by Dennis Crouch
Martin Luther King Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and I re-read his speech today -- especially the portion contrasting development of science and technology against development of the human spirit. The past 60 years have continued to reveal astonishing discoveries and invention. Yet King’s words and warnings continue to resonate because we have continued to neglect our internal realm.
Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live.
King. In his speech, King did not decry advances in technology, but argued that the level of attention paid to material advances should be matched by attention to moral and spiritual humanism.
Modern man has brought the whole world to an awe-inspiring threshold of the future. He has reached new and astonishing peaks of scientific success. He has produced machines that think, and instruments that peer into the unfathomable ranges of interstellar space. He has built gigantic bridges to span the seas and gargantuan buildings to kiss the skies. His airplanes and spaceships have dwarfed distance, placed time in chains, and carved highways through the stratosphere. This is a dazzling picture of modern man’s scientific and technological progress.
Yet, in spite of these spectacular strides in science and technology, and still unlimited ones to come, something basic is missing. There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.
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