Engaging Laudato Si’ Chapter 3 Reflection

The increase in technology has brought both positive and negative impacts to our common home.  We look to the advances in technology that have improved our daily living, e.g. electricity, modern medicine, and the digital revolution. “It is right to rejoice in these advances and to be excited by the immense possibilities which they continue to open up before us, for “science and technology are wonderful products of a God-given human creativity” (#102).

If we look to the other side of the coin, so to speak, we have to accept that some technological products are not neutral.  They create a framework which ends up conditioning lifestyles and shaping social possibilities along the lines dictated by interests of certain powerful groups.  We recognize that nuclear energy, biotechnology, information technology, knowledge of our own DNA and many other abilities we have acquired, have given us tremendous power.   Therefore,  we must keep in mind that a technology severed from ethics will not easily be able to limit its own power.

What are your thoughts?

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