By Caleb Strom

As Climate Week at the United Nations draws to a close, it’s worth looking at a 2001 Disney animation called Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Even as tech barons talk about strip mining the moon, Atlantis depicts an approach to technology that is relational and gives explicit obligations to humanity to act responsibly. In the film, Atlantis has technologies such as powered flight and energy shields thousands of years before modern civilization. Atlantean technology, however, is powered by energy from a crystalline entity created by the collective emotions of all past Atlanteans, completing a loop in which the technology is based on a relationship between the Atlanteans and their ancestors.

The original Atlantis, created by Plato, suffered its fate as a result of those familiar Greek tropes of hubris and overreach, concepts still valid thousands of years later in real time.

When the Disney Atlanteans try to use the crystal for their own gain, as an instrument of war, Atlantis sinks beneath the sea. Thousands of years later, a band of adventurers from the early-twentieth-century United States arrive, aided by archeo-linguist Milo Thatch. The adventurers mostly turn out to be mercenaries who are only interested in what they can gain financially from the Atlantean crystal.

The mercenaries want to sell the crystal for their own gain while the Atlanteans and Thatch see the crystal as a being with whom they have a relationship. This conflict reflects two perspectives on the universe. One sees the universe as a stockpile of resources to enrich humans, in particular capitalist humans. Read the morning headlines for examples. The other view is of the universe as a being with which we are to relate and to which we have obligations. Many religious traditions express this view, as do many Indigenous people. Even Christianity, which has long seen humans as having "dominion" over creation now speaks of co-creation and stewardship.

Modern films and books depicting the future are for the most part dystopian or apocalyptic, showing a world destroyed or wounded by violence, greed, and racism. Indeed, this is the initial plot of Atlantis as the island sinks beneath the sea. But the story doesn’t end there. The Atlanteans, who still exist underwater and cut off from the rest of the world, fight off the mercenaries and rediscover how to use their technology in a way that is more respectful toward their crystalline host.

Many religious traditions have always recognized that our natural resources are a gift from God or the universe and that humans are stewards and caretakers. Could these traditions inspire a vision of a future in which humans use technology in redemptive ways that care both for people and the planet? Can we have a future where we have space exploration not aimed at colonizing other worlds once our own is uninhabitable, where we find cures to preventable diseases, where there is enough food for all, where everyone has access to information, and where we all have a flourishing relationship with nature?

Growth as Ideology

In many ways, the ideology of growth functions as a religion itself. Silicon Valley tech barons talk about technology as a source of salvation. Although technology does not need to be worshiped, technology does have a spiritual component. Many of the major figures in the tech scene see it as a form of salvation, whether from personal death or from extinction. Religious traditions should not repudiate the spirituality of technology but redeem it so that it is about something other than infinite material expansion.

The philosopher of space exploration Frank White, in his book The Cosma Hypothesis, argues that the universe is self-organizing and that cosmic evolution might have a specific direction. What if technological progress meant alignment with the evolutionary course of the universe? What if instead of seeing technological progress as a conquest of nature, technological progress was seen in terms of how humans are participating in the evolution of the cosmos toward its intended goal?

Of course, participating in the evolution of the cosmos requires knowing the direction of said evolution. White suggests that the Overview Effect, the experience astronauts get when looking at Earth and feeling a sense of interconnectedness, could be a hint. The Overview Effect emphasizes the interconnectedness of all things: the reality that we are all part of one planet and dependent on each other. He suggests that this is also true of the cosmos as a whole. What if the order that our technology was supposed to conform to and enhance was that interconnectedness, not just with Earth but the entire cosmos?

Examples of movements that try to realize this future include Buen Vivir, a lifestyle embraced by an Indigenous-led movement in South America, emphasizing a balance with nature and fulfilment of human need rather than economic growth. This is also exemplified in convivial technologies inspired by Ivan Illich, which promoted creating technology that is human-scaled and promotes human agency at the individual and communal levels.

Another example of a redemptive vision of a technological future is the Solarpunk genre, which depicts a future where technology is used to integrate humans with nature and each other in contrast to the technologically induced alienation and authoritarianism depicted in Cyberpunk settings. Examples of this genre include the books by Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild Built and A Prayer for the Crown Shy.

Will this be a century in which humanity is able to use its technology in the service of God or the universe and the benefit of creation or, like the Atlanteans, will our abuse of technology destroy us? Which story will we choose: the one that sees technological progress as conquest of nature or the one that sees technological progress as a partnership with nature?

Caleb Strom is a planetary scientist. He is also a Christian and writes about faith, science, technology, their intersection, and how they can work together to make a better world.