“This is going to get darker before it gets lighter.”
Monday, December 14, 2020
Part of my goal in the previous post was to make us more aware of how the forces of Big Tech slowly condition us to love the slavery that’s already in our own hearts. My goal in this and the next post is to help us not have an uninformed, romanticized view of the power and potential of the internet.
The more we use Big Tech unwittingly, the more they use us very wittingly. We are conditioned in our expectations, desires, and outlook on life.
Let me be specific. I can think of at least six ways our unthinking use of Big Tech, personal devices, the internet, and all that is in those orbits catechize us in worldliness. I know its sounds 1999 to talk about “the internet” but whatever.
Firstly, we expect instant gratification in life. We believe that we can have whatever we want, whenever, and wherever. This is not hard to see. Google curates most of the world’s knowledge and puts it at our fingertips. We can instantly buy ebooks, products, and services at the touch of the screen. Within seconds, we can order takeout from wherever and catch an Uber to wherever. Slowly and unwittingly, we ignore the fact that all good things worth enjoying involve a great degree of delayed gratification, hard work, and patience. This partly explains why the epidemic of pornography would not exist apart from the internet. Why bother asking a girl out and getting a job and getting married (or faithfully loving your wife) when the screen in front of you smiles at you while it is naked, and gives you all the dopamine your brain can want? But Christianity stands diametrically opposed to the life of instant gratification. Christianity is cosmic delayed gratification.
Secondly, we become believers in the supremacy of personal choice. We foolishly believe that the only obligations that are legitimate in life are the ones we have personally chosen. We think that duties that are imposed upon us because of God’s creational design are not legit. The problem, of course, is that man was created for heteronomy, not autonomy (think Kant). God created us— we are obligated to Him and life-long obedience to Him. God saved us and we are now Christians— we are called to worship Him with His people on the Lord’s Day (whether or we “feel” like it), and to be lively and active members of the communion of saints. We have parents— we are to honor them always, even after they die. We have children— we must care and love them whether we want to on any given day. We have work and multiple callings and responsibilities (as neighbor, friend, citizen) that we did not choose but that we were created into. These are not only legitimate obligations, this is the stuff that human culture and civilization are made of. Life is full obligations imposed upon us from God and others. But Big Tech encourages us to view life as personally chosen. It’s the triumph of the solipsistic self.
Thirdly, Big Tech encourages us in escapism and the neglect of family, real conversation and relationships, and reality. Social media is actually anti-social media. How many times do we look at our phones when we want to avoid talking with people around us? Patricia Snow reports in First Things:
“The new phones, especially, turn out to be portable Pied Pipers, irresistibly pulling people away from the people in front of them and the tasks at hand. Researchers have demonstrated that all it takes is a single phone on a table, even if that phone is turned off, for the conversations in the room to fade in number, duration, and emotional depth. All it takes is a single student surfing the Internet in class for everyone around him to learn less.”
Furthermore, human language is one of the pillars of human relationships and human culture (we reflect the Trinity in this way). Our attempt to escape from God and reality will prove to be an escape from human language and a further entrenchment in animalistic and regressive barbarism. We will be able to communicate only in memes or emojis or grunts, if at all.
Fourthly, our devices (and Big Tech who stands behind them) are communicating to us, in all their “functionality” and pizzaz, that life has to be fun and entertaining. When I look at my weather app, I’m dazzled at how much is going on. But checking the weather should be boring and ordinary. Life is not fun. Far from it. Life in Christ is good, but good and fun are two different things. One steels your nerves for real warfare and true peace, the other keeps you running on the hamster wheel of distractions and notifications.
Fifthly, our devices have conditioned us to ahistoricity. When you’re engulfed in the soft glow of Big Tech, nothing matters. Metaphysics does not matter. God does not matter. The telos of creation and especially creatures made in His image does not matter. And history certainly does not matter. What is, is what ought to be. What matters are not the particular videos on YouTube but the fact of YouTube. What matters are not the things you scroll down to see, but that you’re mindlessly scrolling, and know to do this obediently at certain times of the day. Who cares about the past? Who cares about who said what last week? There are new notifications in the last hour! This is the traditional news cycle on steroids. Squirrel! What matters is You. What matters is now.
Finally, the ubiquity of Big Tech is simply assumed as a given. We want Big Tech, and we think we need Big Tech. We believe we cannot live our lives without it. We derive our sense of worth, happiness, identity, and mission from likes, connections, subscribers, and our platforms. Every part of this house of cards preaches to us that it surrounds us, pervades us, helps us, knows us. But this is false. Only God is God, and only God knows us and saves us. Only God is true, and only God is the sine qua non of life, He without whom we cannot live. It is no coincidence that the ubiquity of Big Tech is a direct challenge to the attributes of God.
How many of us are really ready to resist the encroachments of a hostile world, when we practically live connected to the internet, are addicted to our devices, and cannot think outside the norms and conventions given to us by our technology?
Here’s the sum of the matter— critiques of the new totalitarianism that don’t take aim at certain aspects of the private sector and Big Tech do not go far enough. RJ Rushdoony and Gary North warned us against the enemy an unchecked government would be. Little did we realize the threats in our day would also come from the other side. Exposure to, and ingestion of, the barrage of constant messaging and propaganda, the glut of information and disinformation, that is the internet will distract you from your obligations before God and others, erode your moral principles, and will make your life a piece of cheap, malleable plastic.
Don’t get rid of your phone. But maybe you should. More importantly, get rid of your slavery. You may not have to live off the grid, but understand that Big Tech in your home and in your life is like a complete stranger sitting on your couch and living in your pocket, wanting to live in your heart and mind.
Don’t be a clueless ditz. Big Tech is not reality. God is reality, and He invites you to live in the the world He has made.
Photo by Agê Barros on Unsplash
Rebuilding From The Ruins 