Problems With Technology

At an academic meeting recently, a research professor in the philosophy department of Sogang University was shocked to hear about 'wet-life' and 'dry life', about a future time when humans will not need water to live.  The "new humans" will not die and will be freed from their biological bodies and given man-made parts, while at the same time keeping all the faculties of human consciousness: memory, intelligence, and feelings. She reflects on this possibility  in a  recent issue of the Peace Weekly.

On the first day of Lent, she says, ashes are placed on our foreheads to remind us that we will die. We look over our lives humbly and make plans to do better in the future and realize the need for virtue. Our dignity as humans comes from this moral base. Would it be possible, she wonders, for humans freed from death to live a moral life?  Without fear of punishment and judgment for the evil we do, would we be sufficiently motivated to live such a life? If the meaning of life becomes deeper and more urgent because of our encounter with death, then we might ask ourselves, she says, whether the possibility of life without death is a blessing or a curse.

For the professor, freeing humanity from death is a frightening thought. Expecting a moral life from immortal humans, she feels, would be too difficult. The philosophers Heidegger, Hans Jonas, Erich Fromm, and Vittorio Hosle saw, with trepidation, that the marvels of technological innovations was making man think of himself as possessing God-like powers.  Humans, by thinking they can make anything through the power of technology, are in danger of rejecting their shared humanity. And, today, there appears to be no way we can restrain the power of technology, which threatens to take over our lives. Enormous sums of money are poured into the technological sector of our economy,  and we can hold no one responsible.
 
She gives us an example of what she means by citing a personal experience. One night while sleeping, she heard a banging. She got out of bed and went out to the balcony. The banging was coming from the next door apartment. She called out: "What's the problem?"  A voice expressing urgency answered: "I'm locked here in the veranda, please help!"  The professor had recently moved in and had not made the acquaintance of the new family.  After much difficulty, she was able to enter the apartment.  The woman, who had locked herself out on the balcony, was shivering  from the cold. The automatic door lock system had operated smoothly and could not be unlocked once anyone entered the balcony, unless set manually to do so.

Who was to blame? the professor asks. She was not able to get angry. The door was doing what it was made to do. There was no one who was responsible for what happened. This is one example of how we become enslaved by technology. Technology becomes automatic and autonomous and we have no one, she says, that we can hold responsible for its failures.  One big fear is that we can't expect any moral sensitivity from technology. Isn't this a reason to be frightened by the trust we have given all too quickly to the technological advances rapidly changing our lives?
 
Technology doesn't fear anything. For us to be without fear, however, can be dangerous, she says. Some fears are virtues that enable us to live noble lives--fears that superficial humanity is unaware of.  Before we continue to sit back and watch the development of this fearsome technology, we need to ask ourselves if it is wise to go ahead with technology, without imposing any conditions.

Hope for the New Year

Today we start with a new day, a  new month and a  new year. New is something different from what existed in the past. Time is not new, but what we will face, how we interact and prepare will be new. This is a time for resolutions as we look forward to a new beginning with hope. The Peace Weekly editorial wants us to be like the horse (the Asian symbol for the year 2014), with its strength to make the jumps necessary for a year of hope.
 
Pope Benedict, in the encyclical Spe Salvi, in the first paragraph, writes, "In hope we were saved, says Saint Paul to the Romans, and likewise to us (Rom 8:24). According to the Christian faith, redemption (salvation) is not simply a given. Redemption is offered to us in the sense that we have been given hope, trustworthy hope, by virtue of which we can face our present time. The present, even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads toward a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey." 
 
We started the last  year with hope. 51 percent of the citizens voted for President Park with great hope, and those who didn't vote also continued to hope that things would be different. We Catholics had the hope that the Year of Faith would revitalize our life of faith. However, we have seen, instead, a lack of trust, an increase of confrontation, in politics no meaningful dialogue, the  breakdown of communication, and the pride of self-righteousness. Because of the illegal participation of government officials in the recent election process, there is a movement demanding that the president resign, and the opposition is also criticized for not acting maturely in the National Assembly.

Each diocese has worked in various ways to make the Year of Faith a profitable one for all, but one survey, which was considered a good reflection of the whole country, showed disappointing results.  Most Catholics, it was determined, follow their own values instead of the teaching of the Church. This is the reality of the Catholicism in Korea. Moreover, whether the Church should actively participate in political and societal issues is highly controversial. Even though those who do participate make up a small segment of the Church, it has brought on confrontation and hostility.

This reality, instead of giving us hope, upsets and gives rise to sighs and anger. But despite this feeling of frustration, we have to allow hope to be operative. Again, in the encyclical Spe Salvi, "All serious and upright human conduct is hope in action. This is so, first of all, in the sense that we thereby strive to realize our lesser and greater hopes, to complete this or that task which is important for our onward journey, or we work toward a brighter and more humane world, so as to open doors into the future. Yet our daily efforts in pursuing our own lives and in working for the world's future either tire us or turn into fanaticism, unless we are enlightened by the radiance of the great hope that cannot be destroyed even by small-scale failures or by a breakdown in matters of historic importance (#35).
 
As we begin this Year of the Horse, the editorial concludes with hope that we will not have the unhappy events of the past destroy our hope for the future. We, like the horse, should be vivified by new strength and should begin this new year with great hope. Place our trust in the Lord, and remember the words of  St. Paul, "Hope will not disappoint us" (Rom.5-5).

Happy New Year

Time is like the flowing river, one year flows out and another flows in. The desk columnist of the Catholic Times  introduces us to the Latin words Januarius and Janus, from which the month January takes its name. Janus, with his two faces pointing in opposite directions, was the Roman God of beginnings and ends, and fittingly names the month of January, which sees the end of the previous year and the beginning of the new year.

Janus was also known as the God of the gate, the gatekeeper of the heavenly gate. The columnist describes the new year as throwing off the old and beginning afresh with new hope and joy. She remembers many words about bringing in the new year but the most memorable were the words of a sermon. The priest mentioned that at the beginning of the new year we should remember the words of Jesus to his disciples: "What I am doing is sending you out like sheep among wolves. You must be clever as snakes and innocent as doves" (Matt.10:16).

The intention of the sermon was to remind us that though we will have joy in the beginning of a new year, we need to remember that during the year we will meet rough and threatening times. There will be challenges, and the words of Jesus will be helpful in navigating through the year. The pack of wolves are ready to fight, armed with relativism, secularism and materialism. We who are Christians have to fight daily against this culture of death, which will require wisdom and simplicity.

The Korean Church has already sent out the warning signals concerning the  dangers we will encounter in society, more so today than in anytime in  the past. There is the glorification of material well-being, and conflict and division are not decreasing. We cry out for mutual understanding and compromise, but are most often met with confrontation and selfish attachment to one's position, and a society that seems unwilling to deal effectively with the rising tide of suicides and divorce, the crisis of family life and the problems with our youth.

Wise as serpents and simple as doves is good advice for us to remember as we go into the new year. Pope Francis has told us in his New Year's message that the keyword for establishing peace is fraternal charity among the world family.  Since we are all brothers and sister under God, fraternal love should be a governing instinct in our lives. However, because of the spread of egotism, secularism and consumerism many are becoming impoverished and alienated. When we begin to see these brothers and sister with fraternal love will we not be closer to world peace?

Pope Francis went on to say, in his message on World Peace Day, some powerful words  to remember as we greet the new year. "Fraternity is an essential human quality, for we are relational beings. A lively awareness of our relatedness helps us to look upon and to treat each person as a true sister or brother; without fraternity it is impossible to build a just society and a solid and lasting peace...."

What Do We Mean by the Humanities?

The lack of interest in studying the humanities is the  reason for the many crises in society today, according to a professor emeritus writing in the Kyeongyang magazine. He even fears to read the newspapers, he says, with their many tragic tales of human  suffering. Why the many suicides, the break up of families and the other problems of society which are reported on a daily basis? The bonds that bind the members of a family--love, trust, understanding, sacrifice-- are, he says, as slippery as sand, difficult to hold on to, as we pursue worldly goods and honors.

He quotes Pope Francis: "The crisis is not a crisis of finances, or of culture but  the crisis of being humans. Persons have fallen into crisis; we are destroying ourselves." The professor lists the many reasons he feels that these words speak the truth. Our culture should be helping us to attain a fuller life; however, money and ideology  are putting on their armor and facing each other with violence.

We know what is happening to our environment: the waste products of industrialization have contaminated our ground, our water, our atmosphere, and is causing the disappearance of many animal species. Nietzsche is quoted as saying that humankind will remain as a useless virus on the face of the earth. There are those that agree with him, says the professor. These are just a few of the negative results of our material development.

Our culture is changing us, and not for the better. The professor divides our history into four periods: the ancient, the middle ages, the modern, and the present period. Each period had a particular method of education. The ancient Greeks and Romans aimed at bringing about a unity of mind and body, the cultivation, disciplining and improvement of the self.

During the middle ages, there was an emphasis away from attending to the needs of the individual to focusing more on achieving a relationship with God and religion. On the way to God, we are, he says, pilgrims in pursuit of understanding with faith, building character as we endeavor to lead a life of faith. 

During the modern era, Europe went through great changes. The fighting among Christians brought about a devastation that brought despair to the lives of many. We went from God being the center of our lives to placing humanity once again in the center. With the Renascence, there was a return to the ancient times of the Greeks and Romans, and a desire to rebuild the dignity of the person with humanism. This was the beginning of the study of the humanities in college, and those who championed this method of study were called humanists.

Now that we have entered the present times, we are faced with an ongoing clash between divergent cultures and civilization, between what we are and what we have. We can no longer insist on one culture, one viewpoint, one way of seeing God or man. We have to learn how to live together.  

Many thinkers acknowledge this situation, and they are looking for another way of being members of the human family. The professor believes we need a global humanities program, and then goes on to outline the Asian understanding of the person. Asia also has had an understanding of the humanities. There was a pattern for the human engraved within us, he says, just as there was a  pattern for the heavens. This division appeared first in the Book of Changes (The I Ching).  "Looking at the heavens we see change, looking at the pattern of humanity we see enlightenment." Asia has a tradition of poetry and ritual. We bring to fruition the pattern of life we have received  by the life of truth and virtue.

In conclusion, he doesn't want Asia to follow along the path taken by the West. The West, he says, was interested in the intellect as seen from the male perspective. They forgot that women made up half of the world's population and that 70 percent live in the East.

The study of the humanities, both in the East and in the West, is to form a mature individual, a whole person. How to form the  mature individual is what it is all about, to build for character. At present Korea has lost the idea of what education is meant to attain. The present aim is to get grades, pass the college entrance exam, make money. It is not interested in the formation of a mature person of character.  It is time to make a change, a global change, in the way we go about educating our children.                                                                                                                                                  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Using to Abuse

In June of 2013, Korean TV ran the first advertisement for condoms. A young man is busy in the house attaching something to furniture and even to a tree outside the house. He hears the door bell ring and rushes to open the  front door. His girl friend outside has just dropped her handbag and is picking up the contents, which includes a pack of condoms made by the largest multinational in the field. 

Writing in the Kyeongyang magazine, a specialist in promoting the culture of life discusses the methods used in selling condoms in Korea. Referring to the ad, he asks: Why does it put two incompatible items together: a rosary ring on the finger of the girl friend as she leans down to pick up the contents of her bag, which contains a pack of condoms. 

The obvious intention is to show the use of condoms in a positive light, a part of ordinary life. Though this attempt is easily accomplished with the younger generation in Korea, it is not so easy with the older generation. The marketing objective is clearly focused on desensitizing us from one way of thinking, and moving us along to another. The young girl, portrayed as a chaste, simple Catholic, has come to her boy friend's house prepared to have a "safe" sexual encounter.

All are familiar with the Church's teaching on premarital sex and artificial contraception--not exactly what would increase the bottom line for condom manufacturers, who feel the need to counter this influence--if they are to increase their share of the market--by ads that encourage sexual activity among those least likely to do so. The multinational is working to create a new type of culture. The writer shows this by the way they have treated the Catholic way of life in their advertisements in the West. One example shows a father of 12 children who he is calling them by name from a second story house window. Each one has a saint's name, and as he calls each one he begins to stumble in the middle of the name calling, finding it difficult to remember all the names. He wants them to come in to eat, and as the ad ends, we see the tired face of the father and the words: "If only he had known about condoms, he would not have had so many children to worry about."
 
Of course the  company is not doing this in a vacuum: The Church's teaching is not taken seriously by the Catholics themselves. There is no need for a frontal attack on the Church when Catholics do not see any problem with condoms and premarital sex. More of a problem, he says, is aiming their words to the younger generation. In the advertising segment shown on TV,  we are shown a young man, alone at home, attaching condoms all over the house and a tree outside, waiting for his girl friend to arrive for sex.

The writer recommends to parents a number of responses to this kind of advertising. First, to complain about the marketing of sex to the young. Second, be a wise consumer.  Reckitt Benckiser, the maker of the condoms, makes many household articles, any of which could be the object of a shopper's boycott. (When one of their humidifiers recently caused the death of a number of children, there was no apology or compensation from the company.) Third, educating their children about the media (media literacy) is necessary. Showing sex as something without consequences is a lie, and should be exposed. Fourth, simply becoming more aware of the many conditioning forces surrounding us. We can excuse a commander who fails in battle, but one who has the job of protecting and doesn't do the job is something quite different. In the world of media, we have to be alert so as not to be deceived. The company is spending big money to silently educate viewers with their up-to-date tactics on how to influence us through the media. We also should be as wise in combating this assault on our values.

Hell is to Lose Hope

Korea's aging population is one of the fastest growing in the world. According to the standard of the United Nations, a country with over 7 percent of its population over 65 is considered an aging society, over 14 percent an aged society, and over 20 percent a super-aging society.
 
Writing in the View from the Ark a professor uses these statistics to remind us of a situation in Korea we may not be familiar with. According to the statistics from last year, 11.8 percent of the population is over 65 years of age; in contrast, Catholics over 65 make up slightly more than 15 percent, which puts the Catholic community in the aged society category; a matter of some concern to the Korean Church.

The aging of the population is a serious problem, especially if one looks at the quality of life and degree of happiness that continues to spiral downward among the aged. After the ruin of the Korean War, all that the older generation was concerned with was the education of their children. They had to feed and prepare to educate them, even if it meant going hungry themselves. And because they spent their time helping their children, they were not able to prepare for retirement. Now, they don't have the energy, or the money, to take care of themselves, to deal with the inevitable sickness, economic problems and loneliness that are the normal lot of many of our elderly. As a consequence there has been an increase in the numbers who  choose extreme solutions to their problems. 

The reasons for putting an end to their life is varied, says the professor, but primary reason, he believes, is a sense of hopelessness. The lack of expectation and desire drives them to this stage of giving up, for in their eyes their life is no longer a life worth living. Without hope, life is a living hell; with hope we are already living the heavenly life.  

He reminds us of the martyrs of Korea who suffered every kind of cruelty imaginable, and did not give in or lose hope. Faced with hunger in prison, they would  take the mat on the floor of their prison room, which was made of straw, and use that for a meal. They hoped for a life after death with God. Looking forward to the joys of heaven and fearing the pains of hell, they were given strength to overcome all difficulties. Life on earth was to them no more than a flash of lightning.

The aged and all those who are nearing death are not to be seen as miserable creatures. They will be experiencing new life before the rest of us. They will be able to look ahead to a new life and calmly breathe peacefully. They can enjoy their present life and still dream of the better life to come. The words of Jesus give us life, and even if we are in a helpless situation his words give us strength and courage. He concludes the column with the last words of the Gospel of Matthew: "And know that I am with you always, until the end of the world!"

Fraternal Charity Between the North and South

The primary reason, it is said, for the existence of the Korean military is the division of the country into two Koreas. Not only is this a big issue in politics, especially at election times, but it is related to many other issues: future meetings with the North, the North Limit Line (the disputed maritime demarcation line in the Yellow Sea between the North and the South), Mount Kumgang sightseeing, humanitarian aid to the North, family reunions, the National Intelligence Service, public security, left wing thinking, nuclear weapons, 6-party talks (Russia, China, Japan, USA, South and North Korea) and the like are all connected with the cold wind that blows from the North.

Writing in the With Bible magazine, a college professor reminds us that whenever these topics arise in talking about the North, it is usually accompanied with a  feeling of hostility and hatred. Politics is not the only area of conflict which has developed because of the North/South debate. With the growing confrontation between contending parties, all Koreans are beginning to tire of the issue.

There are things in life we can change and others that we can't. What we can't change, whether we like it or not, says the professor, we need to accept. And if what we can't change is from the past, we need to deal with that issue differently than it was handled in the past. The professor urges all of us to get rid of the baggage we carry from the past and work to change the feelings associated with that baggage. 

Confucius told one of his disciples to be careful not to transfer one's anger to someone else. This advice is not easily followed, the professor admits, noting that passing along our anger to others is a common occurrence, and it usually gets transferred to those weakest among us. He hopes we can rid ourselves of  the anger that comes from a difficult past relationship, so that we can begin to lay the foundation for bringing about a new relationship.
 
Statements like "a follower of the North...a friend of the North" are often used to brand another as somehow unpatriotic.  But isn't that exactly what we should be trying to do?" he asks. Being a friend to a brother in trouble--is this not a sign of our humanity? Isn't this what we as Christians are supposed to do? Being friendly with the North is not something that should be criticized but something we should work to foster.

Love that is not expressed will not bear fruit. Seed that is not planted in the garden will not grow. Liberation does not come automatically.  Salvation comes to us with the cross of Jesus. The difficulty with the North will not be resolved without effort. Instead of hate, we have to speak out for reconciliation and hope.  We do not want to transfer our anger but foster patience and  levelheadedness. This is not a time for hate but joy and fraternity. The message of restoration should be preached in the home, workplace, offices, and places of play. When spoken out forcefully everywhere, this message of hope and joy will be the way we change the static that comes from this long separation into something we all can embrace.
 
 "Be bountiful, O Lord, to Zion, in your kindness, by rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem" (Ps 51:20). In the days to come, the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above  the hills. All  nations shall stream toward it....They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again" ( Isa 2: 2-4).