Over the last years, I started to think more about our role as human beings. My open competition grant from NWO additionally forced me to think more about the interplay of technology and markets. Clearly, the world is filled with opportunities that seem to expand day-by-day and there are cool advances, for instance in medicine. Yet, this does neither lead to infinite levels of happiness, nor to a sustainable way of treating our planet.
In contrast, technological 'progress' often makes us massively dependent (phones, social media, GPS, AI), thereby weakening agency, awe, autonomy, meaning, social embedding, and discussion culture. The tools are cleverly designed to suck us in with the goal to mirror our prejudices and force us to spend as much time there as possible to maximize profits of tech companies. Many economists foster that kind of behavior by focusing on indicators of 'prosperity' like GDP, which are largely uncorrelated with well-being within a country. As an additional downside of technological 'progress', our relation to nature is completely broken. We dig for natural resources and destroy the ground just to store the same natural resource in a different form as 'values' below the ground later. Nature is not valued economically unless of use to make profits.
At the same time, all long-run happiness studies show that what we need is a good social embedding and health studies show that we need a healthy planet (which seems like a fairly decent goal beyond a humanistic view). This is not valued at a nearly sufficient rate in our current capitalistic system. Helping others to excel at whatever task is meaningful to them creates a bond between people and makes the world better; some philosophers even see this as the meaning of our species which should leave us alert to replace personal interactions by technology. Many of the modern hobbies (hiking, biking, climbing, swimming, sauna, travelling) aim at a time off from constant reachability and the tech world and bonding with nature and other humans, showcasing an intrinsic understanding of what is valuable to our species.
On a larger scale, a severe rethinking of our core values is needed. Some interesting sources:
Brede Welvaart (Kim Putters): Aims to measure welfare of societies beyond a pure focus on money.
Awakening from the Meaning Crises (John Vervaeke): Extensive openly available video series about our evolution as a species and the current challenges
How to Live on Earth (Open Planet, narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch): Film that showcases some ideas for future-proof solutions for our planet and our species
Happiness in Action (Adam Adatto Sandel): Reflection on the good life and the role of technology
Several initiatives under the 'human flourishing' label