Lack of moderation
“Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine.”
It is normal for us to pay attention to the circumstances of our own lives and life span. And so we tend to notice the particulars of technologies and their development that concern our own life experiences and life time. But dynamics beyond those particulars are developing under our common radar and threaten the human experience as such.
Over the course of our human history we gained a wide range of intriguing advantages through technology. These advantages strengthen a belief in technology as a universal remedy. It seems increasingly self-evident, that we should focus ever more of our time, energy, and attention on technology’s efficiency and functionality to reach our goals and satisfy our needs and wishes.
Enjoying some ice-cream or a glass of beer or wine can be great. Being agreeable has many advantages, as does exercising regularly. We know, however, that habitually consuming too many sweets or too much alcohol, never being able to say “no”, and constantly overstraining one’s body are likely to create negative effects. These insights are common knowledge. We emphasize the important idea of balance through sayings such as “everything in moderation.”
“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”
Yet regarding technological development – the key area of human endeavor in our times – there is a stunning absence of moderation.
Aldous Huxley once remarked that “… in an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin against the Holy Ghost.” Has our culture of technology become a religion? Are we – on a personal and on a societal level – still able and willing to question how quickly and thoroughly we are infusing technology into our human circumstances? Or has it become “sinful” to doubt our culture’s central belief, which simplistically equates technological development with being beneficial?
- - -
Should freedom and diversity be part of the human experience?
“Science and technology would be used as though, like the Sabbath, they had been made for man, not as though man were to be adapted and enslaved to them.”
The diversity of our values and beliefs, of our artistic, social or spiritual sides, our ability to assess and make choices and our sense of freedom are defining aspects of human existence. They make our lives varied and meaningful.
These facets of human existence need to be lived out. That means they require our time and attention. But the more technology absorbs us into its realities, the more our time and attention are occupied by those technological realities. Therefore the less and less we are available for all things not technology.
If we let technological development* become all-engulfing and all-dominant, we will dissolve the amazing core of our being: our species' soul. Should we protect basic human aspects – such as social, cultural, or spiritual ones – for us and future generations?
If the answer is yes, we must invent and use technology far more selectively. And we must slow its evolution. Doing so are prerequisites for manageability. It lets us embed technology in our respective cultures and keeps us from being enslaved to technology.
- - -
Our species’ challenge
“If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them more than the miracles of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it.”
Without restraining the ever-growing importance of technology in human circumstances there will be no place for values and beliefs, for diversity and freedom. The more we let technology’s developmental logic establish itself, the more that logic will displace anything that is not itself.
Why pay attention to developments that are so much bigger than our own lives and life times? There is no objective value in the continuation of the human experience. Whether that experience continues to exist only matters if we choose for it to matter.
Changing our views on technology and our handling of technological development has become humanity’s biggest evolutionary challenge. Rising to this grand challenge would be our species' greatest accomplishment. It would be an extraordinary triumph of insight over instinct – worthy of the unique beings we see ourselves as.
* E.g.: artificial intelligence (AI), genetic engineering (GMO), robotics, biotechnology, military technology, material sciences, information & communication technology, nanotechnology, medical technology, agricultural technology, pharmaceutics, etc.