A more subtle condemnation of advancement exists in the form of discouragement or laxation of the progress rather than outright doomsday soothsaying. A typical associated statement is, "The harms which the particular technology is designed to prevent have not emerged yet, thus it is not prudent to worry about their neutralization". A parallel of greater assistance in revealing the essence of the principle is the expression, "We are not infected yet, so let us continue to wallow in the puddle of mud possessing billions of malignant microorganisms and not develop medicine for use in the event of our becoming afflicted", or "We are not dead yet, so let us ignore prospects of prolonging our life expectancy". This is the grievous folly of withdrawal due to delay. If the harms are known to be substantial and damaging to one's own welfare, then it is to one's advantage to develop measures to repel them without dallying until the damage is inflicted. If it is logically feasible that the status quo does not account for a particular mishap and if flaws within it can be pinpointed as causes of the menace, then, whether deriving from past examples of the correlation or a concrete scientific warrant, adequate counters must be developed. For example, nonrenewable fossil fuels within the earth may expire within the next century, and it is not desirable to be left without an adequate substitute at the time of their utter depletion. While this circumstance is no excuse for conservation (fossil fuels, as the lifeblood of the world's economy and transportation, should only increase in their usage if industry and human exploitation of the planet are to progress as needed), it is a signal that the development of alternative sources of energy, be those nuclear, hydroelectric, or solar, is desirable as another avenue to supporting the colossal infrastructure man has created for his own benefit. "Lack of immediate necessity" is no excuse for the prohibition of any particular innovation, as the inventor by definition is substantially more expedient and far-sighted than the regulator. Be it constructed for the conditions of the next week or those of the next century, the possession of technology is of infinitely greater advantage than its lack, and the idler's mentality should never be permitted to irrationally coerce men into not developing. Yet it is this imposed sloth which withdrawal due to delay seeks to bring about, as evident in the matter which we are presently examining. Instead of seeking to increase mankind's utility of resources and develop techniques to prolong such actions, the retrogrades advocate "conservation", "fuel economy", and "reduction of consumption", in order to delay the expiration of fossil fuels and prevent the emergence of alternative methods! Too lazy to confront a future harm, they therefore augment one of the present, as a lack of resource exploitation implies the retardation of the tempo of progress and a hindrance to the opportunities which the abundance of energy presents to the improvement of human living conditions. Their ploy, when expanded to its logical extreme, implies the desirability of that remote medieval era when cities possessed no massive avenues between them, and means of transportation were scant, slow, and lacking in endurance, when a drought in the farmlands of a town implied famine, since a massive shipment of supplies from more prosperous settlements could not be managed. Mystic Joe Slack-Off is contented with such a situation, as it is his desire not merely to avoid constructive work himself but also to bar the creative man from performing his, which requires expenditure of resources! For what reason? Joe is a product not of the forward-oriented industrialized society but rather of a state of unaltered Nature, of the Wilderness, in which man's instincts instruct him to subsist only and not elevate himself above the bare necessities; once he has obtained a hunk of rotten meat the consumption of which will eventually result in dysentery, he feels that he must not commit himself to further attempts of elevating his condition. This widespread anachronism is a nihilist who seeks to plunge the species back into the Stone Age, when average life expectancy was twenty, when the most advanced tool was a sharpened obsidian edge, when dreary, damp, foul-scented caves were standard habitation instead of illuminated, sanitary, air-conditioned suburban residences and skyscrapers. His flawed impulses, relics of a frightening antiquity, instruct him to believe that there is no world aside from that of decay, in which man is but a transient speck. This establishes an inherent conflict between the antiprogressive slacker and the rational mind, the latter of which recognizes that it is within man's capacity to employ the resources and principles of his world for the betterment of his position, that an active instead of a passive approach is key to the prevention of harms. The innovator is by definition the archenemy of the creature that follows the path of the Wilderness, and, therefore, the minion of primitivism seeks to limit, regulate, and destroy the implementation of intellect which is technology.

A note on the previously exposed fallacy: its status holds only in such events where products of technology are not threatened by the supposed "solution" to a particular crisis. In the event that the antiprogressives attempt to undertake "precautionary dismantlement" of mankind's tools, it is fitting to respond that such action will simply result in augmented burdens instead of decreased ones. Technology in itself, as has been proven, cannot be the cause of human misery. The harm, be it actual or pretend (as are many "dangers" propounded by the dogmatists), is always derived from a state of Wilderness, a condition outside human influence, be it manifested through the incompatibility of illogical and overly-generalizing human instincts with the objective of individual survival or the threats to life posed by natural disasters, foreign species, or disease. Man's self, his reasoning mind, as its fruits are in every manner optimal for a deliberate aim of enhancing his own life, cannot inflict any manner of harm upon other reasoning minds or their longevity, and the maintenance of the latter is the core of a true human-valuing morality.  Thus, technology, as the product of man's reasoning mind, cannot be a cause of evil. It may be applied as a means of evil's manifestation, yet its elimination can in no manner quell any crisis. Only when addressed at its root, which is embedded firmly in the Wilderness, can the malfeasance become dispelled. Be it through severe punishment of criminals, reinforcement of safety measures, or the colonization of previously untamed lands (depending on the particular problem), the enemy to man's stability can be undermined fundamentally by using technology. But the remedy never comes about as a result of damaging healthy and self-serving portions of human society, of which the scientist and the inventor are prime examples.

G. Stolyarov II is a science fiction novelist, independent filosofical essayist, poet, amateur mathematician, composer, contributor to Enter Stage Right, The Autonomist, Le Quebecois Libre, and the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Senior Writer for The Liberal Institute, and Editor-in-Chief of The Rational Argumentator, a magazine championing the principles of reason, rights, and progress. His newest science fiction novel is Eden against the Colossus. His latest non-fiction treatise is A Rational Cosmology. Mr. Stolyarov can be contacted at gennadystolyarovii@yahoo.com.

Read Mr. Stolyarov's new comprehensive treatise, A Rational Cosmology, explicating such terms as the universe, matter, space, time, sound, light, life, consciousness, and volition, at http://www.geocities.com/rational_argumentator/rc.html.