Introduction
Many years ago, people in the United States seemed to live in harmony with their surroundings. There was no pollution because of civilization and industrialization. White clouds would drift above the green fertile earth in the winter. During the autumn, maple, oak, and birch would set up color blazes that flickered and flamed across tall pines.
Earth was peaceful, and travelers could enjoy the beautiful scenery such as wildflowers, great ferns, alder, viburnum, and laurel. The countryside gained much popularity due to the abundance and variety of birds. However, years later, green farmlands, fresh air, and peace vanished from the earth due to humans’ inventions and industrial development. One creation –technology – has devastated people through cell phones and social media. Modern know-how have caused problems to human relationships with their bodies, other persons, and the environment, whereas the United States citizens have a flawed interpretation of enlightenment because they have attacked nature.
Technology and Human Relationships
Modern technologies have adverse effects on human relationships with the nonhuman world, each other, and their bodies. Automation hampers sensuous engagement and collapses psychic space. Recent technologies have changed the rules of interaction involving people and their environment. Most people rely heavily on technology such as mobile devices and messaging applications that allow streamlined task completion at the expense of the time to connect with other people and the environment. Overexposure to contemporary technologies causes a disconnect between the environment and people, leading to a lack of empathy to participate in good causes such as conserving the environment (Melmed 345). As a result, people lose the psychic boundaries that enable them to have mental dignity and identity.
When psychic space is lost, people are vulnerable to intolerance of frustration, causing humans’ excessive dependence on the high-technology world. For example, self-driving cars have given people a sense of omnipotence and invincibility, creating a dissociation of individuals from their bodies (Melmed 350). Contrastingly, cell phones depict an example of an addictive technology that affords individuals material convenience and hinders honing enchanted sensory capacities. Therefore, people are compelled to innovate new machinery to solve new problems but fail to consider the consequences of their extractivism.
Humans invented automation; however, technology has reinvented people at significant basic levels, reshaping their relationship to place and time. The problem caused by modern technologies leads to climate catastrophe and loss of primary aloneness. People’s activities have caused the environmental crisis, which exacerbates future pandemics, low air quality, and poor nutrition. Food security and resources have dwindled, and human interaction with unknown pathogens has increased (Melmed 349). Current technologies restrict primary loneliness, suppressing a sense of obligation and deeper communion to the environment and other individuals.
Civilization and United States Citizens
United States citizens have a flawed perception of civilization due to their attack on nature. For instance, giant companies owned by the United States residents dump their waste in third-world countries (Fox). Waste disposal in developing nations is cheap and convenient. Government regulation in underdeveloped nations cannot prevent waste dumping by developed economies. Therefore, wealthier countries take advantage of emergent territories and use their land as a waste dump. More affluent states and their multi-billion-dollar companies take resources away from developing countries such as Congo. Foreign multinational firms have sponsored coal mining, leading to resource depletion, unclean air, land degradation, and increased chemical waste diseases. Some companies taking resources away from Congo are American-owned (Fox). It is convenient to wonder if civilized people ignore health hazards and dangerous environmental effects in favor of profits and wealth building.
United States citizens have cut trees in city streets and wild forests and increased the use of chemicals to curb pests. Consequently, it is logical to refer to US inhabitants’ civilization as flawed. Deforestation has devastating effects on the environment and human existence. For instance, it causes low rainfall, stronger winds, and weather change (Fox). In the chapter “Earth’s Green Mantle,” Rachel Carson explores the dangers of pesticides. She asserts that pests have affected many farmsteads, whether industrial or personal, but the farm owners have turned to pesticides and other chemicals to kill the insects affecting their produce and farming (Carson 67). Such insecticides are toxic, and they have disastrous effects on soil, humans, and cats.
Conclusion
In conclusion, up-to-date technologies have led to challenges in humans’ relationship with their bodies, fellow people, and the environment, while the citizens of the United States show a faulty interpretation of civilization. Humans invented the technology, and it ended up reinventing people. As a result, modern technologies changed the way people do their day-to-day activities. Current phones have applications that serve many tasks related to human existence. As a result, they have caused solitude as people’s interaction with others, their bodies, and nature has reduced significantly. Modern technologies led to a temperature crisis affecting food security and air quality. United States citizens have become destroyers of their fellow countrymen, which can be interpreted as defective civilization. Human’s attack on nature and the effect of man’s inventions fueled by unending desire is a topic that should cause concern to many people.
Works Cited
Carson, Rachel. Silent spring. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002.
Fox, Louis, director. The Story of Stuff. Free Range Studios, 2007.
Melmed, Michael L. “Bound by Infinities: Technology, Immediacy and Our Environmental Crisis.” The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, vol. 80, no. 3, 2020, pp. 342–353., doi:10.1057/s11231-020-09258-8.