"We are no longer equal to what we are capable of doing."

We live in an extraordinary age. Every day, human ingenuity overcomes its limits: machines that learn, artificial intelligences, life-changing technologies. Yet, something does not add up. The more our technical power grows, the more we feel lost. The more we build, the more we realise we don't really know what to do with it. At what point are we lost?

Günther Anders realised this before many others: the technique is not neutraland it is not even under our control. It is a force that runs faster than our consciousness, faster than our heart.

The Promethean Difference

Anders called this fracture "Promethean unevenness"The disproportion between what man is and what he is able to produce. Our inventions surpass us, exceed us, become greater than us. So instead of being proud of them, we feel ashamed of them. It is the "Promethean shame"We feel inadequate in the face of what our hands - and our machines - can generate.

But it is not just any shame. È a crisis of human identity. Man, from being the subject of history, is in danger of becoming an instrument of his own technique. We are witnessing a reversal: it is no longer we who use the tools, it is they who use us.

Technique as destiny?

The problem is not the technique itself, but the absolutization of techniqueits elevation to a new criterion of truth. If something is technically possible, then it must be done. Full stop. In this way, the ethical question - is it right? is it necessary? is it human? - is sidelined, excluded from the decision-making process.

Anders warns us against this drift: when technique becomes an end in itselfhumanity is sacrificed in the name of efficiency, progress, performance. But what good is an efficient world if we no longer know for whom, or why, it should work?

From human obsolescence to the possibility of a new beginning

The title of his most famous work is Man's obsolescence. But it is not a condemnation, it is a provocation. Anders does not say that we are finished: he tells us that we must ask ourselves again what it means to be humantoday. In the age of artificial intelligence, automated control, limitless production... what is the place of the soul? What is the boundary between what we can and what we should?

There is no easy answer. But there is a direction: slow down, feel, discern. Get back to putting conscience at the centre, and not leave it at the bottom of the list. Because if the heart does not keep pace with the hand, what we build risks becoming a trap.

The responsibility to feel

Anders invites us to a difficult but essential task: become worthy of our possibilities. Not with fear, but with responsibility. Not with nostalgia, but with a new ethical imagination.
Because maybe we are not obsolete: we are just fall asleep.
And awakening, today more than ever, is a radical choice.