Technology in Caritas in Veritate

69. The challenge of development today is closely linked to technological progress, with its astounding applications in the field of biology. Technology — it is worth emphasizing — is a profoundly human reality, linked to the autonomy and freedom of man. In technology we express and confirm the hegemony of the spirit over matter. “The human spirit, ‘increasingly free of its bondage to creatures, can be more easily drawn to the worship and contemplation of the Creator’”[150]. Technology enables us to exercise dominion over matter, to reduce risks, to save labour, to improve our conditions of life. It touches the heart of the vocation of human labour: in technology, seen as the product of his genius, man recognizes himself and forges his own humanity. Technology is the objective side of human action[151] whose origin and raison d’etre is found in the subjective element: the worker himself. For this reason, technology is never merely technology. It reveals man and his aspirations towards development, it expresses the inner tension that impels him gradually to overcome material limitations. Technology, in this sense, is a response to God’s command to till and to keep the land (cf. Gen 2:15) that he has entrusted to humanity, and it must serve to reinforce the covenant between human beings and the environment, a covenant that should mirror God’s creative love.

70. Technological development can give rise to the idea that technology is self-sufficient when too much attention is given to the “how” questions, and not enough to the many “why” questions underlying human activity. For this reason technology can appear ambivalent. Produced through human creativity as a tool of personal freedom, technology can be understood as a manifestation of absolute freedom, the freedom that seeks to prescind from the limits inherent in things. The process of globalization could replace ideologies with technology[152], allowing the latter to become an ideological power that threatens to confine us within an a priori that holds us back from encountering being and truth. Were that to happen, we would all know, evaluate and make decisions about our life situations from within a technocratic cultural perspective to which we would belong structurally, without ever being able to discover a meaning that is not of our own making. The “technical” worldview that follows from this vision is now so dominant that truth has come to be seen as coinciding with the possible. But when the sole criterion of truth is efficiency and utility, development is automatically denied. True development does not consist primarily in “doing”. The key to development is a mind capable of thinking in technological terms and grasping the fully human meaning of human activities, within the context of the holistic meaning of the individual’s being. Even when we work through satellites or through remote electronic impulses, our actions always remain human, an expression of our responsible freedom. Technology is highly attractive because it draws us out of our physical limitations and broadens our horizon. But human freedom is authentic only when it responds to the fascination of technology with decisions that are the fruit of moral responsibility. Hence the pressing need for formation in an ethically responsible use of technology. Moving beyond the fascination that technology exerts, we must reappropriate the true meaning of freedom, which is not an intoxication with total autonomy, but a response to the call of being, beginning with our own personal being.

Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate

Gary Dorrien on Health Care

The Christian Century has an article by my old advisor, Gary Dorrien, on the health care public option. It is uncharacteristically short (although that is probably The Christian Century’s fault), but it is still a good, clarifying read. He starts with:

Longtime advocates of single-payer insurance like me are thrilled, anxious and deflated simultaneously by the state of the debate on health-care reform. The debate that we wanted has finally come, and it is coming with a legislative rush, but the plan that we wanted is being excluded from consideration. Should we hold out for the real thing, or get behind the best politically possible thing?

I am for doing both: Standing up for single-payer without holding out for it exclusively; supporting a public option without denying its limitations; and hoping that a good public plan will lead eventually to real national health insurance.

Single-payer basically means Medi care for everyone, without the copays and deductibles of the current Medicare system. It is not socialized medicine, as in England or Spain, where doctors and hospitals work for the government. It does not violate the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment, which bars the government from taking private property for public use without appropriate compensation, since it does not nationalize any private firms. The single-payer plan is a system of socialized health insurance similar to that of Canada, Australia and most European nations. Essentially it is an extension and improvement of the Medicare system, in which government pays for care that is managed and delivered in the private sector.

We don’t need private health insurance companies. We certainly don’t need a system that wastes $450 billion per year in redundant administrative costs and leaves 45 million Americans without health coverage. We could do without a system that excludes people with pre-existing medical conditions and limited economic resources. We don’t need a system that cherry picks profitable clients and dumps the unprofitably ill in HMOs featuring lousy care and little choice. Businesses and other employers would do much better not having to provide health coverage for their employees, who often end up underinsured. We could do better than a system that ties people fearfully to jobs they want to leave but can’t afford to lose because they might lose their health coverage.

Health care is a fundamental human right that should be available to all people regardless of their economic resources. A society that takes seriously this elementary principle of social justice does not relegate the poor and underemployed to second-class care or status. The only Western democratic society that doesn’t even try to live up to this principle is the United States. When wealthy and middle-class people have to rely on the same health system as the poor, as they do throughout Europe, they use their political power to make sure it’s a decent system.

But single-payer deliverance is not on the agenda for President Obama and this Congress. The insurance companies are too powerful and politically aggressive to be retired in one legislative stroke. The House bill that calls for replacing for-profit insurance companies has only 79 cosponsors, and the Senate bill has only one—Bernie Sanders.

The Social Encyclical Caritas in Veritate is Finally Out

Benedict XVI has finally released his social encyclical Caritas in veritate. It is an interesting read, although sometimes hit and miss, but in the end, the real value is that some key points are now in the encyclical tradition. On contemporary, economic circumstances, even the BBC notes that Benedict hits out against the greed that has put the worldwide economy where it is now and calls for a reform of the UN. Here are a few interesting quotes from the introduction:

I am aware of the ways in which charity has been and continues to be misconstrued and emptied of meaning, with the consequent risk of being misinterpreted, detached from ethical living and, in any event, undervalued. In the social, juridical, cultural, political and economic fields — the contexts, in other words, that are most exposed to this danger — it is easily dismissed as irrelevant for interpreting and giving direction to moral responsibility. Hence the need to link charity with truth not only in the sequence, pointed out by Saint Paul, of veritas in caritate (Eph 4:15), but also in the inverse and complementary sequence of caritas in veritate. Truth needs to be sought, found and expressed within the “economy” of charity, but charity in its turn needs to be understood, confirmed and practised in the light of truth. In this way, not only do we do a service to charity enlightened by truth, but we also help give credibility to truth, demonstrating its persuasive and authenticating power in the practical setting of social living. This is a matter of no small account today, in a social and cultural context which relativizes truth, often paying little heed to it and showing increasing reluctance to acknowledge its existence.

… Charity is love received and given. It is “grace” (cháris). Its source is the wellspring of the Father’s love for the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Love comes down to us from the Son. It is creative love, through which we have our being; it is redemptive love, through which we are recreated. Love is revealed and made present by Christ (cf. Jn 13:1) and “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5). As the objects of God’s love, men and women become subjects of charity, they are called to make themselves instruments of grace, so as to pour forth God’s charity and to weave networks of charity.

This dynamic of charity received and given is what gives rise to the Church’s social teaching, which is caritas in veritate in re sociali: the proclamation of the truth of Christ’s love in society. This doctrine is a service to charity, but its locus is truth. Truth preserves and expresses charity’s power to liberate in the ever-changing events of history. It is at the same time the truth of faith and of reason, both in the distinction and also in the convergence of those two cognitive fields. Development, social well-being, the search for a satisfactory solution to the grave socio-economic problems besetting humanity, all need this truth. What they need even more is that this truth should be loved and demonstrated. Without truth, without trust and love for what is true, there is no social conscience and responsibility, and social action ends up serving private interests and the logic of power, resulting in social fragmentation, especially in a globalized society at difficult times like the present.

… Charity goes beyond justice, because to love is to give, to offer what is “mine” to the other; but it never lacks justice, which prompts us to give the other what is “his”, what is due to him by reason of his being or his acting. I cannot “give” what is mine to the other, without first giving him what pertains to him in justice. If we love others with charity, then first of all we are just towards them. Not only is justice not extraneous to charity, not only is it not an alternative or parallel path to charity: justice is inseparable from charity[1], and intrinsic to it. Justice is the primary way of charity or, in Paul VI’s words, “the minimum measure” of it[2], an integral part of the love “in deed and in truth” (1 Jn 3:18), to which Saint John exhorts us. On the one hand, charity demands justice: recognition and respect for the legitimate rights of individuals and peoples. It strives to build the earthly city according to law and justice. On the other hand, charity transcends justice and completes it in the logic of giving and forgiving[3]. The earthly city is promoted not merely by relationships of rights and duties, but to an even greater and more fundamental extent by relationships of gratuitousness, mercy and communion. Charity always manifests God’s love in human relationships as well, it gives theological and salvific value to all commitment for justice in the world.

… To desire the common good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity. To take a stand for the common good is on the one hand to be solicitous for, and on the other hand to avail oneself of, that complex of institutions that give structure to the life of society, juridically, civilly, politically and culturally, making it the pólis, or “city”. The more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbours, the more effectively we love them. Every Christian is called to practise this charity, in a manner corresponding to his vocation and according to the degree of influence he wields in the pólis. This is the institutional path — we might also call it the political path — of charity, no less excellent and effective than the kind of charity which encounters the neighbour directly, outside the institutional mediation of the pólis. When animated by charity, commitment to the common good has greater worth than a merely secular and political stand would have. Like all commitment to justice, it has a place within the testimony of divine charity that paves the way for eternity through temporal action. Man’s earthly activity, when inspired and sustained by charity, contributes to the building of the universal city of God, which is the goal of the history of the human family. In an increasingly globalized society, the common good and the effort to obtain it cannot fail to assume the dimensions of the whole human family, that is to say, the community of peoples and nations[5], in such a way as to shape the earthly city in unity and peace, rendering it to some degree an anticipation and a prefiguration of the undivided city of God.

Off for the Weekend, And You should come too

I’ll be at the Ekklesia Project this weekend at DePaul in Chicago again this year. If you’re around the Chicago area, or do have the time to come from elsewhere, you should come! I believe they can still make room for ya. Trust me, it’ll be worth it for anyone who knows the real point of conferences: food, laughter, and great people.

Bill Moyers Journal: Cornel West, Serene Jones, and Gary Dorrien Video

I am fully aware that I may be repeating myself a bit much; nevertheless, I still think that others should see it, so here is the video below. Oh, Union, I do miss you.

more about "Bill Moyers Journal: Cornel West, Ser…", posted with vodpod

Towards the End of ‘Hail Caesar’

I have little more to add to what I have said about the state, and which the reader is probably well aware, so I recommend a very practical discussion on (and perhaps against) this high holy day, rather than a rant: on Bill Moyers’ Journal last night, Cornel West, Serene Jones, and Gary Dorrien gave a great interview dealing with the economic crisis specifically in America, but still applicable outside of the US.

I love it here at Marquette, but wow, do I miss Union again after seeing this.

Moreover, Interruptive Political Theology Will…

Our political theology recognizes that life is vested with an ‘apocalyptic goal’, which orients the horizon of our expectation toward the coming of the Lord; yet, that orientation never surrenders its cultural and social responsibilities. Hence, political theology will scrutinize from the perspective of the excluded, despised, and poor, the development, promotion, and advance of programs and schemes that propose to resolve violence, injustice, and oppression. Further, political theology will provide a critique of the Church whenever it attempts to evade the dangerous memory of the crucified Jesus by slipping into what Metz names a ‘fatal banality’ or an irenic conformity so passive that it glides over the resolute work of authentic peace, thereby, betraying its mystery.

M. Shawn Copeland, “Presidential Address: Political Theology as Interruptive” CTSA Proceedings 59: 79.

Interruptive Political Theology Will…

Political theology will interpret just how our economic decisions are not value-free, not innocent, and never merely individualistic; rather, that theology will uncover the moral, ethical, and cultural consequences of those decisions. Soelle’s sharp and well known critique of materialism resonates in the words of John Paul II: “It is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed towards ‘having’ rather than ‘being,’ and which wants to have more, not in order to be more but in order to spend life in enjoyment as an end in itself.” Political theology will demonstrate that authentic achievement of hour humanity lies not in having, but in being; moreover, that achievement can be realized only by turning-to-others, thereby, interrupting privatizing, individualistic, destructive behavior.

M. Shawn Copeland, “Presidential Address: Political Theology as Interruptive” CTSA Proceedings 59: 77.

Feminists Really Do Rawk

I have very little exposure to Buffy the Vampire Slayer or this Twilight series. However, after reading review after review of Twilight because it is impossible to avoid, I find the following interactive juxtaposition an apt skewering:

Political Theology

Creston Davis recently announced on his blog that he will be editing a forthcoming a volume of the journal Political Theology focused on continental philosophy.

It will consist of suspiciously reconsidering Carl Schmitt, and include other topics with contributions from Toni Negri, Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Clayton Crockett, Catherine Malabou, Dan Bell, Ken Reinhard, Chad Pecknold, and discussion between Zizek and Milbank that did not go into Monstrosity of Christ. And of course, the book reviews look interesting as well.

I, for one, look forward to it.

J. Kameron Carter on Language and the Theological Roots of Scientific Classification

I have been waiting a very long time for the video of Carter’s lecture on “Language and the Theological Roots of Scientific Classification: Jose de Acosta and the Production of Modernity’s Racial Imagination.” A year in fact.

Part of the problem for the wait is that somehow I missed Scott’s alert back in March. Somehow I missed it, despite longing to share this with others. Boy I feel stupid. Anyways…

The lecture itself is incredibly helpful for understanding the modern colonial project. I cannot stress enough how crucial this lecture is for linking Carter’s thesis in his book Race to current life. I wish he’d put it in his book. But even if one doesn’t buy all of Carter’s thesis, this lecture stands on its own. Following one of the lecture’s clear implications, the colonial practice is racist because theo-scientific racial classification is part of the “inner architecture” of colonial-scientific life.

Without further delay, WATCH IT:

And the careful viewer could see me in the audience, more specifically, my better side!

Faith, Justice, and the Economic Crisis

I’ve mentioned a couple of times a class called “Christianity and the U.S. Crisis” back at my old stomping grounds of Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

This tendency towards immediately dealing with the problems at hand is characteristically Union. But what has always concerned me is, even at a place with a tradition like Union, how can we get our voice heard?

Well, if you haven’t noticed, Union has a relationship of sorts with Bill Moyers. If I’m not mistaken, he attends Riverside Church, which is right next to Union, and is a church in a historically special relationship with Union as well. Judith and Bill Moyers were also awarded the Union medal a few years ago. James Cone, months before the Rev. Wright fiasco, was interviewed on the Journal. And when I was at Union, I saw Moyers visiting a few times.

Thankfully this special relationship continues. On Moyers’ Journal this coming Friday, the interview of Cornel West, Serene Jones, and Gary Dorrien, centered around their class, will be aired. You can see the preview here.

From Union’s website:

The professors presented strong positive critique of the Obama administration’s current bailout and restructuring plan, and called for real alternatives to the crumbling “religion of the market.”

“This is a society that has stoked and celebrated greed virtually to the point of self-destruction,” says Dorrien. “We can’t just go on saying, ‘Well, if we can just patch this thing up and get back to where we were,’ that things will be all right. And none of us believe that, so we also have to talk about what was wrong with the system to begin with, that had outcomes that you can’t really justify morally.”

Who are these three?

Cornel West should need no introduction.

Serene Jones has been president of Union for the past year. I hear she is an interesting feminist and a Calvin scholar. From seeing her interview lecture for the presidental office, she seems well positioned to lead Union and a good theologian in her own right.

Gary Dorrien was my advisor, but more importantly(!) I’ve heard from theologians across the spectrum that he is the one who could save liberal theology in America. And you know what? I believe them.

The point of all this? Here is a brief platform for strong and insightful (faith and) theology to be heard. Will the people in power hear it? Oh, I hope so, but even if they don’t, I do have faith in the ability of the local community to affect change around them, despite or in spite of policies in Washington. So watch it.

Heeeelllloooooo Summer

With French class, swine flu ruining French class, and a reading group that is going through The Monstrosity of Christ, I’ve had precious little time to do much thinking that would eventually result in blog posts. Hopefully this dearth will soon pass ’cause I like the thoughts that are processed in posts. However, until then, here’s to Tylenol, antibiotics, and an electrolyte chaser (gallon size).

That Logic of Psycho-Control

So that post on the logic of control by prescience, I think it fits perfectly into the Flobots song, Handlebars. And so, I would add to the latter half of the song, “And I can control you because I know you better than you.” Or something like that with more eloquence.

Because embedding has been disabled for the official music video, here is a less artistic and less subtle video montage put to the song Handlebars:

Pop Psychology’s Logic of Control

All too often in television, movies, and even the ‘news’ media, people analyze other people and ’solve’ them from a distance. TV shows like House and other dramas thrive on the characters’ attempts to analyze someone’s mind, even someone they may have just met. These characters on the tube claim to know what someone else is thinking. In short, they seem to have a trans-finite view of reality to the extent that they are able to see what could not be seen. They project and apparently, by their accounts, they’re right. Today, no longer is everyone simply a critic, everyone is a certified psychoanalyst.

Through this relational politics of prescience, we seem to know the deepest parts of a person. Or at least we act like we do. However, I would argue that we do not because we are finite. And yet, insomuch that we act like we know the depths of another human being, as described above, we act like we then possess that person — they are figured out and can now be manipulated, used, employed, or simply dominated. In our way of relating to one another, we have turned each other into domesticated pets and farm animals.

This is, at its most fundamental level, a problematic conception power and who other people are, and therefore a problematic understanding of relationships. Unfortunately this prescience is a problem that I’ve seen lived out in the real world, and even by myself I must admit. I am also becoming suspicious that this notion of control radiates out from the bourgeois structure that Metz is so critical of, teaching everyone to possess other people. Perhaps this is how we learn it now?

This should scare us.