3/7: Walking into Hiroshima

What a Jesuit in Japan teaches us about the technocratic paradigm

Reading

There is a tendency to believe that every increase in power means “an increase of ‘progress’ itself ”, an advance in “security, usefulness, welfare and vigour; …an assimilation of new values into the stream of culture”, as if reality, goodness and truth automatically flow from technological and economic power as such. The fact is that “contemporary man has not been trained to use power well”, because our immense technological development has not been accompanied by a development in human responsibility, values and conscience. Each age tends to have only a meagre awareness of its own limitations…

Our freedom fades when it is handed over to the blind forces of the unconscious, of immediate needs, of self-interest, and of violence. In this sense, we stand naked and exposed in the face of our ever-increasing power, lacking the wherewithal to control it. (Laudato Si’, 105)

Reflection

A professor of mine at Boston College gave me a copy of a Spanish-language biography of Pedro Arrupe, former Superior General of the Jesuits. As I paged through the text I stopped in amazement when I learned that he was engaged in ministry in Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.

Pedro Arrupe, SJ , after arriving in Japan — The Diplomat in Spain

Father Arrupe was present at a Jesuit novitiate just outside the city when the bomb fell, felt it shake the residence, and walked outside to see people fleeing a city on fire. Later, Arrupe wrote about the experience:

I shall never forget my first sight of what was the result of the atomic bomb: a group of young women, eighteen or twenty years old, clinging to one another as they dragged themselves along the road. One had a blister that almost covered her chest; she had burns across half of her face, and a cut in her scalp caused probably by a falling tile, while great quantities of blood coursed freely down here face. On on and they came, a steady procession numbering some 150,000. This gives some idea of the scene of horror.

Pope Francis warns of a “technocratic paradigm” — where technological developments are equated with progress and where the power generated by technology knows no limits — that has immense consequences for the environment and wellbeing of all people. We have a tendency to exalt technology above all without taking the time to consider whether such advances in fact bring about the type of human flourishing they claim to bear.

And yet, the degree to which this power can be controlled and put toward positive use remains an open question. Without a doubt, atomic weapons and other weaponry in the arsenal of modern warfare are clear examples of how technological progress does not always promote human flourishing.

Yet many arguments in service to the environment rely on technological arguments: “We’ll address climate change when we improve our access to renewable fuels” and “the technology isn’t there yet, but it will be”. While technology may play an important role in reducing carbon emissions, we forget that technology alone may not always have altruistic ends. Moreover, relying on technology to reduce carbon emissions is a band-aid to the real problem of overconsumption and irresponsible use of the earth’s resources. Even if our technology in renewables is better in a few years, if we don’t place checks on a culture of overconsumption, we’ll just find a different way to kill the planet.

Addressing the challenges facing the climate require difficult choices that will require courage and sacrifice. Pedro Arrupe provided an example of what that courage might look like when choosing to enter the city of Hiroshima in the wake of the bomb:

It is at such times that one feels most a priest, when one knows that in the city there are 50,000 bodies which, unless they are cremated, will cause a terrible plague. There were besides some 120,000 wounded to care for. In light of these facts, a priest cannot remain outside the city just to preserve his life. Of course, when one is told that in the city there is a gas that kills, one must be very determined to ignore that fact and go in. And we did. And we soon began to raise pyramids of bodies and pour fuel on them to set them afire.

Let us also have the courage to question the technocratic paradigm and to face our climate challenges head on.

Question

1. In what ways do I place too much emphasis on the role of technology in my life? Does my use of technology leave me “naked and exposed” to a power I cannot control?

Prayer

More than ever I find myself in the hands of God.
This is what I have wanted all my life from my youth.

But now there is a difference;
the initiative is entirely with God.

It is indeed a profound spiritual experience
to know and feel myself so totally in God’s hands.

— Pedro Arrupe, SJ