Technology's Blindspot: the Human Soul, Grace

"The supremacy of technology tends to prevent people from recognizing anything that cannot be explained in terms of matter alone. Yet everyone experiences the many immaterial and spiritual dimensions of life. Knowing is not simply a material act, since the object that is known always conceals something beyond the empirical datum. All our knowledge, even the most simple, is always a minor miracle, since it can never be fully explained by the material instruments that we apply to it. In every truth there is something more than we would have expected, in the love that we receive there is always an element that surprises us. We should never cease to marvel at these things. In all knowledge and in every act of love the human soul experiences something 'over and above,' which seems very much like a gift that we receive, or a height to which we are raised." 77

Pope Benedict indicates in this text the vastness of the invisible reality of knowledge and of love: gift, gratitude, Grace. Technology is a mere participation, a mere dependence, in this vast world of beneficiaries, inhabiting, exploring and mining myriad castles of marvelous truth.

And so, authentic human development cannot be simply material.

"The development of individuals and peoples is...located on a height, if we consider the spiritual dimension,...rising above a materialistic vision of human events, capable of glimpsing in development the 'beyond' that technology cannot give." 77

"Development must include not just material growth but also spiritual growth, since the human person is a 'unity of body and soul,' (Gaudium et Spes, 14) born of God's creative love and destined for eternal life. The human being develops when he grows in the spirit, when his soul comes to know itself and the truths that God has implanted deep within, when he enters into dialogue with himself and his Creator. When he is far away from God, man is unsettled and ill at ease...The emptiness in which the soul feels abandoned, despite the availability of countless therapies for body and psyche, leads to suffering." 76

Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in veritate, 2009 (His Holiness' response to the world-wide financial crisis)