Francis over Elon, Deeper Thoughts or Shallow Jibes
Not that IT represents science, Neil Postman quotes Paul Goodman pointing out that technology is a branch of moral philosophy. They probably mean that we should exercize good taste in making judgements about what sort of technology to develop: how we want to make use of science.
Religion and Science
I started reading
Laudaot Si' [1] by Pope Francis and it's really good. Naomi Klein on DemocracyNow! brought it to my attention over six years ago so it was in the back of my mind when a Ukranian journalist brought it up recently. Amitave Ghosh's
The Nutmeg's Curse may have gotten me ready to read Pope Francis's Encyclical. The helpful writing may also have been mentioned in Theodore Roszak's
Voice of the Earth: Explorations in EchoPsychology and another book that was a collection of essays put together by a Western Sufi guy:
The Cry of the Earht?
Laudato Si' has me thinking of Alfred North Whitehead,'s "Religion and Science" chapter in
Science and the Modern World/i. I feel like I have to excuse my use of a religious guy's writing so I'll quote some memorable lines from Alfred North Whitehead before putting down the lines from the Pope(Francis) that made me think of the Musk(Elon).
.. there has always been a conflict between religion and science; and in the second place, both religion and science have always been in a state of continual development..
.. all our ideas will be in a wrong perspective if we think that this recurring perplexity was confined to contradictions between religion and science; and that in these controversies religion was always wrong, and that science was always right. The true facts of the case are very much more complex, and refuse to be summarisedin these simple terms..
Theology itself exhibits exactly the same character of gradual development, arising from an aspect of conflict between its own proper ideas. This fact is a commonplace to theologians, but is often obscured in the stress of controversy. I do not wish to overstate my case; so I will confine myself to Roman Catholic writers...
Science is even more changeable than theology. No man of science could subscribe without qualification to Galileo’s beliefs, or to Newton’s beliefs, or to all his own scientific beliefs of ten years..
Galileo said that the earth moves and that the sun is fixed; the Inquisition said that the earth is fixed and the sun moves; and Newtonian astronomers, adopting an absolute theory of space, said that both the sun and the earth move. But now we say that any one of these three statements is equally true provided that you have fixed your sense of ‘rest’ and ‘motion’ in the way required by the statement adopted... all sides had got hold of important truths concerning it. But with the knowledge of those times, the truths appeared to be inconsistent...
We should wait: but we should not wait passively, or in despair. The clash is a sign that there are wider truths and finer perspectives within which a reconciliation of a deeper religion and a more subtle science will be found...
.To acquiesce in discrepancy is destructive of candour, and of moral cleanliness. It belongs to the self-respect of intellect to pursue every tangle of thought to its final unravelment. If you check that impulse, you will get no religion and no science from an awakened thoughtfulness. The important question is. In what spirit are we going to face the issues? There we come to something absolutely vital...
In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of a defeat: but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress towards a victory. This is one great reason for the utmost toleration of variety of opinion. Once and forever, this duty of toleration has been summed up in the words, ‘Let both grow together until the harvest.' The failure of Christians to act up to this precept, of the highest authority, is one of the curiosities of religious histo ry --- [2] (1925)
Laudauto Si': and integral view of rich guys
.. nonchalant resignation or blind confidence in technical solutions. We require a new and universal solidarity. As the bishops of Southern Africa have stated: “Everyone’s talents and involvement are needed to redress the damage caused by human abuse of God’s creation”. All of us can cooperate as instruments of God for the care of creation, each according to his or her own culture, experience, involvements and talents.
Following a period of irrational confidence in progress and human abilities, some sectors of society are now adopting a more critical approach. We see increasing sensitivity to the environment and the need to protect nature, along with a growing concern, both genuine and distressing, for what is happening to our planet. Let us review, however cursorily, those questions which are troubling us today and which we can no longer sweep under the carpet. Our goal is not to amass information or to satisfy curiosity, but rather to become painfully aware, to dare to turn what is happening to the world into our own personal suffering and thus to discover what each of us can do about it.
20 。 Some forms of pollution are part of people’s daily experience. Exposure to atmospheric pollutants produces a broad spectrum of health hazards, especially for the poor, and causes millions of premature deaths… Technology, which, linked to business interests, is presented as the only way of solving these problems, in fact proves incapable of seeing the mysterious network of relations between things and so sometimes solves one problem only to create others.
26。 Many of those who possess more resources and economic or political power seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms, simply making efforts to reduce some of the negative impacts of climate change. However, many of these symptoms indicate that such effects will continue to worsen if we continue with current models of production and consumption.
... We must be grateful for the praiseworthy efforts being made by scientists and engineers dedicated to finding solutions to man-made problems. But a sober look at our world shows that the degree of human intervention, often in the service of business interests and consumerism, is actually making our earth less rich and beautiful, ever more limited and grey, even as technological advances and consumer goods continue to abound limitlessly. We seem to think that we can substitute an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something which we have created ourselves. --- [1] (2015)
Ignacio Ellacuria
On a visit to Europe a few days before he was assassinated by elite government forces in San Salvador in November 1989, Father Ignacio Ellacuria, rector of the University of Central America, addressed the West on the underlying issues. You “have organized your lives around inhuman values,” he said. These values
are inhuman because they cannot be universalized. The system rests on a few using the majority of the resources, while the majority can’t even cover their basic necessities. It is crucial to define a system of values and a norm of living that takes into account every human being.15
In our dependencies, such thoughts are subversive and can call forth the death squads. At home, they are sometimes piously voiced, then relegated to the ashcan in practice. Perhaps the last words of the murdered priests deserve a better fate. --- [3] (1988, 1990)
My feeling is that
#ElonMusk is similar
#BillGates and other techno rich people. If the railroad generation suffered 'robber barons' mabye we suffer from 'IT barons'. Hundreds of years have passed and we still suffer under a feudalism of corporations. This
#fuedalism is run by members of the
#YARM club: Yet Another Rich Moron.
#Moron in the
#RobertMHutchins sense of not thinking.
[url=https://bzmall2.gitlab.io/scriblog/2021_09_24_index_and_new_bib.html#%28idx.[i]%28gentag._101%29%29]https://bzmall2.gitlab.io/scriblog/2021_09_24_index_and_new_bib.html#%28idx.%28gentag._101%29%29[/url]
#RichGuy #ITBarons
- [1] https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html (2015)
- [2] Science and the Modern World Alfred North Whithead, "Science and Reigion form pp 181 or 224
- https://ia601704.us.archive.org/3/items/dli.ernet.212067/212067-Science%20And%20The%20Modern%20World.pdf
- https://ia803103.us.archive.org/19/items/sciencemodernwor0000unse/sciencemodernwor0000unse.pdf
- [3] https://chomsky.info/199011__/
#AlfredNorthWhitehead #ReligionAndScience #Religion #PopeFrancis #LaudatoSi #Ellacuria #IgnacioEllacuria #NoamChomsky #Chomsky #ElSalvador #ITBarons #ElonMusk #Pope