Let us not be carried away by the possibilities and potentialities of science and technology. Let us face the harsh realities.
— Vaasamoorti in Age of Intelligence
A wild and impossible dream of man for ages, landing on the moon, was realized in 1969. Man is now almost ready to venture forth to the worlds beyond. But the word ‘man’ should not mislead us. The moon is not within the reach of everybody. Only half a dozen men have so far landed on the moon. Their number is not likely to go up in the near future. The landing on the moon is only symbolical of the magnitude and potentiality of man’s achievements. Once again the use of ‘man’ here is misleading. It is our science and technology that dominate our world today. Think of all the inventions of science and technology: motor cars, railway trains, steamers, airplanes, telegraph, telephone, cinema, radio, television, modern factories producing millions of various articles required by man, the revolutionary discoveries of medicines, the taming of rivers, the use of electricity, the splitting of atom and the exploitation of the unlimited nuclear energy, the electronics revolution, computers and, the most important of all for the existence of man – the developments in agricultural science. Truly science and technology are now at such a stage that they can provide every man, woman, and child with all the necessaries and comforts of life, so that there need be no more hunger, malnutrition, disease and poverty, and each and everyone can enjoy life commensurate to the status of man in the order of evolution. Indeed one is amazed at the possibilities and potentialities of science and technology.
But let us not be carried away by the possibilities and potentialities of science and technology. Let us face the harsh realities.
Let us see what we have actually been doing with the same science and technology. We come to the costliest ‘hobby’ of mankind, war and all that it involves. Then we shall realize the full extent of the great tragedy that humanity faces today.
It was said that with the money spent on the First World War a school and a hospital could have been opened in every town and village in the world, and a small, but handsome, cash gift could have been given to every man and woman alive1. This was only the money cost of the war. But also think of the millions of people killed, not only soldiers, but also ordinary men, women and children far away from the battlefield, the hundreds and thousands of families disrupted, and the thousands of villages, towns and cities destroyed. A little more than eleven million were estimated killed during that War.