By Fr Anthony Le Duc SVD
Every age has its own rhythms. These rhythms are influenced by the social, scientific, economic, and technological developments that take place in human life. Since ancient times, the discovery of fire changed the way our human ancestors consumed food and spent their time in the evening after the sun went down. Before writing was invented and literacy became widespread, storytelling around a common fire was likely one of the most popular evening activities, especially among preliterate and nonliterate societies. Once the printing press was invented in the 1400s, reading was incorporated into the lives of many people who were literate and could get access to books and printed materials. This one single invention was as revolutionary to the human mind as the discovery of the fire was life changing to the human physiology. And both had tremendous impact on human culture. The rhythms of human life have continued to change and evolve over the ages with each new discovery, invention, and insight into the way the world works.
In the modern age, human beings have continued to develop new “rhythms” in the way we act, perceive ourselves, and interact with the people and things around us – biotic and abiotic. A great part of our daily life nowadays is influenced by digital technology, particularly computer algorithms. Algorithms is a mathematical process to solve a problem using a finite number of steps. In the world of computers, an algorithm is the set of instructions that defines not just what needs to be done but how to do it. For example, algorithms are being developed for self-driving cars and all the “decisions” involved in this important activity.
Today internet users encounter the prevalence of algorithms in our life, especially when we use social media. Algorithms written by software engineers determine what posts are delivered to us when we login to our account. They determine the advertisements that we will see when we go online. They determine what videos to suggest to us when we access YouTube, what merchandise to introduce to us when we go on Amazon, what movies we might want to watch when we open Netflix. These actions taken by algorithms are results of information that are collected about us whenever we access the internet to send email, to post photos and statuses on our social media account, to buy things online, to comment on a friend’s or a stranger’s post, etc. In many ways, our modern life and our everyday choices are increasingly being influenced and nudged by the computer algorithms which have permeated our digital culture.
With ever increasing prevalence of digital technology in human life, the futurist Gerd Leonhard has responded to this new reality by introducing the neologism “androrithms” to call attention to the uniqueness and value of being human with our own peculiar ways and idiosyncrasies. Leonhard intended for this neologism to “describe what really matters for most of us: human ‘rhythms’ not machine rhythms i.e., algorithms.” According to Leonhard, a super-computer might excel at a chess game or an extraordinarily complicated game like GO (a famous Chinese game), but it currently cannot communicate with a two-year-old infant. Sometimes it takes us only a few seconds seeing someone to have some basic understanding about them, not even having to speak to them. With a computer, however, despite the hundreds of millions of data points that it collects from us over the years, there is no guarantee that it really understands our values and feelings.
For Leonhard, androrithms include human traits such as empathy, compassion, creativity, storytelling, mystery, serendipity, mistakes, and secrets. Humans are built for a wide range of existential states and functions, unlike the one-dimensional nature of machines. Decades ago, Picasso sarcastically remarked of computers, “Computers are useless – they only provide answers.” Even though computers have evolved a long way since the 1960s, they remain basically tools to seek answers but cannot not raise questions, which is something that humans do to satisfy our deepest longings to understand ourselves, the universe and the transcendent.
Indeed, in the face of the world being increasingly under the control of the technocratic paradigm, not only aiming to place the entire working of human society under the formulas and methods devised by science and technology, but even transforming humans into machine-like creatures operating and living our lives in accordance with scientific efficiency and precision, the call for resisting this tendency and retaining our human “idiosyncracies” is worth paying heed to – if we wish to retain our humanity, as imperfect, finite, and inconsistent as it is.
As Christians, however, we need to remember that in addition to the human “rhythms” that we need to preserve and promote, there are also the “rhythms” of God. Let’s call these divine rhythms “Deorithms” (to coin my own neologism) – the eternal and profound ways of God, which are neither created, changing, nor ever mistaken.
“Deorithms” are the “processes” of God, whose presence and inspiration are found in the Holy Spirit in our midst. We are called to be keenly aware of the “Deorithms” as we go about critically reflecting on various matters in our lives and discerning the individual and communal choices, both big and small, that we make each day. Deorithms cannot be found in mathematical formulas (algorithms) or in human neurological proccesses (androrithms). Rather, Deorithm is found in the creative breath of the Holy Spirit that gives life to the world, animating the human body and soul as well as the entire creation.
Deorithm is found in the unquenchable fire of the Holy Spirit that impels each person to live out and advocate for the ideals of justice, peace, and harmony in the world. Deorithm is found in the gentle breeze of the Holy Spirit reminding us that love, mercy, compassion and forgiveness must be spread to all corners of the world, to every nook and cranny, and to every recess where the transformative wind of the Holy Spirit might blow. Deorithm is also found in the profound wisdom of the Holy Spirit that guides us towards words and actions that promote integral human development, mutual respect, dialogue, the common good, solidarity and unity.
As we approach the third year of the coronavirus pandemic, we understand that algorithms may help us to predict where the next cluster or even the next pandemic will take place, but it cannot force people to put on masks or take jabs. In fact, depending on which algorithms exerting their influence on us, they may even cause us to do the opposite. As we witness the independent country of Ukraine being brutally ravaged by a power-hungry totalitarian regime of a neighboring country, we realize that androrithms can turn a comedian into a wartime hero just as much as a once respected national leader into a war criminal. There is not any absolute certainty in technological advances. And there is no assurance of ethical behavior in the ways of human beings – no matter how much money, power, education, or technological assistance we may have access to.
While we try to develop more intricate and effective computer algorithms, and reform human thoughts and actions (androrithms), we must make the humble admission that these “rithms” cannot truly improve without being directed by the “Deorithms”, which serve as the governing principle for all human activities and against which any progress brought about by them is to be measured and evaluated.
Indeed, we are increasingly witnessing the merging of machines and human both physically and mentally – each impacting the other in an endless cycle which no one is certain how and where this will eventually take us. Amid this uncertainty of venturing into unchartered territories, we must try our best to set our finite algorithms and androrithms in harmony with the eternal Deorithms (the ways/processes of God), so that we are able to sustain and flourish in our trifold relations with God, with fellow human beings and with creation in our Common Home.
IMAGE: Bernini's Dove of the Holy Spirit, in St Peter's Basilica, Rome.