Whatever the world Kurzweil envisions, it is not a human world dependent on the embodied, loving relationships that mark us as persons -- and therefore made in God’s image. - Jens Zimmermann
I came across the above article recently, about technology and the human person, and thought it helped put into words what many of us are feeling. The article is about a philosophical problem, whether or not human minds can be uploaded into computers, but it’s a philosophical problem with some practical consequences. What Jens Zimmerman points out is that for all the benefits that come with technology, whether they be the advances of medical science, new machines to make our lives easier, or new modes of communication, there is something incommunicable and irreducible about the human person that keeps us from relating to each other as mere machines, or keeps us from being able to relate to one another through screens and social media.
That is why social media can both bring us together but end up tearing us further apart. And why Zoom can bring us together but also make us feel lonely and exhausted. These tools have their place, and I for one am grateful, but they can’t replace true embodied relationship. We are not souls that have bodies, ghosts in a machine. We are embodied souls. And our bodies are not some suit we can put aside. They are intrinsic to who we are. When we act like we can really be together virtually, we lose something very important.
Our flesh, our smell, our jumping legs, and verbal tics, all indicate something true about us, all point to something incommunicable, all mark us as beings not to be used or manipulated but to be loved. The danger in a world built on the logic of technology, intoxicated with its promises, is that we might forget the person in it all. And doesn’t that tend to happen? I know many a times I’d get into arguments online, trying to “win,” forgetting there’s someone flesh and blood, a history and family, on the other side.
Jesus took on flesh and became a human person because the love of God, too, is as mysterious and incommunicable as human love. The only way God could properly show his love for us was in the way that we properly show our love for each other. And God continues to share that personal love in the Church. It is no wonder that our needing to separate through this pandemic would be so painful, God made us flesh and God made us for one another. And it is no wonder that no matter how grateful we may be for all these new virtual modes of communication, it’s just not the same. But it’s not bad. As long as we don’t put undue weight on tools that can’t replace personal presence. They ease the burden of the moment. They have their own joys. And we know this time of distancing is only temporary, and we will be in one another’s presence again.