Integral-Development

In 1996, UNESCO released the Delors Report “Learning: The Treasure Within” prepared by a commission of experts from various countries (educators, sociologists, political scientists, among others) led by Jacques Delors, which stated that students should learn to be, to do, to know, and to live together; and that education was a necessary utopia and an expression of love for children and adolescents, for whom the path to building a better future should be paved; We in the education sector felt inspired; we believed that a new era was dawning, in which all stakeholders—educational institutions, governments, international organizations, students, and teachers—would join forces to transform education into a driving force for human and social development.

An article published on April 13, 2026, in FQ Magazine by Il Fatto Quotidiano tells the story of Katie, a 32-year-old former human resources employee at a company who, according to her own account, overcame postpartum depression by using AI and entrusting the algorithm with complete control over her life. “I described my dream life to the AI, and now I always follow its orders. I don’t trust myself; ChatGPT even decides whether I should wash my hair.” The number of people downloading apps capable of creating custom chatbots—structured with specific data to act as confidants, coaches, and virtual friends—is growing exponentially, especially in the Western world. “AI Companions” offer comfort; they do not judge, do not contradict, remember everything, are charming, usually have a harmonious and gentle tone of voice, and create a “relational bubble” that makes people feel good, accepted, and understood. Young people are increasingly trusting chatbots, making requests that span the most diverse fields: from ethics to medicine to spirituality. The major digital platforms are seeking experts in moral philosophy, anthropology, and theology to provide ethical and wisdom-based information to the algorithms. In virtual relationships, empathy is not necessary, nor is the effort to listen to the other. These interactions between humans and AI using GPT (Generative Pre-Trained Transformer), capable of generating text similar to human speech, raise at least two pressing questions: the definition of the person in their essence and in their distinction from AI, and the evolution of human language in the computational age.

It is highly likely that in the future—with artificial intelligence surpassing and replacing our own, and robots taking our jobs—our lives will be reduced, at least in Western countries, to that of mere consumers of mass media content. But this is the positive scenario, the best-case scenario. There is worse. Mass media content is, in fact, produced because there are those who, in one form or another, pay for its consumption—that is, purchase it. But if robots replace physical labor and AI replaces intellectual labor, then the production of wealth will remain in the hands of our artificial counterparts. The market will become a matter of buying and selling between computers and robots. Humans will be excluded from the production cycle and, consequently, from remuneration. The capitalist economy will change profoundly. We will no longer be able to acquire mass media content because we will have nothing with which to exchange for the purchase. The market—the omnipresent, omnipotent market—will remain only a memory of the past, because society will revert to a feudal system in the hands of those few who control robots and AI.

The term “Ghosting,” derived from the English word “ghost,” was added to the Treccani dictionary’s list of neologisms in 2024. The definition reads as follows: “Suddenly and without explanation, cutting off all contact with a person, making oneself untraceable.” Digital anthropology and psychology, within their respective fields of scientific inquiry, have described this phenomenon, which has become increasingly widespread in the age of online relationships and causes a painful sense of abandonment in those who experience it. Digital anthropology studies and seeks to understand the impact of information technologies on the human beings who use them. “One of the aims of anthropology, as Gaetano Piccolo S.J. states, is to foster self-understanding in human beings, that is, to activate a process of awareness of the existential and cultural dynamics in which they find themselves living.”

We are truly tired of flowery rhetoric about freedom, self-actualization, and human rights. Not because these are undesirable realities or shamefully incomprehensible concepts. On the contrary, they are aspects of life that we strive to preserve, nurture, and make possible so that others may enjoy or attain them. Rather, I am referring to the fact that, in the name of freedom, self-realization, and elegant discourse on human rights, we have been subjected to a sordid practical relativism, to living life any which way, to justifying ourselves to avoid the harsh blow of correction, failure, or sin. I speak as a child of my time. I grew up amid the escalating clash of ideas, the allure of self-assertion, and the dream of freedom. I was repeatedly told that I must seek what fulfills me, what makes me feel good, and what showcases the best of me to everyone. My failures are not mistakes; they are “areas of opportunity.” My sins are not moral breaches, but mere products that necessarily stem from my weakness. Whatever I decide is fine, as long as it springs from the core of my creative will. But few have directed my heart outward from itself, to where Truth dwells. For if it is true that Truth dwells within the inner man—as Augustine says—Truth is at once what is more intimate than one’s own intimacy and the highest transcendence, beyond every limit of my being. True interiority is always ecstatic, always outside of itself, always seeking beyond boundaries of every kind: conceptual, ontological, moral, spiritual.

The well-known phrase ‘divide and conquer’ has not only been applied to winning battles and subsequently wars, or in commercial transactions to maximise profits; it also applies to human beings themselves, in their various spheres (work, family, social, professional); for example, in medicine, the focus has been on treating the patient’s specific ailment, without considering that they are a whole human being with multiple conditions; and that even if they suffer from localised pain, that organ is affected and is affecting the rest of the body.

The world is hungry. We hunger for justice and peace. We are born into a state of hunger, cut off from our mother and turned out to a cruel world as orphaned beggars. We are robbed daily of our peace. Our energy and joy are eaten day and night to fuel the extracting machines of this world: industrialism, capitalism, consumerism. Brutalized, where in this world can we turn for justice? No where. Checks on executive power weaken with each social media proclamation, judicial bias has been bought stock and trade, due process is a false and flimsy veil over systemic corruption. Justice is bartered at the money changers’ tables beneath the ivory towers of our governments and the price is steep!

This famous verse by David Maria Turoldo introduces this brief – and certainly not exhaustive – reflection on ‘justice’, a theme that is often at the heart of debates and demands. Let us ask ourselves what the meaning of the term “justice” is in a globalised, multicultural society dominated by market forces and technology, and, above all, on what foundation can the concept of “justice” be anchored if religious and moral references are no longer valid or shared? Is a society that speaks the language of weapons just? These days, the terms most frequently heard in public debate are those relating to war, violence, the death of innocent people, and armed attacks. It seems that humanity is prey to an insatiable thirst for power and is capable only of devising plans for destruction, aggression, and the invasion of spaces belonging to others. Pope Leo XIV, too, in the Angelus on Sunday 15 March, drew attention to the “dramatic situations of injustice, violence and suffering that mark our times”.

It is always terrible to see how humanity, generation after generation, finds its greatest aspiration in war, murder, and destruction. In the annihilation of part of itself. One might say, “It’s not my fault. It’s the other who is my enemy, and therefore I must crush him like a poisonous plant.”

This is the same argument used by Cain when questioned by Yahweh after spilling Abel’s blood, who gave the surprising answer, “Who made me my brother’s keeper?”

It seems that so-called political realism is in vogue, i.e., that there are no laws or rules to protect us, but that it is only important to know how to navigate the conflictual sea of reality, where nothing but force and power make sense. That men, after such a long journey, return to the club, the stone, and the machete is indicative of a regression to the devastating powers of instinct, but also of an intolerance towards what had been the liberal canon in recent years, made up of a dense web of rights, which, however, had been transformed into the garment that Deianira sent to Hercules, a garment soaked in the poison of Naxos. Poison that killed Heracles.