This is the title of a painting I did a few years back. When we talk about progress, we look back at previous generations through history and seem quite confident that we are in a better position. I am generally inclined to agree, however, I do also notice that the main core social issues that we have today, were also there at the very beginning. These are issues around xenophobia, racism, chauvinism and LGBT rights for example. I believe technology has been highly instrumental to allow for development in these areas, that is, when considering the thousands of years of civilisation, it was really only after electricity came into play that women began to have modern rights. Of course, we are far from a true fair society still.

Furthermore, I compare the features developed by a tech company, such as a mobile phone corporation, to those of rights introduced by governments. Companies cannot introduce the entire list of features in their latest phone, they need to keep customers excited and eager to get the latest model. If your telephone just worked, if the internet on it was reliable and fast, if the battery lasted a full day without problem, and generally had no bugs, it would be a much tougher sale to get you to buy a newer model. Equally, governments who want to hold on to power, cannot give citizens rights that would allow them to live a simple a fulfilling life. Simply because what would make anyone wish for more? If we were all content with what we had, if those human rights essential to exist were met, these would include food, shelter, health and perhaps in a different lesser extent also education, transportation, communication and some form of entertainment. In such scenario, we would not be the avid consumers we are, we would not be so afraid thus becoming so easy to manipulate.

We are given certain freedoms that do not carry real weight because we do not put pressure on the government to respect our exercising of those freedoms. What is worse, because of how vulnerable we are as a society to manipulation, we willingly let go of the freedoms we earned. We had access to public transport and health which are rapidly becoming privatised and the very clear example of Brexit where we lost the invaluable freedom of movement we had throughout numerous European countries. Indeed powerless.