nature vs civilization. technology breeds happiness?

Last weekend we had the Sapporo International Night and along with it a lot of group discussions on world heritage sites, nature etc. Our group discussed on nature, culture and civilization and how they can co-exist. I am not getting into all details of coexistence but just a single point.

Technology & happiness. Human civilization and technology has grown in a fast pace but are we happy? Some of the members said they feel life is more comfortable. Nobody said that life has become happier. We found that technology which has been developed to make life easier has in fact made life complicated and busier. One of the members said that unlike the past, now he can travel from place to place in few minutes/hours but life has become busier. Communication has improved, internet, mobile phones, have taken place in our lives but effective communication between people have decreased. We were all alarmed to face this fact that better technology doesn’t mean happiness. So is technology, instead of liberating us, holding us back?

Does it look like a painting? I like the overall tone. A bit far from earth, it doesn’t show much of human intervention other than the dam. but may be a dam is enough? Anyways the picture shows a lot of geographical features.. Took it on my flight from Delhi to Sapporo a few months before. So it must be somewhere close to the east coast of India.

nature & civilization

Anyways, am happy about the warm hi-fi japanese toilets mentioned in the pervious post 🙂 More on it later!

27 Responses

  1. sarah says:

    ” Nothing is more commonplace than to lament that moral progress has failed to keep pace with scientific knowledge. If only we were more intelligent or more moral, we could use technology only for benign ends. The fault is not our tools, we say, but in ourselves.
    ” In one sense this is true. Technical progress leaves only one problem unsolved: the frailty of human nature. Unfortunately that problem is insoluble.”
    – excerpts from ‘Straw Dogs’ by John Gray in the section “why humanity will never master technology”.

  2. rocksea says:

    hi da! happy to see you here 🙂

    yes it all depends on how we take it. but sometimes some of it are forced on us as well. let us see whether humans adapt to technology or technology will adopt and adapt us!! :O

  3. Arun Ravi says:

    gosh.. So complicated! Technology itself is a sort of happiness.. it often generates new definitions for happiness too.. So can’t answer blindly.. It all depends on the recipients..
    Then I truely envy you roxy.. for all your photographs.. Amazing..:)

  4. sunny says:

    Hi,

    It is a biggest myth that we invent or are using technology to bring happiness. Infact technology is the manifestation of the ability of our human species. Infact every species show some capibilities and inborn technologies.

    So technology is our extention our environment ..we ourself. we are not complete eithout it and GOD(scheme of things) choose and gave us this capability.

  5. sarah says:

    THANK GOD for technology, aren’t we finding happiness from it? Certainly it is helping us so much, dear. Imagine us without it!

  6. rocksea says:

    well said sarah sweetheart. i think somewhere most of us get unbalanced in this balancing procedure when you try to compensate the lost happiness with better technology.

    anyways, technology has helped us a lot in OUR happiness, right 🙂

  7. sarah says:

    Me think technology has not really changed our state of happiness much. Earlier, we had a less sophisticated life and found happiness in simpler things and maybe we had more time too. As the days get busier and stressful ‘coz of technology, it makes us less happy and people are turning to newer technologies (pretty ironical huh?) to find the lost happiness in whatever time they can. So, it is a sort of evolution we are undergoing along with technology.

  8. rocksea says:

    cibbuano, geetha, theresa, pradeep , thank you for your significant views on technology and happiness. it seems to me that people have different perspectives on happiness and it depends on each situation/person. anyways it is great to see from the poll that a higher percent are able to extract happiness out of technology. may be people are getting wiser 🙂

  9. Happiness is a state of mind that one has discover from moment to moment, and it is not dependent on technology (or even salary or other material comforts).

  10. Theresa says:

    Yes, I quite agree that reading does bring people a lot of advantages, and certainly does make us more knowledgable. 🙂 One more reason why i like reading is that I pick up a lot of writing styles from different authors and poets, and I also get to widen my vocabulary. ^_^ And an addition is that I get inspired also! lol

  11. Geetha says:

    Cool. The picture is really clear.

    Technology has done its part to improve our lives, as well as destruct it. But we, help it (the technology) to make our lives more difficult, on a faster mode…

  12. cibbuano says:

    I agree with Theresa – technology has nothing to do with happiness.

    However, people often view tech as the key to happiness. How many people want a new car, or a new iPod? We’re all suckers.

    Anyway, as technology progresses, our lives are getting more complicated, partly because companies are trying to protect their profits and their interests.

  13. rocksea says:

    hey anu, 🙂

    between, theresa, thanks for the info on Shanghai Baby. so why was it banned then, if it simply looked into modern shanghaiese..

  14. anu says:

    oooohhh..! lovely..!!
    :))

  15. rocksea says:

    Hiren, can’t decipher where life is taking us huh 😉

    g, come let us go to the mountains

    jal, at first i thought the same. it seems use of camera is restricted during flight take off and landing. while i was taking these pics the captain passed by and he asked me whether am getting good pics. after that i started clicking fervently!

    then, the camera has excellent zoom (10x). and this must have been before we went up the clouds..

    theresa, painting :O

    but some people look like robots, dont they 😉

    and who knows people won’t be robots some time!!

    കലേഷേ, അങ്ങനെ മറക്കാന്‍ പറ്റുമോ കലേഷേ..

    മലയാളം വായില്‍ വന്നാല്‍ അപ്പഴങ്ങ് കാച്ചിയേക്കാം.. തല്‍ക്കാലം ഒരു വിഷയദൌര്‍ലഭ്യം?? ശരിയാകുമായിരിക്കും..

    mind curry ya.. that end looks like something out of Robin Cook’s book.. 😀

  16. Mind Curry says:

    nice pic..yeah it does look like a aerial snapshot..the only other thing it reminded me of is a microscopic view of some kind of infection spreading.

  17. ചേട്ടോ, മലയാളം മറന്നോ? ഞങ്ങളെയൊക്കെ മറന്നോ?
    എന്താ‍ ഈയ്യിടയായിട്ട് മലയാളം പോസ്റ്റുകളൊന്നും കാണാത്തത്?

  18. Theresa says:

    The painting first looked to be a bird’s eye view of some place… It looks kind of realistic. 🙂

    Anyways, I don’t think technology would really be a factor in making people’s lives happier or contrawise. It’s all in the mentality of how you would take it. If you took technology materialistically, you will never ever be satisfied because technology advances very quickly. It also causes us to be busier because of the advancements which allows everything to progress faster therefore building up the jobs people have to do… afterall, people are not robots. lol

    Shanghai Baby does go a bit in the Chinese culture. But mostly, it showcases the modern Shanghai and young Shangaiese there. So yea.. 🙂

  19. jal says:

    exceellent pic… but how come they let u use cams inside the flight? they dont do they? and how come u wre flying in such low altitude?

  20. g says:

    Super cool pic! Now if only i could take em like that!
    have a nice day
    love

    g

  21. Hiren says:

    The standard of living has improved but the standard of life has remained more or less same despite technology because very little is know about the Internal man compared to the external sources.

  22. rocksea says:

    aye james, thank you

    pidiyana, ohh that time we were blogs apart. anyways the flight was kochi-mumbai-delhi-bangkok-tokyo-sapporo. didnt get out at delhi.

    SewerSalmon, ya, itz a beer thatz how this place got its name. hmm.. itz the other way round 🙂

    prasad, exactly. comfort doesnt make me happy always.. or in the long term run. here am comfortable with a good lab, computer and a cozy place to sit n work. but in the long run the sedentary life makes me less healthy n less happier? so am waiting (phd!) to go out to the jungles 😉

    anyways one can say technology gives short term happiness, which we cant avoid, but which may turn out to be not so beneficial in the long term run?

    isnt hirakud a bigger dam? anyways from what i saw i feel this dam is a smaller one.

  23. prasad says:

    tht ‘painting’ is cool.(hehe,it looks more like a painting thn a photo).tht dam may be the one near my village..hehe,kiddin..tht must be Hirakud(spelling?) on Mahanadi,I guess.
    another topic I like!influence of technology on ‘happiness’.hmmm,i like 2 put it ths way.Technology definitely made human comfortable,but comfort need not necessarily mean ‘Happiness’.(does it seem paradoxical?).I always feel a tiny(?) difference between comfort and happiness.But for other ppl,comfort can be real happiness.Besides,tht r many unwanted longterms effects are gifted by technology ;).
    I am not against Technology though.Technology for its own causes added benifits 2 human kind.But I dont like the path technology is takin.Let me hav a common example.On the name of protection,we created Nuclear Technology etc.How Ironic!And now strugglin to abolish all nuclear weapons..

  24. Isn’t Sapporo some kind of beeru? 😉

  25. pidiyana says:

    Delhi???? Thats where you will get to meet me!!!
    When was this???

  26. Excellent picture..!
    It looks like a painting!

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