One of the most interesting sections of the encyclical Laudato Si’ are paragraphs 102-111 on the role of technology. ‘We have entered,’ Pope Francis says, ‘a new era in which our technical prowess has brought us to a crossroads.’
While he recognises the improvements to life that technology has achieved which he describes as ‘wonderful products of a God-given human creativity...in the fields of medicine, engineering and communications’, he nevertheless mounts a profound critique of technology and what it is doing to us.
While Francis has no time for technological solutions and ‘fixes’ for complex ecological problems, he is no techo-Luddite. What he does is link technological knowledge to power and says that those with this knowledge and the economic resources to use it, gain ‘an impressive dominance over the whole of humanity and the entire world.’
Francis argues that technology cuts us off from our biological connectedness with nature and creates the illusion that the world simply exists for us to use. ‘Technology,’ he says, ‘tends to absorb everything into its ironclad logic’ that presupposes that ‘there is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit’, an idea he says that ‘proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology.’
Quoting theologian Romano Guardini, Francis says that ‘there is a tendency to believe that every increase in power means “an increase of progress itself”...[yet] “contemporary man has not been trained to use power well” because our immense technological development has not been accompanied by a development in human responsibility, values and conscience.’ We are besotted with technology, but don’t have the maturity to use it wisely.
Francis’ critique draws on the writings of Romano Guardini (1885-1968) who, despite being born in Verona, was German. Although present-day conservative Catholics have tried to harness Guardini to their critique of post-Vatican II Catholicism, he was a key theologian leading-up to the Council and his much of his thought is reflected by progressive Catholics.
The Guardini book that Francis quotes is The End of the Modern World (1956). Guardini argues that we have entered a post-modern world that is dominated by a technology that cuts us off from the natural world creating an artificial, abstract, one-dimensional, de-personalised reality. ‘The technological mind,’ he says, ‘sees nature as an insensate order, as a cold body of facts, as a mere “given”, as an object of utility, as raw material to be hammered into useful shape; it views the cosmos as a mere “space” into which objects can be thrown with complete indifference.’
Technology ‘is creating a radically different sociological type’ which Guardini calls ‘mass man’. This ‘simply designates the man who is absorbed by technology and rational abstraction.’ Mass man, according to Guardini is ‘fashioned according to the law of standardisation, a law dictated by the functional nature of the machine.’
Pope Francis says that ‘this paradigm leads people to believe that they are free as long as they have the supposed freedom to consume. But those really free are the minority who wield economic and financial power. Amid this confusion, post-modern humanity has not yet achieved a new self-awareness capable of offering guidance and direction, and this lack of identity is a source of anxiety. We have too many means and only a few insubstantial ends.’
Lurking the background, perhaps unconsciously, of Guardini and Pope Francis is German philosopher, Martin Heidegger’s 1955 essay The Question Concerning Technology. Guardini and Heidegger knew each other and were colleagues in Munich and Freiburg.
The essence of Heidegger’s environmental thought is rooted in his profound ambiguity about technology. For him the ecological crisis is the direct result of our technological culture which, in turn, we have inherited from our philosophical tradition. He defined technology in the broadest sense: it meant human interference by mechanistic force in the natural dynamics of the world for some perceived ‘good’ for humankind.
It was everything from stem cell manipulation to the use of chain-saws and bulldozers, to irrigation and hydroelectricity. The modern world is dominated by an opportunistic, ‘can-do’ mentality; if something can be done, it should be done. It needs no further ethical justification. Technology has created a cultural and intellectual Ge-stell, an ‘en-framing’ of reality that determines the way we think. And how we think, says Heidegger, is much more important than what we think.
This is precisely what Francis is saying. ‘The idea of promoting a different cultural paradigm and employing technology as a mere instrument is nowadays inconceivable...It has become countercultural to choose a lifestyle whose goals are even partly independent of technology, of its costs and its power to globalize and make us all the same.’
It is precisely this countercultural stance that Pope Francis is promoting.
Paul Collins has published further and more detailed articles on Laudato si’ and Heidegger’s philosophy on his blog.