What is development? And what does development miss, especially in this part of the world and the world at large? I think it is a question we all should be able to answer. It is the same as asking, what is success? A lot of people have their own definition of success. To some, it is wealth, while to others, it is power, and to a few, it is authority. Although, at the end of the day, the bottom line is that we all want to make something good with our lives and out of life.
I actually listened to an interesting conversation on TV today where the anchor of the programme brought up the idea of what development misses. I don’t know if I got the name of the person right, but the discussion was about what development misses and what we lose in the process of developing our societies.
The truth is that all over the world, the evolution of humanity has cost us a lot of things: our traditions, values and history. It is such a shame, but what can we do? We all want development anyway. But why do we need development if not to better our lives and make the earth a better place to live for ourselves? Yet, what do we see instead? We humans have polluted the earth through our activities, all in the name of development.
We have become so greedy that we only think about the wealth we are building. What we don’t realise is that money means little if there is no good life to measure it against. It is sad, but what can be done? It is a rat race, and we are all bound to make our own contribution and our own quota.
In a world where we believe development is proportional to an improvement in the GDP of a nation, we often fail to consider the quality of life of the people. We have turned everything about human beings into how much money we can make, how much more we can make, and what we can do for our individual lives to become better. In the process, we forget the community and communality that are at the heart of what makes us human.
The era of community is gradually disappearing. We now build houses where only a few people live. Families live apart and only get to see each other during the burial of their loved ones. It is sad indeed.
We now measure development against our fellow human beings by asking, “What do I have that they don’t have?” We have turned everything into competition. We only see and talk about the winner. No doubt, human beings, especially those who are less privileged, are sometimes willing to do whatever they can to get to the top, without minding who they crush or whether they themselves get crushed in the process. It is all meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
We are hypocrites in our own world and often only do what benefits us as individuals. We are greedy and selfish as human beings, and I don’t think that is going to change anytime soon. But why do we build roads? Why do we need electricity? Why do we build bridges? There are reasons for these things. We should ask questions and consider what development will cost us.
We all know that development comes with a price, but the price should not be the quality of life we are trying to build in the first place.
Development should be about improving the quality of human life and nothing else. If it does not do that, then there is no need for it. We don’t need someone so wealthy that they can feed the entire world all by themselves. What we want is a society that can survive and thrive on love, humanity and a sense of community.