Reflections on Magnifica Humanitas, part 5

I apologize for being woefully behind on my continued reflections on Pope Leo XIV's latest encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. I have been meaning to sit down and write my thoughts on Chapter 3 for a few weeks now, but real life has taken over. 

There is one thing I would clarify before continuing. I have noticed particularly in Chapter 3, but beginning in previous chapters of this encyclical, the Pope Leo has started using the terms "technocrat" and "technocracy" quite a bit. As someone who understands what he is referring to, this does not bother me. Unless I missed it, he never clearly defines what he means by those terms; he alludes to (dare I say heehaws around) definitions, sometimes imprecisely. As I do not believe these terms are common English parlance outside certain political science and techno-babble circles, I feel the need to try to define the terms, or at least my understand of them, as it becomes a very central concept in Chapter 3. 

As I understand the etymology of the terms, they were originally in the late 1800s plays on the words "bureaucracy" and "bureaucrats." Everything generally understands what a bureaucracy is, i.e. a government run by bureaus, or unelected agencies that carry out the administrative, if mundane, functions of a government. Bureaus and bureaucrats as general terms have both negative and positive connotations. Every government, whether an imperial dictatorship or a democratic republic, has to have some level of government officials to make sure things like roads get paved and taxes get collected. Even governments with the most corrupt or lazy people at the very top can function, sometimes for centuries, with an efficient bureaucracy that can take care of the details of running a government. Imperial China and Ancient Rome were able to limp along for generations because they had a bureaucratic infrastructure that could run their Empires, even if the Emperor himself was mad as a hatter.  

The downside is that, as Thomas Jefferson observed, "Governments expand to meet the needs of expanding governments." The same is true of bureaucracy. A bureau gets created to deal with a specific social problem, and that's all well and good. But then another bureau gets created to deal with problems or side effects (good or bad) created by the first bureau. And then a third bureau gets created to audit the first two bureaus. And so on and so forth...and before you know it, you have layer upon layer of bureaucracy, none of which is really accountable in practice to anyone, and the government becomes so bloated by bureaucracies and regulations, that the negative connotation of bureaucracy earns its spurs. If you have ever had to deal with bureaucratic "red tape..." suffice is to say that if you know, you know. :)

The Victorians on the tail end of the Industrial Revolution and in the midst of the classic progressive "science will answer all our problems" explosion of innovation, coined the phrase "technocracy" and "technocrats." Simply put, "technocracy" is a governing body that is basically managed by technical experts. Thus, a technocrat is, according to the Cambridge Online Dictionary, "an expert in science or technology who has a lot of power in or influence with or over the government or industry." Just as a bureaucrat can begin to wield too much power in a bloated bureaucracy that has no common sense, so a technocrat can likewise begin to wild too much power in a bloated technocracy that has no common sense. Technocracy is basically mechanized bureaucracy that has expanded to such a degree that is no longer exists no longer to serve man or tackle a common society problem, but exists now only to preserve itself by whatever means and red tape necessary to achieve such homeostasis. 

Getting back to Magnifica Humanitas, Chapter 3 gets to the heart of what Pope Leo is trying to do with Catholic Social Teaching as applied to the technology of our current age: the internet and the rise of Artificial Intelligence. Interestingly, he grounds this brave new virtual reality in the same way the previous Pope Leo grounded Catholic Social Teaching in Rerum Novarum. While Pope Leo XIII was speaking to how the technology of the 1800s was creating economies where humans were becoming cogs in uncontrollable economic and political machines (both in extreme Capitalism and in Communism), Pope Leo XIV in speaking to much of the same themes, just with the technology of computers and servers and artificial intelligence programs and not greasy steam engines and slave labor textile mills.

At the end of the day, both Leos (Popes Leo? Leoi?) are asking the same question: what are we attempting to build with this new technology? Are we attempting to build a society that is a reflection of the City of God that is a reflection of the heavenly Jerusalem or are we attempting to build a City of Man that at its center is a new Tower of Babel that may become nothing more than a reflection of hell itself?

Interestly, both encyclicals frame the world of their times as attempting to build utopias with the technology of the time. No pure utopia exists because there is always a very dark side to any attempted utopia because utopias, if they can be created, can only do so by perfecting humanity. Humans are sinful and limited and mortal. No virtual AI software or Victorian Steampunk engine or Social Revolution can ever change that. Humans cannot perfect themselves. As the American comedian Groucho Marx once said, "I Don’t Want to Belong to Any Club That Will Accept Me as a Member."

In Chapter 3, we finally get to the premise of why this encyclical is named Magnifica Humanitas. The name literally means in English: "Magnificent Humanity." Humanity is, indeed, perhaps the most stunning of all of God's creations. We have intellect, reason, emotions, memory, ability, etc., and yet any '-ocracy' that would put limits on all those God given gifts and talents endowed to humans by their Creator is but a City of Man, a Tower of Babel that will eventually crumble and fall. Limits imposed by bureaucrats or technocrats ultimately service to expand the power of the few at the expense of the many. 

I would argue Chapter 3 of this encyclical paraphrases Thomas Jefferson: technocracy expands to meet the needs of expanding technocracy. Therein is the danger of AI and control by technocrats. It fences in the limits of magnificent humanity and turns them into cogs in the great computer Server of Man when what we need as a world now dependent on computers and software is to create a computer Server of God or else we become cogs in the great AI machine, just as workers became cogs to the Victorian steel dragons that belched smoke. 

For as the Ghost of Christmas Present shows to Scrooge the two poor souls clinging to him upon their parting:

    "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased..."