The biggest experiment in history
Why are we still pursuing the long-past dreams of armed colonialists, top-hatted industrialists, and greedy bankers?
When someone mentioned a few years ago that the Industrial Revolution started 200 years ago, I was struck with the thought, ‘Gosh, I have lived through more than a quarter of the Industrial Revolution!’ That means that when I think back to the racing cars on St Ouen’s beach when I was a child, to tractors pulling ploughs followed by hoards of gulls, industrialism was young compared to now.
We are living through one of the biggest experiments that humans have ever undertaken on the Earth. Is it possible to grow the same monocrop in the same fields year after year? Is it possible to isolate people in flats and housing developments and have them still turn up for work every day? Is it possible for people to spend most of their lives in debt when there isn’t enough money in existence for them to pay back all they owe?
It was a massive leap into the unknown when the first farmers took up neolithic ways, deciding never again to migrate following the wild herds or gather nature’s bounty. They cut down nature’s bounty, burned the forests, planted their meagre crops, and began to defend what they suddenly felt — for the first time ever — was ‘their’ land.
It was another huge step when landowners enclosed their land, drove off the peasants who did not pay rent, hunted down and killed the last remaining wild animals, and marked out their estates, fields and parks. Industrialists, mine owners and mill owners soon found work for the peasants and their children, villages grew into towns and towns into cities. Now we have high density blocks and suburban sprawls; traffic jams and fumes characterise our daily commutes.
Those who truly believed in these changes defended them with murderous zeal. They even exported the ideas to most other continents. They grabbed the land, subdued, traded or exterminated the indigenous folk, and made everything into moneymaking schemes.
But what if they were wrong? What if this is just an experiment, and the wildfires, the uprisings, the extinctions and the wars are proof that it has already failed? Could simply caring, loving and sharing be kinder, more human, more sustainable, more fair and more just?
Why are we still pursuing the long-past dreams of armed colonialists, top-hatted industrialists, and greedy bankers? Can we not see all around us the death and the harm such heartlessness has caused?
This article first appeared in the Jersey Evening Post on 15 August 2019
