problem. The problem is the egoistic nature of the person using them. As long as our primary concern is how to benefit ourselves at the expense of others, whatever we create will eventually reflect that nature.
Paradoxically, this is also why technological development is necessary. Humanity must continue progressing until it recognizes that no external invention can solve its essential problem.
Once, we believed that one or another social system would save us, whether it was capitalism, socialism, communism, liberalism, greater freedom, or greater prosperity. We continue trying new arrangements, yet eventually each one exposes the same underlying problem: human egoism remains unchanged.
This is the recognition of evil.
The greatest invention humanity can ever make is therefore not another battery, machine, energy source, or political system. It is the method for correcting human nature.
We need not return to caves or destroy everything we have created. We need to understand what our entire development has been teaching us. Happiness does not depend on how many objects we possess or how sophisticated our civilization becomes.
As it is written, “One who increases knowledge increases sorrow,” and the same can be said about accumulating wealth without correcting the person who possesses it.
Eventually, humanity will discover that it has been trying to improve everything except the one thing that truly needs improvement, which is ourselves. When we reach that realization, our development will finally begin moving in the right direction.
Based on KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on October 15, 2019. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.