�The Imagery of the Two Ways: Bable �or Rebuilding Jerusalem

Learning From Past Events To Face The Future

Core Pillars of Historical Learning

• Pattern Recognition: �Analyzing recurring patterns.
• Failure Analysis: �Studying past systemic collapses to build resilience
• Institutional Memory: �Preserving knowledge across generations

Preface – Learning from Past �& Facing the Future

Strategic Frameworks for the Future

• Adaptive Governance: �Creating flexible systems that evolve with technology
• Scenario Planning: �Modeling multiple future outcomes based on history.
• Risk Mitigation: �Applying past safety lessons to emerging technologies.

We’ve been there before!

The Gutenberg Press was an instrument of change.

Developed in the 1440s by Johannes Gutenberg, it enabled mass production of books and especially pamphlets.

It was an information revolution that fueled the Renaissance & the Reformation, the Enlightenment & the American Revolution

�Talk to your neighbor��How is the Smart Phone, Social Media, etc. like Guttenberg’s Press?��What curbs had to be placed on printing? By whom?

Reviewing Catholic Social Doctrine Through A Tour of the Popes

Pope Leo XIII – Rerum Novarum (New Things) 1891

Laid the Foundation for the Church’s Social Teaching,

• Began with the Dignity & Rights of Workers
• The value of the person takes precedence �over capital & profit
• Right to a fair wage for oneself & one’s family
• Right to organize, Unions
• Defended private property & its societal role
• Proposes cooperation rather than class struggle

Pope Benedict XV 1914-1922

World War I – 1914-1918,15-22 Million Died, �Focused on Supplying Relief

For a Christian, going beyond the narrow confines of one’s own interests and committing oneself, within the limits of one’s ability, to the common good is a non-negotiable value, as is the promotion of life.

Pope Pius XI - Quadragesima Anno (40^th Year) 1931

The Great Depression (1929-1939) enlarged the teaching to include economic & political order

• Denounced concentrating economic power in the hands of a few
• Criticized unlimited competition & collectivist projects that rob the individual of freedom & responsibility
• Affirms the workers’ right to associate
• Wages must be proportionate to performance & to the needs of families for a dignified life

Pope Pius XI – Principle of Subsidiarity

Subsidiarity: whatever can be done by individuals, organizations & communities should not be carried out by higher-level authorities

1. Subsidiarity strengthens associations & communities by avoiding centralization of power.
2. Justice concerns not only the individual but also economic & institutional structures

Pope Pius XII – Christmas Messages

Proposed a dialogue within society based on the natural law as objective principles that precede individuals and States

Professional associations, labor unions & intermediary organizations are essential for civil equilibrium and determining the common good

Pope Pius XII (1939-1958)– The Rule of Law

Experience of World War II: Rule of law guards against the abuse of power

1. Democracy promotes the proper exercise of authority
2. Warned against basing law on utility or force
3. An International order governed by the strongest exposes the weaker peoples to oppression & undermines trust between nations.

Guidelines from Pope Pius XII

Our times are marked by new forms of global power & growing inequalities.

1. Law takes precedence over interests
2. Economic disparities are a breeding ground for tension & violence
3. The necessity of associations to mediate between the individual & the State.

Pope John XXIII – Pacem in Terris 1963

Placed a greater emphasis on the global dimension of social issues & rights

• Addressed to all people of good will.
• Linked the dignity of the person to their fundamental rights & duties
• Wealthy nations have a duty to the poorer based on truth, justice, love and freedom.
• Proposed a direction for society at the international level

Vatican Council II – Gaudium et Spes - 1965

“… religious freedom is a fundamental right grounded in human dignity that must be guaranteed by law so as to prevent people from being forced to act against their conscience or impeded from seeking and professing the truth”

• Social Doctrine is offers “for protecting individuals & building pluralistic, peaceful societies”

Vatican Council II - Dignitatis Humanae 1965

“Religious freedom is a fundamental right grounded in human dignity that must be guaranteed by law so as to prevent people from being forced to act against their conscience or impeded from seeking and professing the truth both privately and publicly”

Pope Paul VI – Populorum Progressio �Progress of Peoples. - 1967

Highlighted urban problems

• Made “development to a more humane living a central moral category
• concerns “each person �and the whole person”
• Development is the “the new name for peace”

Pope Paul VI – Octogesima Adveniens – 80^th Anniv. 1971

The Gospel offers a vision of the human person, relationships, authority and the common good that is capable of guiding economic, political and cultural choices today.

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“No person or people will be treated as expendable in the processes of development.”

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Pope John Paul II – Laborem Exercens 1981

Expanded the primacy of the person & the dignity of work with a personalist anthropology

“Work is not considered simply as a problem to be dealt with or a means of generating income, but a fundamental good for the person, a principle of economic activity and the key to the entire societal question. Through work, human beings bring their freedom, creativity and capacity for cooperation into play, contributing to the cultural and moral elevation of society .“

Pope John Paul II – Laborem Exercens 1981

Fair wages are a measure of the entire socio-economic system since they reveal whether “the worker is treated as a person or merely as a cost of production.”

• 151. Unemployment is a grave evil.

Pope John Paul II – Sollicitudo Rei Socialis 1987�The Social Concern

[Pope John Paul] “denounced the economic, financial and commercial mechanisms that, managed by the strongest economies, structurally favor their own interests while stifling weaker economies,… ”

… Solidarity was understood as a concrete, shared responsibility among individuals, peoples, and nations — a form of social friendship or political charity oriented toward the “civilization of love”

Pope John Paul II – Sollicitudo Rei Socialis �The Social Concern 1987

Authentic Development is a human development that promote justice and respects all dimensions of the person

Structures of Sin: economic & political systems that oppress the poor

Solidarity: “persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good”

Pope Benedict XV - Caritas in Veritate

• “The originality of his contribution lies in showing that development, justice, institutions and the market are not neutral realities, but spaces where charity in truth must find historical expression.”
• Charity is at the center of the Church’s Social Doctrine, as opposed to the tendency to dismiss moral relevance in the social, legal, political & economic fields.
• This is relevant in light of growing inequalities, the environmental crisis, and a lack of trust in politics.

Pope Benedict XV - Caritas in Veritate

• Respect creation.
• Income Disparity: News kinds of poverty in wealthy countries, while in poorer regions, small minorities lived in affluence.
• Capital Influence: “The new global economic and financial system, marked by a vast mobility of capital and means of production have reduced the political power of states and their ability to influence economic processes.”

Pope Francis Evangelii Gaudium 2013

• “The Christian proclamation has an intrinsic social dimension and calls for a Church capable of listening to the cry of the poor, migrants and victims of new forms of slavery.:
• Pope Francis insisted on a “synodal Church, a Church that “walks together”

Pope Francis Laudatio Si 2013

• Laudatio Si was the first significant systematic treatment of the environmental crisis.
• “The cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” cannot be separated.
• Underlying Catholic Concept: �Universal Destination of Goods

Pope Francis Universal Destination of Goods

• Foundational social principle: God created the earth and its resources to be shared by all of humanity
• While acknowledging private property, the Universal Destination of Gods dictates that ownership is a form of stewardship, & the common good always takes precedence.

Pope Francis Laudatio Si 2013

92. “Pope Francis denounced the growing dominance of a technocratic paradigm in our globalized world: the tendency to let the logic of efficiency, control, and profit alone shape personal, social, and economic decisions.”

Pope Leo XIV

58 “Among these ideologies, I consider particularly insidious the one that suggests that every person must earn or justify his or her own worth, to the point of attributing greater value to those who are more efficient or effective. From this perspective, persons end up being reduced to a means of achieving results, a resource to be used and exploited, and are no longer recognized as a proper end in themselves who should never be instrumentalized.”

�Talk to your neighbor�Why is work important for being truly human?

The Nature of Work

• 149. … “work is not simply an instrument; it expresses and enhances the dignity of our lives. It is a requirement of the human condition, a normal path toward maturity, development and personal fulfilment.
• Financial assistance to the poor may at times be necessary in emergencies, but it cannot become the sole response, since the goal is to enable each person to live with dignity through his or her own work.

Changing Structure of Work

• 150 Today, the convergence of automation, robotics and AI is rapidly transforming the very structure of work. … AI promises to boost productivity by taking over mundane tasks, it frequently forces workers to adapt to the speed and demands of machines, …
• “… current approaches to technology can paradoxically de-skill workers, subject them to automated surveillance and relegate them to rigid and repetitive tasks.”
• It is necessary to design systems that are centered on the human person and not solely on performance.

Contraction of Job & Income Disparity

• 151 …. there is a legitimate fear of a significant and rapid contraction in available jobs that would create a chain reaction deeply impacting families, young people and local economies.
• In many sectors, this can already be seen in new forms of job insecurity and inequality, characterized by outsized remuneration for a highly specialized minority alongside declining wages for a large portion of the workforce.

The Person First

152. The pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs, because the human person is an end, not a means, and the economic order must remain subordinate to human dignity and the common good.

Technology & Dominance

Chapter III

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Also: Remembering a Movie

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We are called to reflect on the great “construction” �of our era and ask: �What are we building?

The Tower of Babel, where collective effort follows a plan that dominates and ultimately dehumanizes (cf. Gen 11:1-9)

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On the other hand, there are the ruins of Jerusalem, which under Nehemiah’s direction are rebuilt piece by piece as a project of shared responsibility (cf. Neh 2–6)

Exploitation

92 “… technology is not simply a tool. When it becomes the standard by which everything is judged, it begins to dictate what matters and what can be discarded, reducing creation to an object of exploitation and human beings to mere cogs in a system driven toward ever greater efficiency.”

More Than AI – Expansion of the Technocratic

93 “This paradigm has spread rapidly in recent years, fueled in part by the expansion of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, nanotechnology, robotics and biotechnology …. because of their power, they can also hasten the expansion of the technocratic paradigm and therefore require a new spiritual, ethical and political framework.”

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Romano Guardini remains relevant: “Contemporary man has not been trained to use power well.”

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“Having more” without “being more” is a problem.

AI – A Life of its own

“Current AI systems are more 'cultivated' than 'built,' for developers do not directly design every detail, but instead create a framework within which the intelligence ‘grows,’”… such as the internal representations and computational processes remain, at present unknown.”

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When AI makes a mistake, it is said to hallucinate

Misnomer: Intelligence

One cannot say something is intelligent if there is not consciousness. It is about number, probability and massive amounts of data.

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99. …“These systems merely imitate certain functions of human intelligence. In doing so, they often surpass human intelligence in speed and computational capacity, offering tangible benefits across many fields. Yet this power remains entirely tied to data processing.”

Who is behind the screen?

So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences.

Manipulation of Data: Trust

132. The ability to manipulate content, images and videos exposes people to biased or misleading perspectives. This problem has both cultural and moral dimensions, since the quality of public communication depends directly on social trust and, in turn, shapes it.

At the same time, truthful information does not arise from centralized or automated control.

Who Controls the Platform?

133. Those who command powerful technological and economic resources, along with substantial human capital for intervention, possess significant capabilities for influencing cultural change. Ultimately, they can influence a significant number of people concerning the truth about humanity, the world, the meaning of existence, the family and even God. This is pure power detached from truth, which subtly or overtly imposes what it wishes others to accept as true.

…. Indifference to the truth leads, slowly but surely, to a descent into totalitarianism.

What is the impact of ….? Talk to your neighbor.

What are the individual and social impacts of “early and unsupervised exposure to digital devices and social media”?

Another Voice

“Seduced by AI’s convenience, I’d rush through tasks, sending unchecked emails and publishing unvetted content,” …

…“frequent AI usage is actively reshaping our critical thinking”

Hessie Jones - Strategist, Entrepreneur & Investor

Communication & The Collective Imagination

135. … it is important to recall that communication “is not only the transmission of information, but it is also the creation of a culture.”

The content that circulates within digital environments shapes how people perceive the world and introduces into the collective consciousness images and narratives that direct our desires and influence our daily choices

Where are the questions?

140. …The speed and ease with which answers or summaries can be obtained risk extinguishing the desire to ask questions, which is a process that bears fruit only over time.

The Chip

The AI Chip

In development is the Cerebras chip the size of a dinner plate. It is built on a single 12-inch silicon wafer with 4 trillion transistors, hundreds of hundred of thousands of cores.

Ai is a Glutton For Electricity

They demand unprecedented amounts of electricity—ranging from 100 megawatts (MW) to over 1 gigawatt (GW).

• A standard AI hyperscale facility uses about as much electricity as 100,000 households. The largest consumes 20 times that amount.
• A single AI chip draws up to 1,200 watts, and a single AI server rack can hit 15 kW.
• Cooling demands huge amounts of water & electricity
• Tech companies are exploring geothermal & small modular nuclear reactors to power their sites

AI is a Hog for Space & Water for Cooling

$10 billion AI Data Center,

Louisiana

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Built on a 2,250-acre former Franklin Farm megasite

Predicted�Job �Loses

Pope Francis

161 “There are a few who have too much, and too many who have little, that is the logic of today.”

The Growing Divide

• In the United States, the top 0.1% owned roughly �14-15% of all national wealth. �In 2025, that is $25.47 Trillion
• The top 1% of households own approximately 32% of the nation's household wealth.
• In 2013, the top 10% owned 81% of all stock

What happened to the Universal Destination of Goods?

Digital Servitude

170. … The subtler forms of addiction linked to the “digital attention economy” should not be underestimated, since platforms and services are often designed to capture users’ time and attention, exploiting their vulnerabilities and weakening their inner freedom

New Forms of Slavery

• 178. “This requires restoring to individuals not only the data that describes them, but also the ability to decide how it is used, by whom and for whose benefit. Otherwise, the digital age will not be post-colonial, but colonial in another form.”
• 179. “New forms of slavery are fueled by economic chains and digital infrastructures.”

Which City? Bable or Rebuilt Jerusalem?

• 180. … if technology becomes the ultimate criterion, the human person risks being reduced to data, a cog in a machine or a commodity.

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If, however, technology is integrated with a wise perspective, it can become an instrument of growth, justice and fraternity

What Infrastructure Is Required?

• 181. …. It asks that these processes be guided with foresight: by institutions capable of regulating without stifling, and protecting without taking over; by businesses that recognize work and dignity as measures of success; by intermediary organizations and educational communities that rebuild trust and relationships; and by citizens who cultivate responsibility, moderation, discernment and a sense of truth.

War By Other Means

• 183. The digital revolution is changing the nature of conflict. Alongside conventional warfare, there are hybrid forms such as
• cyberattacks,
• information manipulation,
• campaigns of influence &
• the automation of strategic decisions.

Is the Pope Speaking to Our Politics?

185 …The spread of a culture of power characterized by polarization and violence.

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188. …. This culture of power infiltrates society, changes relationships and behaviors, and grows by normalizing war, pursuing ever-greater military power, taking advantage of the crisis of multilateralism and fueling a false realism that insists that there is no alternative.

Just War Theory?

192 … Today, more than ever, without prejudice to the right to self-defense in the strictest sense, it is important to reaffirm that the “just war” theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated.

Just War Theory?

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193 … The close link between economic interests, the military apparatus and political decisions produces an “armed nation,” in which war appears as a natural extension of politics, and the arms market becomes an autonomous driving force behind military decision.

Who are we becoming?

• 195 … It is much easier to start a war than to stop it
• 197 … The Holy See has recently observed that the growing ease with which autonomous weapons systems can be deployed makes war more “feasible” and less subject to human control.

This violates the principle that armed force should be used only as a last resort in cases of legitimate self-defense

Non-Negotiable Requirements.

• 200 … First, … guarantee the possibility of retracing and re-constructing decision-making processes, so that accountability and blame
• Second, the decision to use lethal force cannot be delegated to opaque or automated processes, but must remain under effective, self-aware and responsible human control.
• Finally, establish a shared framework — also at the international level — in order to curb the technological arms race and ensure robust protection for civilians and the infrastructures necessary for their survival.

The Language We Use

What has also re-emerged is the temptation to forge a collective identity in opposition to an enemy, fueled by narratives in which each party portrays itself as a victim entitled to retribution. The reduction of complex issues into simplistic categories — “me first,” “friend or foe,” “us or them” — facilitates decisions that are often irresponsible and undermine mutual trust among nations

Liberal Consensus 1945-1980s

1. Shaped by the Great Depression (1929-1941)�& World War II
2. 1945 - Embraced by both parties
3. 1968 - Weakened by Vietnam War & Civil Rights Struggle
4. 1981-89 President Regan effectively attacks the consensus

Post-World War II Liberal Consensus

• Business Regulation to foster growth, establish safe working conditions, protect the environment, etc.
• Build Infrastructure
• Protecting the Environment
• Protect Civil Rights
• Providing a Basic Social Safety Net
• Underpin International Rules-Based Order

Reagan Asserted: “Government is the problem.”

Attacked the mid-century liberal consensus …

1. Slashing top tax rates (Marginal Income Tax Rate cut from 70% to 28%)
2. Attacked Unions
3. Deregulation & Cuts, e.g., Weakened EPA & OSHA and cuts in programs for the poor & working class
4. Redistribution of approx. $79 trillion from the bottom 90% to the top 1%.
5. Almost doubled the annual deficit and tripled the national debt

Which elements does the Encyclical advocate?

• Maintain a Social Safety Net
• Promote Infrastructure
• Protect Civil Rights
• Regulating Business
• Maintain International Rules-Based Order

Is there a disconnect between Catholic social teaching and many Catholics' politics?