THE DEVELOPMENT OF PEOPLES
AND TECHNOLOGY
AND TECHNOLOGY
68. The development of peoples is intimately linked to the development of
individuals. The human person by nature is actively involved in his own
development. The development in question is not simply the result of natural
mechanisms, since as everybody knows, we are all capable of making free and
responsible choices. Nor is it merely at the mercy of our caprice, since we all
know that we are a gift, not something self-generated. Our freedom is profoundly
shaped by our being, and by its limits. No one shapes his own conscience
arbitrarily, but we all build our own “I” on the basis of a “self” which is
given to us. Not only are other persons outside our control, but each one of us
is outside his or her own control. A person's development is compromised, if
he claims to be solely responsible for producing what he becomes. By
analogy, the development of peoples goes awry if humanity thinks it can
re-create itself through the “wonders” of technology, just as economic
development is exposed as a destructive sham if it relies on the “wonders” of
finance in order to sustain unnatural and consumerist growth. In the face of
such Promethean presumption, we must fortify our love for a freedom that is not
merely arbitrary, but is rendered truly human by acknowledgment of the good that
underlies it. To this end, man needs to look inside himself in order to
recognize the fundamental norms of the natural moral law which God has written
on our hearts.
69. The challenge of development today is closely linked to technological
progress, with its astounding applications in the field of biology.
Technology — it is worth emphasizing — is a profoundly human reality, linked to
the autonomy and freedom of man. In technology we express and confirm the
hegemony of the spirit over matter. “The human spirit, ‘increasingly free of its
bondage to creatures, can be more easily drawn to the worship and contemplation
of the Creator'”[150]. Technology enables us to exercise dominion over
matter, to reduce risks, to save labour, to improve our conditions of life. It
touches the heart of the vocation of human labour: in technology, seen as the
product of his genius, man recognizes himself and forges his own humanity.
Technology is the objective side of human action[151] whose origin and
raison d'etre is found in the subjective element: the worker himself. For
this reason, technology is never merely technology. It reveals man and his
aspirations towards development, it expresses the inner tension that impels him
gradually to overcome material limitations. Technology, in this sense, is a
response to God's command to till and to keep the land (cf. Gen 2:15)
that he has entrusted to humanity, and it must serve to reinforce the covenant
between human beings and the environment, a covenant that should mirror God's
creative love.
70. Technological development can give rise to the idea that technology is
self-sufficient when too much attention is given to the “how” questions,
and not enough to the many “why” questions underlying human activity. For
this reason technology can appear ambivalent. Produced through human creativity
as a tool of personal freedom, technology can be understood as a manifestation
of absolute freedom, the freedom that seeks to prescind from the limits inherent
in things. The process of globalization could replace ideologies with
technology[152], allowing the latter to become an ideological power
that threatens to confine us within an a priori that holds us back from
encountering being and truth. Were that to happen, we would all know, evaluate
and make decisions about our life situations from within a technocratic cultural
perspective to which we would belong structurally, without ever being able to
discover a meaning that is not of our own making. The “technical” worldview that
follows from this vision is now so dominant that truth has come to be seen as
coinciding with the possible. But when the sole criterion of truth is efficiency
and utility, development is automatically denied. True development does not
consist primarily in “doing”. The key to development is a mind capable of
thinking in technological terms and grasping the fully human meaning of human
activities, within the context of the holistic meaning of the individual's
being. Even when we work through satellites or through remote electronic
impulses, our actions always remain human, an expression of our responsible
freedom. Technology is highly attractive because it draws us out of our physical
limitations and broadens our horizon. But human freedom is authentic only
when it responds to the fascination of technology with decisions that are the
fruit of moral responsibility. Hence the pressing need for formation in an
ethically responsible use of technology. Moving beyond the fascination that
technology exerts, we must reappropriate the true meaning of freedom, which is
not an intoxication with total autonomy, but a response to the call of being,
beginning with our own personal being.
71. This deviation from solid humanistic principles that a technical mindset
can produce is seen today in certain technological applications in the fields of
development and peace. Often the development of peoples is considered a matter
of financial engineering, the freeing up of markets, the removal of tariffs,
investment in production, and institutional reforms — in other words, a purely
technical matter. All these factors are of great importance, but we have to ask
why technical choices made thus far have yielded rather mixed results. We need
to think hard about the cause. Development will never be fully guaranteed
through automatic or impersonal forces, whether they derive from the market or
from international politics. Development is impossible without upright men
and women, without financiers and politicians whose consciences are finely
attuned to the requirements of the common good. Both professional competence
and moral consistency are necessary. When technology is allowed to take over,
the result is confusion between ends and means, such that the sole criterion for
action in business is thought to be the maximization of profit, in politics the
consolidation of power, and in science the findings of research. Often,
underneath the intricacies of economic, financial and political
interconnections, there remain misunderstandings, hardships and injustice. The
flow of technological know-how increases, but it is those in possession of it
who benefit, while the situation on the ground for the peoples who live in its
shadow remains unchanged: for them there is little chance of emancipation.
72. Even peace can run the risk of being considered a technical product,
merely the outcome of agreements between governments or of initiatives aimed at
ensuring effective economic aid. It is true that peace-building requires
the constant interplay of diplomatic contacts, economic, technological and
cultural exchanges, agreements on common projects, as well as joint strategies
to curb the threat of military conflict and to root out the underlying causes of
terrorism. Nevertheless, if such efforts are to have lasting effects, they must
be based on values rooted in the truth of human life. That is, the voice of the
peoples affected must be heard and their situation must be taken into
consideration, if their expectations are to be correctly interpreted. One must
align oneself, so to speak, with the unsung efforts of so many individuals
deeply committed to bringing peoples together and to facilitating development on
the basis of love and mutual understanding. Among them are members of the
Christian faithful, involved in the great task of upholding the fully human
dimension of development and peace.
73. Linked to technological development is the increasingly pervasive
presence of the means of social communications. It is almost impossible
today to imagine the life of the human family without them. For better or for
worse, they are so integral a part of life today that it seems quite absurd to
maintain that they are neutral — and hence unaffected by any moral
considerations concerning people. Often such views, stressing the strictly
technical nature of the media, effectively support their subordination to
economic interests intent on dominating the market and, not least, to attempts
to impose cultural models that serve ideological and political agendas. Given
the media's fundamental importance in engineering changes in attitude towards
reality and the human person, we must reflect carefully on their influence,
especially in regard to the ethical-cultural dimension of globalization and the
development of peoples in solidarity. Mirroring what is required for an ethical
approach to globalization and development, so too the meaning and purpose of
the media must be sought within an anthropological perspective. This means
that they can have a civilizing effect not only when, thanks to
technological development, they increase the possibilities of communicating
information, but above all when they are geared towards a vision of the person
and the common good that reflects truly universal values. Just because social
communications increase the possibilities of interconnection and the
dissemination of ideas, it does not follow that they promote freedom or
internationalize development and democracy for all. To achieve goals of this
kind, they need to focus on promoting the dignity of persons and peoples, they
need to be clearly inspired by charity and placed at the service of truth, of
the good, and of natural and supernatural fraternity. In fact, human freedom is
intrinsically linked with these higher values. The media can make an important
contribution towards the growth in communion of the human family and the
ethos of society when they are used to promote universal participation in
the common search for what is just.
74. A particularly crucial battleground in today's cultural struggle between
the supremacy of technology and human moral responsibility is the field of
bioethics, where the very possibility of integral human development is
radically called into question. In this most delicate and critical area, the
fundamental question asserts itself force-fully: is man the product of his own
labours or does he depend on God? Scientific discoveries in this field and the
possibilities of technological intervention seem so advanced as to force a
choice between two types of reasoning: reason open to transcendence or reason
closed within immanence. We are presented with a clear either/ or. Yet
the rationality of a self-centred use of technology proves to be irrational
because it implies a decisive rejection of meaning and value. It is no
coincidence that closing the door to transcendence brings one up short against a
difficulty: how could being emerge from nothing, how could intelligence be born
from chance?[153] Faced with these dramatic questions, reason and faith
can come to each other's assistance. Only together will they save man.
Entranced by an exclusive reliance on technology, reason without faith is doomed
to flounder in an illusion of its own omnipotence. Faith without reason risks
being cut off from everyday life[154].
75. Paul VI had already recognized and drawn attention to the global
dimension of the social question[155]. Following his lead, we need to
affirm today that the social question has become a radically anthropological
question, in the sense that it concerns not just how life is conceived but
also how it is manipulated, as bio-technology places it increasingly under man's
control. In vitro fertilization, embryo research, the possibility of
manufacturing clones and human hybrids: all this is now emerging and being
promoted in today's highly disillusioned culture, which believes it has mastered
every mystery, because the origin of life is now within our grasp. Here we see
the clearest expression of technology's supremacy. In this type of culture, the
conscience is simply invited to take note of technological possibilities. Yet we
must not underestimate the disturbing scenarios that threaten our future, or the
powerful new instruments that the “culture of death” has at its disposal. To the
tragic and widespread scourge of abortion we may well have to add in the future
— indeed it is already surreptiously present — the systematic eugenic
programming of births. At the other end of the spectrum, a pro-euthanasia
mindset is making inroads as an equally damaging assertion of control over life
that under certain circumstances is deemed no longer worth living. Underlying
these scenarios are cultural viewpoints that deny human dignity. These practices
in turn foster a materialistic and mechanistic understanding of human life. Who
could measure the negative effects of this kind of mentality for development?
How can we be surprised by the indifference shown towards situations of human
degradation, when such indifference extends even to our attitude towards what is
and is not human? What is astonishing is the arbitrary and selective
determination of what to put forward today as worthy of respect. Insignificant
matters are considered shocking, yet unprecedented injustices seem to be widely
tolerated. While the poor of the world continue knocking on the doors of the
rich, the world of affluence runs the risk of no longer hearing those knocks, on
account of a conscience that can no longer distinguish what is human. God
reveals man to himself; reason and faith work hand in hand to demonstrate to us
what is good, provided we want to see it; the natural law, in which creative
Reason shines forth, reveals our greatness, but also our wretchedness insofar as
we fail to recognize the call to moral truth.
76. One aspect of the contemporary technological mindset is the tendency to
consider the problems and emotions of the interior life from a purely
psychological point of view, even to the point of neurological reductionism. In
this way man's interiority is emptied of its meaning and gradually our awareness
of the human soul's ontological depths, as probed by the saints, is lost. The
question of development is closely bound up with our understanding of the human
soul, insofar as we often reduce the self to the psyche and confuse the
soul's health with emotional well-being. These over-simplifications stem from a
profound failure to understand the spiritual life, and they obscure the fact
that the development of individuals and peoples depends partly on the resolution
of problems of a spiritual nature. Development must include not just material
growth but also spiritual growth, since the human person is a “unity of body
and soul”[156], born of God's creative love and destined for eternal
life. The human being develops when he grows in the spirit, when his soul comes
to know itself and the truths that God has implanted deep within, when he enters
into dialogue with himself and his Creator. When he is far away from God, man is
unsettled and ill at ease. Social and psychological alienation and the many
neuroses that afflict affluent societies are attributable in part to spiritual
factors. A prosperous society, highly developed in material terms but weighing
heavily on the soul, is not of itself conducive to authentic development. The
new forms of slavery to drugs and the lack of hope into which so many people
fall can be explained not only in sociological and psychological terms but also
in essentially spiritual terms. The emptiness in which the soul feels abandoned,
despite the availability of countless therapies for body and psyche, leads to
suffering. There cannot be holistic development and universal common good
unless people's spiritual and moral welfare is taken into account,
considered in their totality as body and soul.
77. The supremacy of technology tends to prevent people from recognizing
anything that cannot be explained in terms of matter alone. Yet everyone
experiences the many immaterial and spiritual dimensions of life. Knowing is not
simply a material act, since the object that is known always conceals something
beyond the empirical datum. All our knowledge, even the most simple, is always a
minor miracle, since it can never be fully explained by the material instruments
that we apply to it. In every truth there is something more than we would have
expected, in the love that we receive there is always an element that surprises
us. We should never cease to marvel at these things. In all knowledge and in
every act of love the human soul experiences something “over and above”, which
seems very much like a gift that we receive, or a height to which we are raised.
The development of individuals and peoples is likewise located on a height, if
we consider the spiritual dimension that must be present if such
development is to be authentic. It requires new eyes and a new heart, capable of
rising above a materialistic vision of human events, capable of glimpsing
in development the “beyond” that technology cannot give. By following this path,
it is possible to pursue the integral human development that takes its direction
from the driving force of charity in truth.
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