By Carl Trueman, Public Discourse.
We are using our genius to degrade ourselves into nothing much at all, and the existential results are anxiety and shame at how small we have become.
Some years ago, a friend was invited to a two-day summit of tech bros, religious leaders, and moral philosophers to discuss the impact of modern technology on the nature of humanity. On the first day, the tech bros made their presentations as the religious leaders and philosophers listened. On the second day, it was the turn of the religious leaders and the philosophers to speak. But by that point, the tech bros had all departed. My friend’s conclusion? Those driving the technological revolution of the modern world have no interest in allowing broader religious, moral, or metaphysical considerations to limit or even to shape their projects in any way. They have no idea where they are going, but they are going there full steam ahead.
This incident captures the question humanity now faces: who are we and what will we be ten, twenty, fifty years from now? This is already a world where we can, for example, order food, travel in a taxi, form friendships, and even indulge in sexual relationships without ever having to encounter another human being. In such a world, to use the phrase of the Psalmist, what is man?
In this context, the appearance in English of The Obsolescence of the Human, Günther Anders’s reflection on the role of technology for the human condition in modernity, is most welcome. Anders, perhaps best known in the English-speaking world as the first husband of Hannah Arendt, was an astute thinker in his own right. The essays collected here cover themes from nuclear weapons to women’s makeup to Waiting for Godot.