In this essay from the Spring 2025 issue of The New Atlantis, Brad Littlejohn and Clare Morell decry how modern technology tends to hack the human person in pursuit of profit. Drawing on free market theory and its inherent pitfalls, they explain how many seemingly promising technologies end up degrading human life, relationships, and society. If human beings have a nature, then attempting to bypass that nature with short-term “hacks” will ultimately cause harm to human flourishing. The authors give examples of human hacking “from gamete to grave,” and call for us to re-examine the “choice architecture” of our technology policies. The price we are paying now for prosperity is too high to ignore. Besides the choices individuals and families can make, Littlejohn and Morell argue that policy makers must say “no” to certain technologies while incentivizing those that actually aid human flourishing and uphold human dignity.
This essay is provided courtesy of The New Atlantis and is read by Ken Myers. The complete text is online here.
Listeners who appreciate this essay may also be interested in a related “manifesto” of sorts, co-authored by Littlejohn, Morell, Jon Askonas, and Emma Waters, and signed by numerous other conservative thinkers and writers. It is called “A Future for the Family: A New Technology Agenda for the Right,” and it was published by First Things on January 29, 2025. We also recommend an essay by Brad Littlejohn titled “In Search of a Free Market,” published in Comment magazine on February 6, 2025.
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