Introduction

The nineteenth century in Europe was the century of the ‘industrial revolution’: this transformation – so multidimensional that it could be described as systemic – shifted the working of societies to a new logic; a logic based on economic freedom and exclusive ownership paving the way to specialisation and trade; a logic which political democracy is supposed to preserve and guarantee.

The Church was slow to take note of the profound changes brought about by modernity and the industrial revolution. It remained silent until the end of the 19th century, when Pope Leo XIII proclaimed the first social encyclical of modern times on “new things”.

Starting from the steppingstone of Rerum novarum, modern Christian social teaching developed with the same, unique epistemological stance. It consists in maintaining a permanent dialogue between human values (in virtue of the Church’s expertise in humanity, according to Paul VI) and the economic, political and technical conditions of life that the social sciences may help to scrutinise.

The present paper explores the notion of technocratic paradigm as it emerges from the pages of Laudato si’, highlights its components and identifies the related dangers.

In the paper Elements of the Technocratic Paradigm before Laudato si’, we will seek to see whether, and if so how, the various components of the technocratic paradigm have been identified by the texts of Francis’ predecessors on the chair of St. Peter.

In the paper Technocratic Paradigm: Selected Christian Texts, an analogous analysis will be made of some texts by Christian thinkers who have long warned of the dangers of “all-technology”. These are Georges Bernanos, Romano Guardini and Jacques Ellul.

1. Technology and development: the novelty of Laudato si’

The attention to “new things” with the will to relate them to the Gospel message is the common point of the pontifical documents that have followed one another in the 130-year history of Christian social teaching. The encyclical Laudato si’, published in May 2015 by Pope Francis, is part of this line of texts addressing topical social issues; its subtitle is “on care the common home”.

The text contains a severe diagnosis of the current situation, a dramatic warning and an urgent call to action to ‘safeguard the common home’ in the face of the current ecological and social crisis. The Pope is very concerned about the central role that scientific, technical and organisational progress, which embodies rationalism and materialism, continues to play. Thus, the Pope identifies this “technocratic paradigm” as one of the main causes of the worrying situation in which the world finds itself today. The encyclical criticises this paradigm and warns that if it action is not thwarted in due time, it risks leading humanity to ecological, social and anthropological collapse.

2. The crossroads – the technocratic temptation

From paragraph 16, the encyclical announces that “the critique of new paradigms and forms of power derived from technology“ is one of the axes running through the entire text, along with “the intimate relationship between the poor and the fragility of the planet” and the search for “other ways of understanding the economy and progress”. This shows how important the technocratic paradigm is for Pope Francis in understanding the current crisis.

Paragraph 102 of Laudato si’ highlights the benefits of technology but also the risk of abuse of power that follows. On the one hand, due to the immense technological achievement that is present in every corner of our lives: “Technology has remedied countless evils which used to harm and limit human beings”; on the other hand, it has increased the temptation of power of “those with the knowledge, and especially the economic resources to use them, an impressive dominance over the whole of humanity and the entire world”.

“In whose hands does all this power lie, or will it eventually end up?”. The question is rhetorical, echoing Romano Guardini’s analysis: “contemporary man has not been trained to use power well”. In other words, the current challenge is to ensure that the power that knowledge and technical progress give us is not misused for the “immediate interests” of a group or a caste, and that it serves the global common good.

Faced with this ethical challenge “we stand naked and exposed in the face of our ever-increasing power, lacking the wherewithal to control it. We have certain superficial mechanisms, but we cannot claim to have a sound ethics, a culture and spirituality genuinely capable of setting limits and teaching clear-minded self-restraint” (105). In this sense, Laudato si’ sees the contemporary period as a critical moment: “Humanity has entered a new era in which our technical prowess has brought us to a crossroads” (102).

In theory, technology is always ambivalent, capable of both good and bad. In reality, the more powerful it becomes, the more important the issues linked to it become, as is the case today. The crossroads to which Laudato si’ alludes are related to the fact that – today – a particular technique ceases to be a simple instrument that man can put at the service of higher ends as a vast array of techniques is merging into a single technological logic that escapes man’s control. Technology expands its grip by continuously transforming new segments of reality, which in turn opens the new fields and needs for additional techniques.

Thus, by merging into technology, techniques cease to be instruments and become a force on their own, passing from the control of the individual to that of technocracy. In this way – Pope Francis notes – technology is able to exercise its hold and acts as a structuring force for the whole world: “Technology tends to absorb everything into its ironclad logic” (108).

Laudato si’ sees in the current ecological and social crisis the dramatic consequence of the spread of technological logic relayed by technocracy. The criticism is therefore fundamental: “the technological paradigm has become so dominant that it would be difficult to do without its resources and even more difficult to utilize them without being dominated by their internal logic”(108).

This quote shows why the Pope does not hesitate to use the term ‘paradigm’. This term refers to a horizon of thought that a group – for the Pope, most of contemporary humanity – takes as an implicit given, and therefore does not fully perceive it as a limit, and, by consequence, does not seek to reach beyond that horizon. Thus, identifying the borders of a paradigm is the first step towards reaching beyond; it amounts to raising one’s gaze and pointing out the confinement.

3. Technology and finance: a dangerous alliance

According to Laudato si’, technology is dangerous today because it has struck an alliance with two other major forces present in contemporaneous society: finance and economic rationality. Technology as such can provide solutions, but the solutions it is capable of providing today are partial and biased because it is aligned on the exclusive quest for financial profitability. Thus, the choices dictated by technology and its economic ally serve the interests they can afford to defend: “The alliance between the economy and technology ends up sidelining anything unrelated to its immediate interests. […] (A)ny genuine attempt by groups within society to introduce change is viewed as a nuisance based on romantic illusions or an obstacle to be circumvented”(Laudato si’, 54).

In the mind of a Pope who insists on the importance of a holistic vision “everything is connected” - this is a strong criticism: “Technology, which, linked to business interests, is incapable of seeing the mysterious network of relations between things and so sometimes solves one problem only to create others” (20).

The problem is important, since “we stand naked” facing – helplessly – a “homogeneous and one-dimensional paradigm” with, at its core, the ever increasing control over nature. From there, we easily come to “the idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology” (106). In the name of this homogeneous rationality associated with technical possibilities, the springs of the economy are mobilized to guide “every advance in technology with a view to profit, without concern for its potentially negative impact on human beings” (109).

Yet “technoscience, when well directed, can produce important means of improving the quality of human life […] It can also produce art and enable men and women immersed in the material world to ‘leap’ into the world of beauty” (103). Technoscience as such therefore has a positive potential, but it struggles to turn it into reality as long as it remains in the exclusive obedience of financial profitability, i.e. of return on investment.

4. The technocratic paradigm

The technocratic paradigm that Laudato si’ denounces is more than technology. It is a system in the full sense of the word, even if the text of the encyclical does not use the term in this context. This system – according to our reading of the papal text – is made up of three main components that reinforce each other in a dynamic interaction.

a. A structural and social component: technocracy. Power in society is held by those who have knowledge and are able to mastermind technology. Their power is currently disproportionate as it confronts the “us” that stand “naked” in its face : “The technological paradigm has become so dominant that it would be difficult to do without its resources and even more difficult to utilize them without being dominated by their internal logic” (108).

b. A component of rationality or logic. According to Pope Francis, technical reason has been led astray by its close alliance with finance and economics, which is reflected in the pre-eminence of considerations of financial profitability in technological choices. A similar situation prevails in the world of consumption. According to Laudato si’, the technocratic paradigm extends its dominance to consumption, where it feeds consumerism (203 and following).

c. Finally, the technocratic paradigm has a third epistemologic component, which stems from the fact that – in the current context – the acquisition of new scientific and technical knowledge is achieved through an ever-increasing specialisation that stands in opposition to a more holistic or integral vision of the problems.

“The specialization which belongs to technology makes it difficult to see the larger picture. The fragmentation of knowledge proves helpful for concrete applications, and yet it often leads to a loss of appreciation for the whole, for the relationships between things, and for the broader horizon, which then becomes irrelevant”. And he continues: “This very fact makes it hard to find adequate ways of solving the more complex problems of today’s world, particularly those regarding the environment and the poor; these problems cannot be dealt with from a single perspective or from a single set of interests. A science which would offer solutions to the great issues would necessarily have to take into account the data generated by other fields of knowledge, including philosophy and social ethics; but this is a difficult habit to acquire today”(110).

Thus, this new technical and scientific knowledge, which is inevitably fragmentary, reinforces the techno-economic logic and – indirectly – the power of technocracy through a positive feedback loop. Technical progress thus contributes to the consolidation of the grip of the technocratic paradigm on the world today. The loop would thus run unperturbed, the paradigm having the resources to ensure its own perpetuation.

5. Resisting the technocratic paradigm

According to Laudato si’, the technocratic paradigm driven by its own systemic dynamics is getting stronger and stronger. In this context, the question ‘is there a way out?’ is natural. Is a lucid resistance out of reach? Is the logic of techno-financial rationality unshakeable? No, answers Laudato si’, which sees signs of hope coming from “authentic humanity” that “seems to dwell in the midst of our technological culture, almost unnoticed, like a mist seeping gently beneath a closed door. Will the promise last, in spite of everything, with all that is authentic rising up in stubborn resistance?” (112).

The critique of the technocratic paradigm offered by Laudato si’ is thus a call to resist each of its three main components. With regard to the structural dimension, which translates into the disproportionate power of the masters of technology, some avenues are proposed. “The establishment of a legal framework which can set clear boundaries and ensure the protection of ecosystems has become indispensable, otherwise the new power structures based on the techno-economic paradigm may overwhelm not only our politics but also freedom and justice” (53). And the Pope identifies the cracks that are already visible, where the alternative emerges: “Liberation from the dominant technocratic paradigm does in fact happen sometimes, for example, when cooperatives of small producers adopt less polluting means of production, and opt for a non-consumerist model of life, recreation and community” (112).

To break the logic of profitability, it is necessary to develop a sense of social ethics and concern for the common good, especially among those who hold technocratic power, and thus “the urgent need for us to move forward in a bold cultural revolution” (114). In order to regain control over technocracy, it is imperative to slow down the race to allow time for ‘us standing naked’ to develop the means and mechanisms to better direct technical evolution.

Slowing down and changing one’s gaze should also affect rationality by leading to a different approach to economic issues, including the attenuation or even the abandonment of the criteria of short-term financial efficiency and effectiveness (cf. Laudato si’, 187, 189).

Finally, with regard to the epistemological component of the paradigm, resistance requires moving away from blinding specialisation towards interdisciplinarity, which is the only hope for better perceiving the interdependencies within reality and imagining integrated, not ad hoc, solutions. This dimension is essential in the long term because “we need to realize that certain mindsets (and paradigms – addition by the author) really do influence our behaviour”. The challenge extends to education, which must “strive to promote a new way of thinking about human beings, life, society and our relationship with nature” (215).

Laudato si’’s analysis of the technocratic paradigm in its various components leads to a radical critique and a call for a “cultural revolution” (114). In this way, Laudato si’ is in line with the Apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium (2013), which pointed to “this economy that kills” (53).