Progress – define it objectively. Why do people dislike progress?

Progress is a positive change. If it is objective it is about things getting better in a way that is provable and therefore no reasonable person can disagree. This would include things such as extending life expectancy, persuading more people to give up smoking, reducing global warming, closing the hole in the Ozone layer, reducing the murder rate, reducing the suicide rate or lifting people out of absolute poverty. These changes would be progress because they are aimed at preserving life. It is human instinct to remain alive which is why we eat and drink. Those who try to end their lives are usually judged to be mentally ill.

There can be progress which is not necessarily a moral improvement. Someone who attains better scores in exams than before is making progress. Someone who achieves faster times in running is making progress. This can be demonstrated objectively because there is a metric to do this.

We could make people live longer and this could be proved through data. However, it is debatable whether this is a desirable aim. The pension system might collapse. Is it worth living many years bed bound or in a permanent vegetative state? The health service would then have to expend so many of its resources extending the lives of geriatrics. Therefore, the younger generations’ health would be neglected.

Economic progress is about enriching ourselves. This can be proven through looking at Gross Domestic Product. GDP is sometimes misleading as it might hide a huge gulf between the affluent and the indigent. The United States has a very high GDP but that is because it has many billionaires even though 20% of the people are in poverty. Economic progress is not always to be welcomed even when it means greater wealth even for the poorest. Car ownership has become the norm in highly developed countries. But this brought with it more pollution, more noise and more traffic jams. It became difficult to find a parking space. Furthermore, green space had to be concreted over to build more roads and car parks. Some see all this so-called progress as a pity. Some economic progress could be undesirable. If we concentrated on providing for the needs of the poorest this would increase the sum of human happiness more so than furnishing the already affluent with superfluous material goods.

Economic progress can lead to urban sprawl. It might also cause small family owned businesses to go bust. The tranquility of a close knit community can be wrecked by a behemoth business. For instance, a hypermarket out of town can undercut a corner shop because the small business cannot compete on prices with a hypermarket that buys goods in bulk. Mass scale tourism has ruined the quaintness and placidity of remote fishing villages for instance. The people in the village would become wealthier due to the influx of tourists. But is that worth it? That is a subjective issue. Poverty, not just development, is also ugly.

Objectively demonstrable progress is something which a datum can prove as adumbrated hereinbefore. This is in stark contrast to something subjective which is a matter of personal preference or ideology. The victory of a certain political party is hailed as progress by some but seen as retrograde by others. Social changes will be lauded as emancipation by some but disparaged as decadence by others. Gender and racial equality can be shown through statistics. However, some bigots dislike these trends. Therefore such contentious changes which do not have a statistical basis or an uncontentious reason for calling them progress can be objectively identified as progress.

Progress involves change. Some people dislike change. Those who are small ‘c’ conservatives tend to be sceptical about change. There are reactionaries who are opposed to all modernisation and indeed wish to turn the clock back to the way that things used to be centuries ago. Progress is threatening to people who are set in their ways. Those of a very traditional cast of mind wish to continue current practices. This can be irrational: being overlay attached to doing things the way they have always been done just for the sake of it. Not all traditions are worthy of automatic respect.

Technological progress can put people out of work. Some people are Luddites and are against scientific and technological progress. People have opposed vaccines from the time of the smallpox vaccine in the 1780s. To this day we have people who disbelieve in vaccines including for COVID-19. There are people who think it is playing God or interfering with nature. Such irrationality has still not disappeared despite people being more educated and less superstitious than they were in the 18th century.

Some people were against trains and cars. New fangled items upset people of a very backward looking mindset. Those who are made unemployed by new technology have a logical reason to oppose it. Within 20 years we will probably have no bus drivers, taxi drivers, lorry drivers, aeroplane pilots, helicopter pilots or ship pilots. All the people who currently do these jobs will need to be found jobs.

Technological changes that save labour are progress. We can prove this because less human effort is required and people can do things they enjoy rather than work that they do not always enjoy. Furthermore, to stick with the example of self-driving vehicles, it is human error that causes crashes almost every time. Automatic cars and other vehicles do not become intoxicated, they do not lose their tempers, they do not fall asleep at the wheel and they cannot break the speed limit. They are very efficient. Therefore self-driving vehicles and self-flying planes will keep us safer.

There are some irrational suspicions of new technology. Some people simply have a knee jerk reaction against innovation. Elderly people often find it hard to adapt to new technology and modes of thought.

In conclusion, progress is generally to be welcomed. It can be objectively demonstrated through data which will show an improvement that any right thinking person would celebrate. There will be some downsides to these changes and those impacted as well as ultra-conservative people will dislike these changes.

=====================

There is more to healing than the application of scientific knowledge

Write a unified essay in which you address the following:

Briefly define ‘scientific knowledge’. Explain how it might be argued that medical treatment that is not wholly based on scientific knowledge is worthless. Discuss whether there can be approaches to healing that are valid but not amenable to scientific experiment. 

Healing is recovering after an illness or injury. Scientific knowledge is knowledge about the natural world and human inventions. This includes biology, chemistry and physics. Such knowledge is garnered through observation and experiments to test hypotheses. An experiment needs to be a fair test and to be repeated on many occasions to guard against the possibility of a rogue result. Scientists must be circumspect about leaping to conclusions. Scientific findings are published in peer reviewed scholarly journals. Scientific knowledge needs to be certain or near certain before we call it knowledge at all. However, no science is immutable. It has been overturned before and could be again. For instance, people thought that they knew that the world was the centre of the universe but from the 16th century onwards it became accepted that the universe is heliocentric.

Some argue that medical treatment need not be exclusively based on scientific knowledge. There are people like Prince Charles who say that homeopathic medicine is equally valid. Likewise some favour traditional Chinese medicine or ayurvedic medicine. However, these so-called schools of medicine are not regarded by the medical profession as real medicine. Medicine involves developing drugs through several years of double blind tests with full data sets published. Medicine has to be sure that positive outcomes for patients are not simply consequent upon coincidence or extraneous factors. That is why in a drug experiment there is a control group which is given a placebo.

The Prince of Wales was an advocate for making homeopathy available on the National Health Service. However, the medical profession generally reacted negatively saying this was a footling waste of time and would be a diversion of scarce funds and resources.

It is said that ayurvedic medicine, traditional Chinese medicine are contumeliously dismissed by Western medicine for Eurocentric reasons. Some Westerners find it hard to accept that Asia was centuries ahead of Europe in terms of medicine.

Faith can help people live longer and recover faster. Religious people often attribute this to divine intervention. However, this is probably because religious people believe that they will live longer. This can make them actually do so because their morale is high and they are more socially engaged by membership of a religious community and they therefore tend to be physically active as much as they walk to their place of worship. Religion is not open to experiment. It is a matter of faith not science. If a religion could be proved to be true on a scientific level then it would not require any faith to believe in it any more than we need faith to believe in gravity or photosynthesis. Religion and science are said to be non-overlapping magisteria by religious apologists.

People cite having friends and a loving family as being positively correlated with making a swift and full recovery from illnesses and after operations. But this could be said to have a scientific basis in that people with a loving family and many friends have higher morale and are hugged. Data proves that this stimulates endorphins and boosts the immune system thereby speeding up the healing process. They say that laughter is the best medicine: again this is because it stimulates the immune system.

Non-scientific approaches to medicine are ridiculed by many physicians as nonsensical. These non-scientific approaches are seen as at best a waste of time and money but at worst a dangerous delusion. Some patients might go to a so-called homeopathic doctor rather than a real doctor. If homeopathy, ayurvedic medicine and traditional Chinese medicine could prove that they work to a scientific level then they would be accepted as part of real medicine by the scientific community. They are not amenable to experiment.

It is true that ayurvedic medicine and homeopathic medicine sometimes seem to work. But that could just be good luck. Perhaps the patient was going to get better anyway and the ayurvedic medicine or homeopathy made no difference. Alternatively, it could be a case of mind over matter. If the patient believes that the homeopathy or ayurvedic medicine would heal him or her then it does so because it is a case of mind over matter. Much of recovery is dependent on morale. That is also why many elderly people die in January since they have willed themselves to live past New Year.

In conclusion, it is true that healing can be assisted by things that are not based on scientific knowledge. However, this is applicable only in a minority of cases and is seldom determinative in itself. Medicine should not become distracted by non-scientific doctrines and practices.

=========================

People are often motivated to deny the existence of problems if they disagree with the solutions to those problems.

Explain what you think is meant by the statement. Present a counter-argument. To what extent do you agree with the statement?

The statement suggests that people sometimes fail to face up to problems if the solution to the problem is deeply unattractive. There are numerous examples. For instance it is scientifically proven that climate change is happening and that it is at least partially anthropogenic and is harming us. The solution involves changes to our lifestyles that many find unpalatable. For example, we will have to drive fewer cars, drive smaller cars, drive electric cars, fly less frequently, insulate our houses more, live in smaller houses and wear more clothes at home in the winter. This involves reducing our quality of life and making some consumer products less affordable. It also means we will have less convenience. All this is very unattractive to some people. It will also hit the profitability of powerful vested interests such as airlines, the automotive industry and hydrocarbon companies. Therefore they are minded to de-emphasise or even deny the anthropogenic aspect of climate change, to downplay the injurious effects of climate change or even to claim that climate change is not occurring at all.

People tend to tell themselves something they can tolerate. They say that the truth always hurts. It does not always hurt but sometimes it does.

An obese person might refuse to recognise that he is obese. A drastic diet and an exercise regime might be unbearable for this person. Therefore, he is wont to be in denial about his medical condition.

When a doctor tells a patient that she has been diagnosed with a serious or even terminal illness the patient sometimes refuses to accept it at first. This is indicative or a person being unwilling to confront the hideous and frightening truth.

People who are addicts often refuse to recognise their condition for what it is and seek help. Acknowledging the condition is the first step on the road to recovery. An addict usually does not wish to admit that he or she has an addiction because the word addict is opprobrious but also because the concomitant consequences of addiction are harmful and sometimes even fatal. This is applicable to drug abuse, alcoholism and nicotine addiction. Beating addiction often requires rehabilitation, changing habits, breaking destructive relationship cycles, moving to a new place, getting a new job plus the anguish and physical pain of withdrawal symptoms. This can involve delirium tremens. As the way to beat addiction is hard the addict would prefer not to face the truth. Addicts tend to be prisoners of the present: they cannot think in long time scales.

Even when people acknowledge a problem and admit that the only solution is going to hurt they usually delay moving to that solution. We delay the unattractive. This is true of fiscal matters now.

A counterargument is that people commonly invent non-existent problems. They will demand expensive, painful and onerous solutions to these imaginary problems. Munchausen’s Syndrome is an example wherein a patient presents himself or herself to a doctor claiming to be afflicted with certain ailments. He or she might describe all the symptoms and even have faked some of them. This person can be very convincing and persistent but scans and blood tests can prove that the claim is bogus. Some people like to feel like martyrs. There is Munchausen’s Syndrome by proxy wherein a parent claims that his or her child has an illness and reports all sorts of symptoms. The parent might convince the child that he or she is suffering from it.

In conclusion, this essay agrees with the title statement to a very considerable extent. It is easily observable that people seldom face up to an unappealing truth. That takes immense amounts of wisdom, moral courage and objectivity. Sadly, all too many people are subjective, unduly emotive and suffer from unwisdom.