STS

• Human person


  • Man’s role in the universe, gift of technology, means of fulfilling ultimate destiny
• Human flourishing is a life-long existential journey of hopes, achievements, sufferings, regrets, losses, illnesses, and coping
• Aristotle: 'Each man has a purpose in life and the function of one’s life is to attain that purpose'
• Human flourishing is defined as an effort to achieve self-actualization and fulfillment within a larger community of individuals, each with the right to pursue their own efforts
• Humans are endowed with reason by God as a means to communicate, strive after truth, and care for His creation
• Human beings have a natural desire and capacity to know and understand the truth, pursue moral excellence, and instantiate their ideals through action
• To achieve true human flourishing, an individual must first overcome the different mechanisms of alienation
• Our technological relationship with nature

  Before: as stewards of nature, Now: as master and slave
• Technology as a way of revealing

  It is not merely something we create; it is a mode of being or revealing
• Heidegger discusses the essence of modern and industrial technology, particularly evident in factories and industrial processes
• Ordering the world purely as a resource dominates human consciousness, appreciating the world aesthetically, poetically, and religiously also reveals truth
• Martin Heidegger: 'The essence of technology is by no means anything technological'
• Humans have a divine origin and the human body is a divine gift deserving unconditional respect
• Human flourishing encompasses

  • Uniqueness
  • Dignity
  • Diversity
  • Freedom
  • Happiness
  • Holistic well-being of individuals
• Karl Marx: 'Humans are naturally social beings'
• Alienation is the estrangement of humans from aspects of human nature
• The purpose of life includes earthly happiness and flourishing, achievable through reason and acquisition of virtue
• Technology is a way of revealing, not merely a means, according to Martin Heidegger
• Two ways of understanding technology

  • Instrumental view
  • Anthropological view
• Technology manifests where revealing and unconcealment occur, where truth emerges
• Modern technology challenges nature by imposing unreasonable demands, viewing nature as objects of manipulation and artificial ordering
• Human Condition Before the Common Era: From the time of Homo erectus to Homo sapiens, the primary goal was survival
• Problem with Modern Technology

  • Ordering the world purely as a resource, viewing everything through the lens of scientific rationality, dominates human consciousness
  • Appreciating the world aesthetically, poetically, and religiously also reveals truth
  • The dominance of the technological mode of revealing obscures other ways of relating to the world
  • By recognizing technology as just one way of relating to the world, we can mitigate its dominance and allow nature to reveal itself through alternative modes of revealing
• Notable Contributions

  • Mortality Rate
  • Average Lifespan
  • Literacy Rate
  • Gross Domestic Product
• Different Perspectives on Happiness

  • Materialism
  • Hedonism
  • Stoicism
  • Theism
  • Humanism
• Filipinos spend approximately 3.2 hours on mobile devices and 5.2 hours on desktops
• Plato's Perspective on the Good Life


  • Emphasizes the task of understanding the world in parallel with achieving soul flourishing
• John Stuart Mill's Perspective on the Good Life


  • Declares the Greatest Happiness Principle, stating that an action is right if it maximizes happiness for the greatest number of people
• There are 47 million active Facebook accounts
• Hedonism


  • The end goal of life is acquiring pleasure; life is about indulging in pleasure since it's finite
  • Led by Epicurus, followers adopt a "eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die" mentality
• Theism


  • Many find meaning through communion with God, seeing it as the ultimate basis of happiness
• 3 Key Aristotelian Ideas on Human Flourishing

  • Eudaimonia: Translated as "having good demons" from Greek
  • Virtue: Virtue enables flourishing
  • Education and Habit: Virtue is cultivated through education and habituation
• Technology as a Way of Revealing

  1. Derived from "techne," meaning art and skill

  2. It serves as a means to achieve human ends and constitutes human activity, as articulated by Martin Heidegger
• The Good Life


  Defined as the attainment of human flourishing, encompassing various components necessary for happiness
• Human Condition in the Common Era: Facing the Holocene extinction, the primary goal shifted to living a good life
• 119 Million mobile subscriptions
• Materialism


  • Ancient Greek atomists believed the world is made of and controlled by indivisible units called atomos or seeds
  • Materialists emphasize the world's composition of matter; many find meaning in material wealth
• Stoicism

  • Happiness is generated by learning to distance oneself and adopt apathy, accepting things beyond one's control
• Aristotle's Perspective on the Good Life


  • Divides disciplines into theoretical and practical, focusing on truth and the good respectively
  • Posits that understanding the truth about the good is necessary for pursuing what is good
• The Philippines boasts one of the highest digital populations globally