Reading Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, it seems that the pope agrees that humanity itself is undergoing a bit of an identity crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the deep fragility of life and rapid changes in technology threaten our very understanding of what it means to be a human being. In the face of human finitude and fragility, humanity is faced with a choice — slow down to focus on human relationships or speed up the quest for a kind of immortality. For its part, AI seeks speed and efficiency, its goal to remove any and all friction from human life. Grounding itself in the gift of humanity created by God, Magnifica Humanitas, however, invites us to embrace finitude to find flourishing in relationship.
Embracing finitude means acknowledging our limits and that can be difficult.
As I read the encyclical, I could not help but reflect on my own experiences of chronic illness. When I was 16 years old, I experienced a serious head trauma in a car accident. As a result, I suffer from chronic migraines. For years, migraines and dizziness set limitations of pain and fear. Luckily, I had an excellent neurological team who found a treatment plan that lessened the frequency of attacks. Today my condition is well managed, but it will never go away. It is a condition where technology may prove useful in analyzing patterns and identifying triggers. Yet, it will always remain. Chronic illness, even one successfully treated, is a constant reminder of finitude and vulnerability.
Our spending habits suggest that accepting our finitude is not a high priority for most people. The United States thrives on a culture of self-improvement as wellness. It is a $500 billion-dollar industry. Thus, “Our relationship with life seems to be in crisis today,” explains the pope, where any limit is seen as a “defect to be corrected” instead of part of what makes us human. In the drive to enhance, expand and extend life, our culture seems to have forgotten that we are created and that this means our limitations will involve hardship, suffering and even death. Human flourishing is blurred as immediacy and efficiency become values in themselves. Against a culture focused on evading limits, Leo argues that “humanity flourishes not despite limitations, but often through them.”
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With thanks to National Catholic Reporter and Meghan Clark, where this article originally appeared.
