Project Vision 21

Recently I came across the following question, “Quo vadis, humanitas?” (“Where are you going, humanity?”), which appeared as the title of an article inviting readers to rethink the future of humanity from a philosophical, theological, and anthropological perspective—without delegating the decision about our future either to machines or to laboratories.

My first thought, naturally, was “Domine, quo vadis?” (“Lord, where are you going?”, Acts of Peter, 35), where, according to that text, Peter questions Jesus about the path He is following, only to discover that he himself—despite his good intentions—was heading in the wrong direction.

Connecting these two questions led me to wonder whether humanity might be moving in the wrong direction precisely because we are seeking, in what is ultimately intranscendent (algorithms, artificial intelligence), the answer to the question of our future and our transcendence. It was then that I came across the following statement by the Spanish philosopher Simón Cano Le Tiec:

“The boundaries between the machine and the human have become very blurred” (or, if one prefers, blurred, weakened, or diluted). According to Cano Le Tiec, this situation prevents us from thinking clearly about the relationship between humanity, nature, and technology, and leads instead to a “climate of cynicism” and a “generalized irresponsibility.”

We are searching outside ourselves for the meaning, the purpose, and the direction that we have lost within ourselves. For that reason, we will never be able to answer appropriately the question “Where are you going, humanity?”—an existential question—if we do not even know who we are or what we are becoming.

The issue is no longer about looking for answers, but about asking the right questions from a level of consciousness that is irreducible to algorithms and irreplaceable by artificial intelligence. This led me to think of another question—indeed, the very first question that appears in the most widely known translations of the Hebrew Scriptures:

“Where are you, human?” (Genesis 3:9 )

This is a relational and existential question that does not seek information but confronts us with the need to examine our own humanity, our condition and our place in life. It can also mean “How are you?” and “What have you become?” In a sense, we spend our entire lives responding to these questions, which also carry the implicit demand: “Present yourself and take responsibility.”

Thanks to new technologies, the possibilities of radically altering the biological limits of human beings—and even surpassing those limits—are increasing. At the same time, artificial intelligence is transforming human agency, establishing new decision-making processes and reshaping social structures.

This situation calls for ethical reflection that goes beyond the pressures of the market or the imperatives of technology. It also calls for collective wisdom capable of discerning the future direction of humanity.

In the face of these ontological, teleological, anthropological, existential, and civilizational questions, we must respond by becoming present and responsible from the highest level of our emerging consciousness. Consciousness cannot be removed from the description of reality.

What we need now is a dialogue about the new future.