In 1897, "The War of the Worlds" came out. It tells the story of the colonizing West, able to conquer the world with technology and industrial might, brought low by new powers from another planet with even greater technologies and machines. These new forces don't respond to reason, they care nothing for religion, really they only seek to…
In 1897, "The War of the Worlds" came out. It tells the story of the colonizing West, able to conquer the world with technology and industrial might, brought low by new powers from another planet with even greater technologies and machines. These new forces don't respond to reason, they care nothing for religion, really they only seek to take over and impose their will. But like every heedless conqueror before them, these invaders are ultimately destroyed by the humblest of creatures, a deadly microbe. Perhaps had they been more compassionate, or had they coexisted with the people they sought to exterminate, they might have learned to survive or avoided being wiped out, but the moral lesson of the story is obvious, that no human or even alien force is so great that it can conquer science, biological or otherwise.
I don't mean to suggest that China is run by an evil alien force, or that they have anything at all like the designs of the invading aliens, but they are very much in that story all the same. China's leadership has an excessive case of hubris, and despite the recent widespread trend of criticizing democracy in favor of the supposedly greater efficiency and capability of autocracies, it is precisely its lack of messy democracy and all its attendant problems that has sent China hurtling into a collision with basic scientific reality. The party cannot silence nature with GDP numbers, and it cannot simply decide to no longer have a deadly epidemic because it said so. Microbes will not listen to a party slogan any more than they will to tentacled machines shooting lasers.
Re: war of the world's - your point is wonderfully put but does ultimately read to me as unreconstructed fatalism, apologies. Regarding your other points - extremely interesting and thank you (though am not sure GDP is as much a priority as it once was). However I do feel if we really try to consider ends not means then there is arguably a positive frame esp. in the context of a crumbling world.
In 1897, "The War of the Worlds" came out. It tells the story of the colonizing West, able to conquer the world with technology and industrial might, brought low by new powers from another planet with even greater technologies and machines. These new forces don't respond to reason, they care nothing for religion, really they only seek to take over and impose their will. But like every heedless conqueror before them, these invaders are ultimately destroyed by the humblest of creatures, a deadly microbe. Perhaps had they been more compassionate, or had they coexisted with the people they sought to exterminate, they might have learned to survive or avoided being wiped out, but the moral lesson of the story is obvious, that no human or even alien force is so great that it can conquer science, biological or otherwise.
I don't mean to suggest that China is run by an evil alien force, or that they have anything at all like the designs of the invading aliens, but they are very much in that story all the same. China's leadership has an excessive case of hubris, and despite the recent widespread trend of criticizing democracy in favor of the supposedly greater efficiency and capability of autocracies, it is precisely its lack of messy democracy and all its attendant problems that has sent China hurtling into a collision with basic scientific reality. The party cannot silence nature with GDP numbers, and it cannot simply decide to no longer have a deadly epidemic because it said so. Microbes will not listen to a party slogan any more than they will to tentacled machines shooting lasers.
Re: war of the world's - your point is wonderfully put but does ultimately read to me as unreconstructed fatalism, apologies. Regarding your other points - extremely interesting and thank you (though am not sure GDP is as much a priority as it once was). However I do feel if we really try to consider ends not means then there is arguably a positive frame esp. in the context of a crumbling world.