By Roshan Jayasinghe
We live in an age of breathtaking advancement. Every day, new tools are born. New platforms emerge. New discoveries promise to change the world.
But in the quiet of all this motion, a deeper question lingers, soft but urgent -who are we really building all this for?
Because somewhere along the road to progress, we took a wrong turn. We stopped designing for people and we started designing for profit.
The Cost of Innovation Without Conscience
Innovation was never meant to be exclusive. It was meant to be shared. From the earliest stone tools to the printing press to the internet, progress was supposed to serve the many not the few. But today we see a different story unfolding. Technology, energy, healthcare and even education are increasingly gated behind wealth, power, and geographic advantage.
We praise disruption but ignore displacement. We applaud growth, while overlooking who gets left behind. We call it advancement, but for too many, it feels like abandonment.
And the troubling part? We’ve normalized this.
The Invisible Price of the Market
We’ve also accepted an economy that celebrates innovation, but only when it can be sold.
Clean water is bottled. Life-saving drugs are trademarked. Solar energy is scalable, but still not universally accessible. Even our data, our very identities have become commodities.
The supply and demand curve is no longer neutral. It is bent toward control. A few hold the resources. A few control the timelines and a few decide who gets access, and when.
The rest? They are asked to wait. To accept and to adapt to a world not made with them in mind.
This is not just economic inequality. It is a spiritual misalignment.
The Turning Point: A Song that Became a Compass
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds.” – Bob Marley, Redemption Song
Some words echo louder through time. These do.
They remind us that our disconnection and our silent consent to systems that divide was never inevitable. It was conditioned and what is conditioned can be unlearned.
In this age of artificial intelligence, climate crisis and widening wealth gaps, we must pause and ask the question, have we been innovating for service or for supremacy?
“How long shall they kill our prophets, while we stand aside and look?”
How long will we allow the silencing of voices that challenge this imbalance? How long will we dismiss those who speak from the margins of the system, not because they lack insight, but because they lack power?
This is our collective reckoning – We are not just living in a time of innovation. We are living in a time of remembering.
When Did Belonging Leave the Room?
The systems we live in today reward extraction over contribution, speed over depth and scale over care.
But let’s ask something radical: What if we designed not for ownership but for belonging?
Belonging invites stewardship, not scarcity. It sees innovation not as a competition, but a collaboration. It reminds us that progress isn’t how fast we go but how many we bring with us. And it begs us to stop asking “what’s next?” and start asking, who’s still waiting? who’s still outside the gates? instead.
Reimagining What We Value
We’re taught to measure success in profits, in patents and in platforms launched.
But what if we measured them differently?
How many lives did it touch? How much dignity did it restore? How much wisdom did it carry forward? How many doors did it open that were once locked?
We need a new economics. One that centers on equity, not ego.One that supports innovation that regenerates our planet, our communities and our sense of shared future.
An Invitation, Not an Instruction
This is not a blueprint. This is a mirror. And the reflection it offers is this: We don’t need to invent more to fix the world. We need to remember more about why we began creating in the first place.
Let us remember: that progress is not the problem. The problem is forgetting who it’s supposed to serve.
And in remembering, We begin again. Not with new machines. But with new values. Values rooted in fairness.
In humanity.
In the profound stillness of thought lies a radical truth – the future is not a commodity to be sold but rather it is a promise that must be honored.
About the Author
Roshan Jayasinghe is a humanist thinker and emerging writer based in California. With a background in administration and a deep passion for social equity, he explores the intersections of politics, identity, and compassion through a lens grounded in nature’s own self-correcting wisdom.
Roshan Jayasinghe
Rooted in the belief that humanity can realign with the natural order where balance, regeneration, and interdependence are inherent. Roshan’s reflections invite readers to pause, question, and reimagine the systems we live within. His writing seeks not to impose answers, but to spark thought and awaken a deeper awareness of our shared human journey. Roshan will be sharing weekly articles that gently challenge, inspire, and reconnect us to what matters most.
