Tag Archives: Technology

On Technological Neutrality

Moralilty, Work, , ,

One of the most harmful delusions that many Christians operate under is that technology is neutral.  The fence-sitter posits that most, if not all, technology is neutral.  As long as we exercise authentic prudence in its use, then it acts as an unquestionable good.  The problem with this approach is that it seems to consistently lead us into a technological Catch-22 where some sort of calculus must be invented to make sure that the good outweighs the bad.  A moment’s reflection will lead us to understand that this leads us into a moral pitfall.  The will itself can never be the sole determiner of the moral worth of a given object.  There must be some objective standard by which we can measure the worth of a technology a priori.  But in order to develop such a standard we must first be willing to challenge this belief in technological agnosticism.

Technology and the Perception of Reality

In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates tells the story of King Thamus who is talking to the god Theuth about his invention of writing.  Thamus thinks the technological advance of writing is actually harmful because it will eliminate the need for memorization.  Man’s memory will atrophy such that he longer needs memory but reminding.  The point here is not whether or not this is true, but that even a crude technology like writing is not neutral.  Writing changes not only how we describe reality but also changes the person himself.  No one would dispute that writing acts as an “external hard-drive” to document things to be remembered, but it can never be as rich as memory itself.  Writing then, like all technologies, affects not only how men interact with reality but the perception of reality itself.

Pope Francis in Laudato Si (107) says something similar:

“It can be said that many problems of today’s world stem from the tendency, at times unconscious, to make the method and aims of science and technology an epistemological paradigm which shapes the lives of individuals and the workings of society. The effects of imposing this model on reality as a whole, human and social, are seen in the deterioration of the environment, but this is just one sign of a reductionism which affects every aspect of human and social life. We have to accept that technological products are not neutral…”

Developing a Rule

Once we recognize the relationship between technology and our perception of reality, we can develop a rule by which to evaluate its worth.  To start, we can draw on an insight from Fr. Romano Guardini which compares sailboats and ocean liners:

“Take a vessel sailing on Lake Como. Though it is of considerable weight, the masses of wood and linen, along with the force of the wind, combine so perfectly that it has become light. When it sails before the wind, my heart laughs to see how something of this sort has become so light and bright of itself by reason of its perfect form…Do you not see what a remarkable fact of culture is present when human beings become masters of wind and wave by fashioning wood and fitting it together and spanning linen sails? In my very blood I have a sense of creation here, of a primal work of human creativity. It is full of mind and spirit, this perfectly fashioned movement in which we master the force of nature…let the remoteness from nature become greater! It grieves me when I see built into one of these vessels, these noble creations, a gasoline engine, so that with upright mast but no sails the vessel clatters through the waves like a ghost of itself Go even further and the sailing vessel becomes a steamer, a great ocean liner – culture indeed, a brilliant technological achievement! And yet a colossus of this type presses on through the sea regardless of wind and waves. It is so large that nature no longer has power over it…Mark you, something decisive has been lost here.”

In the case of the sailboat, you must cooperate with both the waves and the wind and when you do, the boat is powered by them.  The potency of the wind to move a boat equipped with a sail is made actual by man’s effort.  There is something beautiful that happens when the sail fills with wind and the boat glides across the waves and for that reason it is lovely.  With the ocean liner, it is no longer about capturing the power of the wind but overcoming it.  Potency and act are separated and this aspect of reality is abstracted away.  The point is not that the sailboat is better than the ocean liner, but that something has been lost without us even realizing it.  By harnessing the wind, the sailor is better able to grasp the meaning of the wind and its symbolic (or even sacramental) meaning.  Seeing the wind merely as a nuisance parameter to factored out, the captain of the ocean liner stands in an abstract reality.  He merely needs to calculate how much it will speed or slow his pace.  This changes how he not only interacts with reality but also how he views it.

    

The sailor on the sailboat is also freer than the captain of the ocean liner.  The former needs only to adjust his sails, while the latter depends upon his engine.  The wind does not break down the way engines do.  Moving from sailboats to ocean liners means a natural competence is traded for a technological one.  The cost of acquiring power over nature is the diminishment of one of man’s natural powers and becomes something less than he would otherwise have been.  Homo sapiens is reduced because he is no longer also homo nauta.  The sailor knows how to use the wind not only on the sea but on land.  The captain knows only how to factor it into an equation.   

Once we drop the myth of neutrality and realize that technology shapes the subject using it just as much as it does the object we apply it to, we can proceed with a greater sense of caution.  Specifically, we must begin to accurately calculate the tradeoffs we are making when we use technology.  Not only are we losing competence in many areas, we are also becoming less virtuous.  A man may not choose to take a cruise on a sailboat, but he may choose to buy a sailboat (instead of a motorboat) so as to become more human by becoming a sailor. 

Confronting the Mass Identity Crisis

Angels, Church and State, Creation, Culture, Devils, , , , , ,

When Our Lord and His Apostles came to the great rock of Caesarea Philippi, He asked a poignant question about His personality: “Who do you say that I am?”.  Only Simon, enlightened by Divine grace, saw Our Lord for Who He really was: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16).  Once Peter identified Our Lord, Our Lord in turn gave him his true identity as the Great Rock upon which the Church herself would be identified.  Peter was not alone in this regard.  Our Lord came to bestow our identity upon each one of us.  He identified with us in order that we might come to share in His identity as “sons in the Son.”  Modern man, perhaps more than any other ailment, suffers from a great identity crisis that makes this moment in Our Lord’s Life particularly important. 

The First Identity Crisis

Lucifer had the greatest natural endowment of all creatures.  In this way he was entirely unique and, created in a state of grace, he was the most like God.  This was his true identity. Rather than receive this identity as a gift, he instead chose to create his own.  Lucifer became Satan and lost his true identity forever.  He became, in the words of then-Cardinal Ratzinger an “Un-person”, corrupted beyond any personal recognition.  Out of envy, Scripture says, Satan then became an Identity Thief attempting to steal everyone else’s identity.  He began by coaxing a third of the angels to follow him in asserting their own identity.

Misery loves company and so Satan set his sights upon mankind.  Ultimately his temptation of Eve amounts to questioning her true identity as a beloved daughter of God.  He tells her that she will become like God.  The problem, of course, is that she already was like God.  God had gifted her with sanctifying grace which already made her “like God”.  Satan tempts her to see her identity as something she must grasp, rather than receive and so simultaneously attacks her femininity.  Likewise, with Adam, both his identity as being like God and being a man.  It was the man who was commanded to protect and till the Garden. 

Our identity crisis has its roots in the Fall then.  Original Sin removed sanctifying grace, which forms our true identity, our God-likeness if you will.  But it also wounded us in our sexual identity, the manner in which we individually image God.  Not only does the distinctly feminine power of childbirth become labor for the woman, but, because man will be tempted to lord over her, she will be tempted to seize masculinity.  Likewise, for man, the uniquely masculine way of working also becomes labor and he will be tempted to seize the feminine.  Not only was God-likeness lost, both forgot what it meant to image God in their masculinity and femininity.

The crisis would grow until the New Adam and his suitable helpmate, the New Eve came. Satan could not steal either of their identities.  He tried to steal Our Lord’s when He went into the desert.  The enmity between him and Our Lady made her immune to Satan’s wiles.  Our Lord and Our Lady then, each in their proper way, cooperated in restoring us not just as children of God, but sons and daughters. 

Our Identity Crisis

Satan may have lost the war, but he is still engaging in the Battle across the centuries, trying to keep us from our true identity.  He has had varying degrees of success but has been particularly successful in our own age.   His battle plan remains the same as always by destroying the image and suppressing our desire for the true likeness of God that lies at the root of our real identity.

Rather than accepting God-likeness as a free gift that comes only through Baptism, we chase immortality through technology.  The Covid crisis has been particularly eye-opening in this regard in that we are all expecting a technocratic Messiah to save us.  Technology can make us like gods.

The Church has not been immune to this attack either, putting bodily health before spiritual health.  One soul, dying in a state of grace, is far greater than 1000 people “safely” locked in their houses without any access to the gift of true God-likeness in the Sacraments.  Christ instituted the Church, so that, throughout all-time, His unique power to bestow our true identity might be made available to all.  When the Church forgets her true identity, then a mass identity crisis is sure to follow.    

While technology is the weapon of choice to suppress our desire for true God-likeness, intersectionality, rooted in identity politics, is the weapon of choice to suppress our identity as being made in the image of God.  Intersectionality attempts to root our identity in victimhood.  Christ became a victim so that we could overcome this temptation and clear the way for our real identity.  Sex, masquerading as gender, rather than being a way in which we individually image God, is simply a social construct made malleable (through technology) according to personal whims.  This Great Lie destroys our identity rather than restoring it.  It sits at the heart of today’s mass identity crisis and is nothing more than a ploy of the Evil One. 

Genesis tells us that the Serpent, in attacking Adam and Eve’s identity was the most subtle of all the wild animals (Gn 3:1).  What makes our age unique is that he has thrown subtlety out the window and has chosen to unmask himself.  That is why we must be prepared to fight the identity crisis by refusing to be a party to any of the lies that have enabled the crisis to become so deep.  Too often we simply go along to get along.  The Devil has been hard at work stealing people’s identities, we need to be equally hard at work helping them find their true one.

Then or Now?

Virtue,

It is always the questions with the obvious answers that cause the most problems.  Case in point, what if I were to ask whether you would rather live now or 200 years ago?  Allowing for the exception of a troglodyte or two, every one of them would, without hesitation, say “now.”  The reason seems obvious—the quality of life today is far beyond anything that could have been imagined two centuries ago.  Not only do we live longer today, but we are healthier and more people have access to more wealth.  Even the poor enjoy access to luxuries that only the very richest had in the past (if at all).  Think for example of our access to entertainment, entertainment filled with enough depravity that only the likes of Nero could enjoy in his day.  With that we realize that we may have answered the question too quickly and perhaps even looked at it the wrong way.  Sure we are enjoying an unprecedented material prosperity, but man does not live on bread alone.  Can we say that we are also enjoying an unprecedented spiritual prosperity?  Before throwing away the key to our time machines, we should reframe the question and ask “in which time period would being virtuous easier?”  Suddenly the answer does not seem so cut and dry.

The Question of Technology

We might be tempted to put the question down completely at this point.  We are when we are and there is no going back.  That is certainly true and the answer is only valuable insofar as it helps us in the here and now.  But rather than killing investigation, it ought to motivate it.  Volumes could be written on the differences in the time periods, but they could be summarized neatly in one word—technology.  At least that is the main difference according to CS Lewis who wrote:

“[F]or the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue.  For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both in the practice of this technique are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious—such as digging up and mutilating the dead.”

Summarizing Lewis’ point we can say that there are two kinds of men—those who subdue themselves to reality and those who will have reality subdued to themselves.  We call those in the first group virtuous and the second vicious.  This is a “problem” that is at the heart of man’s fallen existence.  Adam’s reality was that he had a single limitation—not eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Rather than subjecting himself to this reality, Adam chose to subject reality to himself.  In this regard he is no different than any one of us—sin is, at its core, an unwillingness for each of us to submit himself to reality.  We are like God in many ways, but not in the way that we can define for ourselves what is good and what is evil.

This is not a new problem for sure, but what is new is that in the past the average person lacked access to the power necessary to subdue reality to his wishes.  Now with so many technological solutions (techniques to use Lewis’ term) that give us power over reality, the temptation to subdue reality is much greater.

Technology and Power

Technology and power go hand in hand.  This may not be as obvious as it seems when more people have access to instruments of power, but it is true nonetheless.  Power in the hands of a few tends to corrupt only a few, power in the hands of many corrupts many.  With technological power comes the capacity to destroy ourselves.

We may have fallen victim to the belief that an increase of power mean “progress” but that is only true when the strength of character for using that power has kept pace.  We are now all like the superhero who wakes up one morning discovering he has superpowers and is confronted with whether we will use our powers for good or evil.  With greater command over the world, we need greater command over the self.

Progress in technology then is only truly progress when it makes us more human.  And this ought to be how we evaluate any advances in technology or our use of existing technologies.  Technology may be morally neutral, but how we use it is not.  Our guide as to its use is whether it leads to a more virtuous life or less, whether I am more human because of its help or less because of its substitution.

Efficiency

What often blinds us to seeing our use of technology more clearly is an obsession with efficiency.  Modern technology, the argument goes, increases efficiency making work easier and freeing us up for higher things.  But it seems that in the majority of cases the exact opposite has happened.   Labor saving devices may have replaced the slave labor of the past, but these devices often have enslaved otherwise free men.

The men of 200 years ago were freer than we are today.  Of that, there is no question.  The average man was more capable of taking care of himself and his family without significant outside help.  They could farm and hunt, they could build their homes and repair them, they knew how to navigate when lost in the woods, etc.  We, on the other hand, have specialists (farmers and homebuilders) or special machines (GPS) to do that for us now.  The average man 200 years ago would be far from average today.

The point is not that efficiency is bad, only that we should not treat it as an absolute value.  There is value in work done with our hands and simple tools.  It helps us to grow in the virtues of prudence, patience and perseverance.  In other words, we are better men for having done the work, no matter how menial it seems.  Labor saving technologies are only good and should only be used insofar as they help make us better men.

Another example might help to illustrate the point further.  Take a simple technology that is near and dear to my heart, the calculator.  Having a calculator has freed me up from doing the time consuming work of crunching numbers and enabled me to do the higher and more theoretical work in statistics.  However, when doing simple mathematical calculations, I will never use a calculator because it will reduce my distinctly human ability to do this.  I am somehow less human when I cannot do percentages in my head and have to rely on a calculator for a tip.  The point is that when the technology actually frees us up for higher things then it is a good, but this can never be at the expense of the loss of the ability to do the lower things.

Paradigm shifts always come abruptly.  We may pine for simpler times.  Frankenstein is already out of the cage and is not going back in.  While we may prefer to have lived in a previous age of morally better men, the reality is that we live in a technological age and we must find ways to use that power to make us better men.  Virtue itself may be harder, but this also means they will be stronger.