Most of the industrial societies have a high value of human development index. Human development index as defined by United nations includes parameters like availability of education and career opportunities, healthy environment, justice to all and typically high standard of living. Such being the case, what can be wrong? Shouldn't every society emulate an industrial one? Doesn't industrial development foster peace and prosperity? Isn't it paradoxical to say that such a society promotoes violence?
Human development index, when separated from standard of living is probably an excellent measure of how advanced a society is. Equal opportunities for education and career development, justice for all and such other purely humanitarian parameters are in fact peace-inducing ones. Every country and every community needs to strive to improve these factors. The questionable part is "standard of living".
High standard of living is typically defined in a western measure of scale. This scale is set by modern economic theory and is purely from a material posession and comfort point of view. In this system, a family living a content and healthy life in some remote corner of Africa or India, with no money will be considered to be extremely poor, compared to a taxi driver in New York City, who is an immigrant and has no immediate family! In this scale, a country with rich Bio-diversity and not much of industries is considered backward and third world compared to a country with many factories, high trade and no natural habitats!
High standard of living, associated with material wealth and human-centric comfort comes from a huge cost to Nature. It requires high energy and natural resources for its sustenance. Where do these things come from? Without unleashing devastating destruction on nature, there is no technology that is existent today, that can generate the required energy and can acquire and transform the natural resources to maintain high standard of living.
As long as the flow of energy and natural resources are uninterrupted, everything seems to be peaceful. In such a case violence will be hidden. In most cases the violence happens so remotely that the population enjoying high standard of living could be completely unaware.
Energy that we use results in Carbon-compunds as output which gets into nature at a rate faster than natural cycle. Result, as we know today, is global warming. Global warming is not just about increasing temperature. It is about drastic changes in climate across the globe resulting in widespread damage to nature. Isn't that violent?
Industrialization has no regard for forests and wild animals? Forest cover is decreasing at an alarming rate world over. Animal species are going extinct. Isn't that violent?
Fish and other sea food are being used up at an unsustainable pace. Not only the number of fish is decreasing but also species are going extinct in sea. Sea life and river life are devastated by increased consumption of fish and other water-animals, oil spils, chemical dumps and by propellers of speed boats and large cargo and luxury liners. Isn't that violent?
In cases where certain nations or groups cause an interruption to the supply chain of the industrial society for whatever reasons, vaid or invalid, the nation or the group could be termed as terrorist and could be devasted by war. Couldn't that be the case with Afghanistan and Iraq? Isn't that violent?
Who sells guns to the thugs and the militants across the world and equip them with means for violence? Isn't selling of guns for such purposes violent?
Much of the pollution in advanced societies has decreased in the last few decades. Isn't that a miracle of science and technology, that while the pollution decreased the standard of living increased? Shouldn't humanity bask in this glorious achievement? However what happened in reality? Much of the polluting industries were shifted to the so-called "third world" countries. There has been no miracle in science and engineering that has happened to eliminate pollution. Even there is no sensible way to recycle or even safely dispose much of the products of today's industries. Most of these toxic wastes are dumped in "poor" countries. Isn't that a violent policy?
Above all, industrialization is seemingly leading the whole humanity and the entire bio-sphere to a dead-end? Isn't that violent?
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