“What is the goal of our technologies? What should be our goal? What is off limits and why? What is our operating definition of the good that we are pursuing through technology? Where is the uncrossable line between healing and enhancement, and what are the other proper limits of our technologies? What are people?” Maria Baer and John Stonestreet
Telos: Greek, (noun) the end term of a goal-directed process; esp. the Aristotelian final cause (the end result/purpose).
When my father was born in 1916, the first radio broadcast was still a dim hope, still four years off. KDKA in Pittsburgh wouldn’t transmit the first radio signals ever until 1920. Home ownership of telephones was still uncommon.
Now we carry devices that contain phones, radios, televisions, cameras, clocks, calculators, flashlights, information resources, and social media outlets.
Technology has come a long way since sliced bread and the assembly line.
During the 1990s, I took a college class called Science, Technology, and Society. The professor led multiple discussions of the telos of technology by asking the question, “Will people invent a technology they won’t use?”
Along with others, I asserted that our production of nuclear warheads was fulfilling its telos as a deterrent to nuclear war. We didn’t build bombs so we could use them. We built bombs hoping no one else would feel brazen enough to use theirs against us.
We didn’t think of the self-destructive “bombs” we were developing to finish ourselves off one at a time and with no beneficial result.
Take embryonic stem cell research, for example.
From Baer and Stonestreet:
“Historically, President Bush’s position on embryo-destructive research has been thoroughly vindicated. The additional funding committed to research into adult and induced pluripotent stem cells produced amazing medical breakthroughs. But none of the promises of embryonic stem cell therapies ever materialized, even after his Oval Office successor reversed Bush’s policies, rebuilt the Council around only scientists and medical researchers, and released enormous funding for embryo-destructive research,”
Additional funding. On and off over the years. But not a single benefit.
Harvesting humans. Reaping no benefits. Continuing to take lives and money to repeat the process.
Even if there were a benefit, I would still argue against this barbarity. How can we “benefit” from the death and destruction of innocents? We hope to gain healing for a physical body but harm eternal souls. We become less than we were, less than we can be, when we engage in such practices.
Technologies have good and bad ends. Even a bread slicer can produce a more usable and uniform product or a wounded worker. It’s all in how we use it and what the telos is.
We are letting the end we hope for overcome the meaning every human life always Contains. That purpose never involves becoming spare parts for someone else, directly by transplant or indirectly through research.
God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27, ESV
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It’s terrifying how technology —or anything, really — can be twisted for evil! Thank God our Lord prevails.
Amen, He prevails, indeed. Thanks, Jessica. God bless!
This is a powerful and timely message, Nancy. The impact of technology, used for evil intent, is farther reaching than ever before. Let us remain steadfast in prayer for our children, our leaders, and our world.
Amen and amen, Melissa. We must be steadfast. Thanks and God bless!
I think you post really made me realize how anything can be used for good or evil. Many of us use technology for good, to learn and to share. But it also show us how people can be emboldened to say what they want, even if untrue. It is scary. Thanks for sharing your wisdom with us Nancy.
Thank you for reading and commenting with such insight, Yvonne. God bless!
The arrogance and shortsightedness of humans comes to mind as I read this, Nancy. We see time and time again how even advances made with the best of motivations wind up destroying, yet we don’t learn. And, of course, human motivations are never pure. Thanks for writing on this important topic.
We are sometimes our worst enemy. Thanks, Annie. God bless!
Another very disturbing technology is rearing its head today, also, and that’s artificial intelligence. Who knows when that’s going to lead?
So true, Lisa. I’m afraid it will lead to a mind-deadening ignorance that lets machines think for us. Thanks and God bless!
The pendulum of innovation where technology is concerned has swung too wide to keep humanity and society safe from the harm that most often overrides any good. Lord, help us!
Amen and amen, Karen. Thanks and God bless!
So very true Ms. Nancy. I think about the technologies I’ve seen come about in my life and I can see how they were all corrupted and used for evil. I think it because they were created by man and not God. Although Satan has managed to even “corrupt” religion (not the true God) by making evil, vile, wrong teachings because man wants to look for (through conditioning I think) the “Easy Button” for everything in their lives. Great post ma’am.
Satan can corrupt everything in the world. We need to stay holy and close to Holiness Himself. Thanks, JD. God bless!