Technology: Is Wisdom Counterintuitive in the Face of Entrenched Cultures?

What prompted this blog was the thought of technology without responsibility or ethical considerations and how it can lead to ecological and societal demise. The resurgence of wisdom as equally valid to fact, is an essential change agent. In truth, wisdom is holistic as contrasted with technological knowledge motivated by economic self gain. This could be thought of similarly to selfishness in service of self compared to awareness in service to humanity. Entrenched interests and/or economic entities have thought in ways that are uncontested. An example of that would be the mantra of business interests that is unquestioned as it links to economic growth and people would identify employment and survival with that. The compromise is people feel they benefit. Yet in the case where economic business interests undermine earth systems e.g. removal of top soils, over fishing, extractions of fossil fuels, pollution, chemicals, over consumption etc. then there must be forums or opportunities for unquestioned beliefs to be questioned and explored in ways that illuminate rather than harm.

In the future wisdom will be the decider of technological advancement. There will be an awareness around the benefits not only to human life but all other life forms and support systems. There will be lines drawn in the sand to ensure we do not breach boundaries of unethical and immoral intentions. The field of genetics is an example of a case in point. Another would be the use of technologies, as described above, which undermine the ecological support systems of life on earth.

The blog below highlights the importance of wisdom in technological considerations.

http://jed-sutton.blogspot.com/2009/10/hans-jonas-technology-and.html

Hans Jonas: Technology and Responsibility: Reflections on the New Task of Ethics

“We need wisdom the most when we believe in it the least.” (p. 130)

Dr. Jonas’ arguments for a reconsideration of the ethics of techne exists within the construct of a re-contextualized horizon that for the first time in the history of human advancement, we are compelled to contemplate the finite qualities of the earth’s resources, and by extension the limits of our previously uncontested thinking about its stewardship. Jonas’ quote about the necessity for wisdom, while being essentially pragmatic, is counterintuitive in the face of an entrenched culture that has wasted generations of intellectual capital worshiping at the shrine of consumption. The disastrous presumption that humans could endlessly source nature without end is an idea that has exceeded its shelf life.

Jonas invokes Kant’s quote, “human reason can, in matters of morality, be easily brought to a high degree of accuracy and completeness even in the most ordinary intelligence” to advance the idea that ethical decisions about the outcomes of choices we make today should not and in fact cannot be strictly limited to ivory tower academics. His faith in the innate ability of the lay person to adapt his intellectual considerations in light of changing information suggests that anyone can make judgments of morality without the ability to “anticipate all the contingencies that happen in it, I can yet know how to act in accordance with the moral law.” (p124)

We no longer live in a world of bottomless, endlessly self-replenishing resources. We now possess the awareness of our rapid (and accelerating) depletion of natural resources previously thought to be limitless. This knowledge has forever changed the rules of ethics. Never before has the earth required our concentrated efforts to address its needs. We now contemplate the damage done in the name of human civilization. This expanding horizon of knowledge means that although we have consistently perceived morality as essentially anthropocentric, we must be better, do more and act as more thoughtful stewards of Nature and not only life but the future of life, which has no say in our doings, but certainly deserves our thoughtful consideration. Precisely because the future has no say in matters considered today, our obligation to do so is greater than ever, in light of the delimited frame of reference.