See inline.

Dr. Johnson C. Philip wrote:
> We know that the ultimate aim for which mankind is working
> is to establish a better world. Whether it be research

A lot of us actually doubt it.

Couple of weeks back, I was looking at a bunch of some 200 odd pictures
of nature a friend brought on a pen drive. It took me a while to realize
a key attribute of virtually every picture I liked - it tended to have
no man made structure visible! When I looked closely, virtually every
man made structure looked rather crude compared to nature made ones!

Some of the happiest memories I have are not of Bombay (where I've spent
much of my life) but of a little unfenced farm near Kanpur in north that
didn't even have electricity & where I spent a summer in childhood!
Lazing under a tree there vs watching TV on a Sunday afternoon in Bombay...

Will I leave my precious concrete jungle for surroundings that have been
less touched by humans? Not anytime soon, but who knows? May be some day
a quite location on some island in Lakshdweep that actually has
uninterrupted power, fast transport to urban centers, & internet...

Of course we understand nature better with every passing day. And also
how to use what mother earth offers to make gadgets that do things not
yet done by gadgets. Whether that results in a "better world" is
probably an open question. Because definition of "better" depends on
person, mood, stage in life, ...

> free of inequality, exploitation, crime, and tyranny.
Last week's terror attacks on Bombay show some of the progress made.

> However, when we project our history into future using
> science-fiction, somehow the crime, the intensity of crime,
> the exploitation of people, only seem to become more
> prominent, more intense, and more evil.

This view probably also depends on what kind of science fiction you read.

A well known example is Eric Frank Russell. His worlds have all the
stupidity & craziness someone can ask for in science fiction, & yet the
effect is to have fun. Here are two of his very well known stories that
are available online, in case someone is unfamiliar with him (second one
is an early example of Gandhigiri):
"Allamagoosa"
<http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/russell/russell1.html\
>
"- And Then There Were None -"
<http://www.abelard.org/e-f-russell.htm>

There are other examples. But yes, a lot of what goes as sf is dystopia.
Fortunately, there is so much of it that we can choose to read only the
kind of stuff that goes with personal temperament.

> 3. Or is it that we will remain evil in spite of progress for
> a millennia, or even a hundred thousand years?
Depending on how "evil" is defined, I suppose a Darwinian view of the
universe can offer some perspectives.

--
<http://variety-sf.blogspot.com/>


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