Padilla ’21 [Luis-Alberto; 2021; president of the board of the Guatemalan International Relations & Peace Research Institute (IRIPAZ), member of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), former Secretary General of the Latin American Council on Peace Research (CLAIP), Director of the Diplomatic Academy, Former Vice Minister, former ambassador in Chile, former permanent representative to the United Nations at the Vienna International Centre, former ambassador to Austria, former ambassador to the Russian Federation, former ambassador to the Netherlands, permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, and professor of the Seminar of World Geopolitics at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the Catholic University Rafael Landivar (URL) of Guatemala; Sustainable Development in the Anthropocene, “The Technological Paradigm,” Ch. 3.7, p. 119] SPark
Moreover, the current false ideological belief in infinite growth partly originates in the modern philosophical tendency to regard technology as a neutral phenomenon that need not question the values applied or the end it serves. The trauma of Einstein when he realized the manner in which the Pentagon was going to use the atomic bomb - largely made possible due to his discoveries - by launching it on Hiroshima and Nagasaki illustrates this ethical issue very well. Hence, the Pope’s ‘technocratic paradigm’ takes on precisely that supposedly neutral position of the technocrats of the economy in the face of social and environmental problems, in which the purpose of economic activity - serving human beings for the satisfaction of their basic needs - is not promoted and still less achieved. Competitiveness guides the performance of entrepreneurs seeking tomaximize capital gain on pain of bankruptcy and market disappearance. As a result, capitalist economy functions for the sake of growth without values or purposes, as if it were a cyclist who does not know where he is going butmustkeep pedalling because if he stops the bike loses its balance and falls. But obviously, if the cyclistdoes not know where he is going, he risks falling into an abyss.
