As reported by CNN and Reuters, Martin Rees, Britain’s astronomer royale, calculates that the odds of an apocalyptic event that wipes out the human race are now 50/50, up from 20 percent a century ago. He blames the breakneck pace of scientific advances for the ever increasing rate.

What it’s really about isn’t the rate of scientific advance, but it is about science outpacing wisdom. The world’s knowledge is increasing at an exponential rate, but its store of wisdom seems to be forever shrinking.

Wisdom is knowledge based within spirituality. It is the application of knowledge and experience to a higher means of living, a better way of relating to the world around us.

Scientists often argue that it is not their job, especially when what they have discovered can only be applied to hurt or kill, to judge the morality of their discoveries. Poppycock! Is that true objectivity, or an attempt to escape responsibility, to lay the guilt for what is about to transpire “on the system”? I feel it’s the latter. I don’t believe a scientist is responsible for having a discovery perverted into a weapon; but I do believe that there is a difference when a scientist knows that what they are doing, making a strain of weaponized anthrax for instance, can only be used to harm others. Rationalizing it away under the banner of nationalism doesn’t release anyone from his or her personal responsibility. Taking it further, we taxpayers must also bear some of the responsibility for the death and destruction such “advances” cause. Without our financial backing, even if it was under the threat of imprisonment, those “advances” might never have seen the light of day. We are all responsible.

I could write a book about the addictive nature of American society, though I would have to include most world societies within that structure as well. The unbridled worship of science and technology is just another form and symptom of addiction, and addiction is always a death dealing process. Rees is seeing the evidence that technological addiction is at work, and its end is easily defined even if it is not easily believed.