Unhappy highways: Economic growth, technology and alienation
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COMMENTS 
Economic growth and technology may increase access to comforts, but may also induce a new individuation and social disintegration, says John Samuel
Economic growth and technological innovations are the two key drivers of change. Technology and economic growth feed into each other. Access to economic growth and technology is supposed to make life more comfortable. But the key paradox of economic and technological growth is that both tend to increase comfort but decrease the level of happiness. While rapid economic growth can create access to income, it can also create the paradox of abundance -- wherein the quantity of money and comforts subvert and undermine the quality of time, life, living and environment.
When growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) does not produce a corollary growth in Gross Domestic Happiness (GDH), the purpose of economic growth and the use and misuse of technology are in question. Economic growth is not a bad idea. But abundance can also create perpetual tension between the zest for freedoms and entrenched fears within and without. Such tensions can wake the demons within the self and society – the absence of trust, increasing insecurity, paranoia and violence.
Technology is a double-edged sword. Every tool's validity depends on who uses it, and for what. The tool itself may not be political, but the use of the tool is always an exercise of power.
Technology has been the main protagonist in the drama of economic growth in modern and post-modern times. Technology did make a difference to the human condition, comforts and lives. Technology has almost acquired a god-like- power to create, sustain and destruct; to search for perfection, to conquer stars and clone life. Ground zero in New York, the blazing guns and exploding young men on a busy street symbolise the frightening dance of technology. It is the unequal and asymmetrical access to technology that also propels various kinds of domination.
In a metro-line in Tokyo, most of the young people are glued to their mobiles, playing games, browsing the Internet, chatting with someone online and they hardly even notice the person sitting next to them. While people are connecting with others distant from them, they are alienated from the person sitting or living next door. The cyber world, social networking on the net etc creates virtual and imagined communities, while subverting and undermining human communities in real life.
In counties like Japan, young people seem too busy to fall in love. Thirty thousand people commit suicide every year -- one of the highest in the world. Aggressive economic growth and invading technology seem to have resulted in more people using the Internet to find someone to sleep with or love, and more people making suicide pacts on the net. When even love, passion and feeling get automated, orderly, routine, life becomes a boring burden: where life ceases to provide any excitement, people may search for excitement in death! It has become a case of an economic society superimposed on a very traditional socio-cultural society, with a pervading sense of new individuation and depoliticisation.
Everyone seems to be pre-occupied with his or her own economic survival, at the cost of emotional security and social/community disintegration. Every young person seems to be busy finding a job, proving his or her sense of self-worth as a "hardworking" professional with “sincerity" to the job. There is no time to hold hands, to walk in a park or to sing a song. When there is no space for anarchic thinking and life, creativity takes a back seat and productivity takes a front seat. Livelihood takes precedence over living and living takes precedence over life. The efficiency of our work goes up and the effectiveness of life gets discounted.
When human beings cease to be social and creative and tend to be more a productive workforce, preoccupied with survival of the self, the seeds of alienation bloom into a cancer of social disintegration and depolitisation. One ceases to be part of a community, more a loner in the midst of an anonymous crowd. This erosion of aesthetics from human relations and society dehumanises society and the world.
Sudden economic growth can induce more demands in some sectors, pushing up the cost of living. The increased income of a minuscule minority propels a new consumerism with a consequent increase in cost of living. In the rapidly growing economies of Asia, we are seeing sky-rocketing real estate prices, smashed housing dreams and transgression of the rights of the majority of the urban middle class. This in turn reduces the real purchasing capacity and increases the discontent of those who did not get much out of economic growth -- a recipe for an economics of violence.
Economic growth and technology may increase access to comforts, but may also induce a new individuation (transforming people from a "social animal" to an "economic animal" driven by economic compulsions), social disintegration, paranoia and a consequent loss of time or mindset for poetry, politics, love, companionship or community.
This paranoia, emotional insecurity and loss of community also create a new market for spiritualism and market-driven religious denominations. Brand new spiritual shops and “gurus” are thriving as a result of the market-induced emotional and social insecurity among people who have becomes the villains and victims of the mega-market.
InfoChange News & Features, April 2008