Human history is often told as a story of triumph. From taming animals to harnessing rivers, from mastering electricity to bending light into information, humanity has steadily expanded its control over the natural world. Yet for all this astonishing progress, one uncomfortable truth remains: our moral growth has lagged far behind our technological power. Few voices captured this contradiction more clearly, and more courageously, than Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

Dr King did not oppose progress. He opposed progress without conscience. In one of his most prescient warnings, he observed that humanity had learned to "fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish", but had not learned "the simple art of living together as brothers". More than half a century later, the relevance of that insight has only deepened.

The modern world is not short of intelligence or innovation. It is short of moral restraint. Poverty persists not because resources are scarce, but because compassion is selectively applied. Inequality widens not because it is inevitable, but because systems reward........

© The Express Tribune