"Our ability to create has outreached our ability to use wisely the products of our invention"
About this Quote
A quiet indictment is hiding inside Young's calm syntax: the real deficit isn’t intelligence, it’s judgment. By pairing "create" with "use wisely", he refuses the flattering story modern societies tell about themselves - that invention automatically equals progress. The verb choice "outreached" is key. It’s not that wisdom is missing; it’s been outpaced, left behind by a culture that treats novelty as virtue and speed as proof.
As a civil rights leader speaking from the pressure cooker of mid-century America, Young is aiming at more than gadgets. The 20th century produced dazzling tools and grotesque outcomes in the same breath: nuclear weapons, televised war, mass surveillance, urban renewal that bulldozed Black neighborhoods, economic "efficiency" that entrenched inequality. His subtext: technology and policy aren’t neutral; they inherit the values of the people and institutions deploying them. When those institutions are unjust, better tools simply make injustice more scalable.
The line also works rhetorically because it dodges partisan labeling. Young doesn’t accuse "them" of evil; he describes a mismatch, a lag in moral and civic capacity. That makes the critique harder to dismiss and easier to internalize. It’s a warning with an organizer’s edge: the fix isn’t to stop inventing, but to build the ethical and democratic muscles that can govern invention - accountability, empathy, and a willingness to measure "progress" by who it serves, not what it produces.
As a civil rights leader speaking from the pressure cooker of mid-century America, Young is aiming at more than gadgets. The 20th century produced dazzling tools and grotesque outcomes in the same breath: nuclear weapons, televised war, mass surveillance, urban renewal that bulldozed Black neighborhoods, economic "efficiency" that entrenched inequality. His subtext: technology and policy aren’t neutral; they inherit the values of the people and institutions deploying them. When those institutions are unjust, better tools simply make injustice more scalable.
The line also works rhetorically because it dodges partisan labeling. Young doesn’t accuse "them" of evil; he describes a mismatch, a lag in moral and civic capacity. That makes the critique harder to dismiss and easier to internalize. It’s a warning with an organizer’s edge: the fix isn’t to stop inventing, but to build the ethical and democratic muscles that can govern invention - accountability, empathy, and a willingness to measure "progress" by who it serves, not what it produces.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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