The idea of progress - Juliette TES2

The idea of progress !

The idea of progress is an important point today because the world is always changing !

This notion can be positive when we talk about new creations or new technologies which permit to save lives, for example. But it can be negative too, like in the cloning case.

First, we are going to present two examples of the positive effects of the idea of progress. And after, we are going to talk about negative effects.

The idea of progress can take several different forms. First, I think at the testimony, which call 'How I harnessed the wind', on the website TED. In this video, the idea of progress is represented by the wish of William Kamkwamba to move everything to change their life. In fact, this person was a poor farmer in Malawi who live with this family in a little house without electricity or water. To sort out this problem, he had read books and learned physic on his own. Finally, he built a windmill to pump water and to generate electricity to recharge cellphones for example. This progress help their family and their neighbors too.

But there isn't just technical progress. Even if there are arguments for and against, Genetic selection can still save lives. This is the case in an article from the newspaper USA today. This text explain that Molly, a young teenager girl has a rare illness. Her two parents have choose to give birth to her brother, Adam, now 9, who has, after a PGD, the same genetic characteristics. The cord blood transplantation was the only solution to save Molly's life !

But progress has its limits. It can beginning a factor of discrimination like in the cartoon 'Odd man out'. A lot of muscular men on a conveyor belt are presents. One of them is different, more short and skinny, and he is being reject by the factory. The idea is that progress can create differences enter humans. We could be dehumanized and people might commit suicide because they wouldn't be any different between people.

'The sixth day' about human cloning is a second example for this problem. This extract from a film presents the character, Adam, in a shop called 'Repet'. He wants to clone his daughter's dog. This scientific progress can be dangerous for a lot of reasons. Each of them is that we can “lose” our soul.

To conclude, we have seen that progress can be a lot of things. It can be technological, scientific, mental (with the wish to change of W.K), …

And if these changes are sometimes good or sometimes bad, it's at the humans to determine those which are necessary for humanity !