Jeff LeJeune raised an important point in one of his recent articles that is worthy of further examination.  Jeff writes (I’m reversing the order a bit),

‘This is where the desensitization comes in. When audiences see brutality so often it barely nags the conscience, when electronic screens have replaced person-to-person interaction, the emotional alarm system fails. We’ve become spectators–scrolling past horror for the sake of staying in our lane, or something.’

‘According to social psychology, individuals are more likely to act alone—but in a group, responsibility is diluted. Add social media, and the urge to record kills the impulse to intervene. But when someone like Holly intervenes anyway—with all the cost—what does the urge to film say about us?

‘How many laughs and likes does it take before brutal violence becomes entertainment and “content”?’

‘So I ask you: was this simply the Bystander Effect—where everyone assumes someone else will act—or is it something darker: a culture so overstimulated we’ve lost our capacity for empathy?’ (‘When Violence Goes Viral: Bystander Effect or National Desensitization?,’ thehayride.com).

We fully agree with Jeff’s analysis, that at the root of this anti-social apathy/psychopathy lies our rejection of Christ:  No one can really love his neighbor if he does not love God above all.  But we believe there is something driving this separation of man from God, and Jeff touched on it in his questions, which is why put them last.  He alludes to that driver in his comments about social media and overstimulation.  It is our contention that the ubiquity of the electronic screen (the enabler of social media, overstimulation, etc.) is the force that is severing mankind from his Creator and Savior and making our love toward our neighbor grow cold.

To back up our thesis, we are going to draw on some material from Herman Middleton, whose Substack You Are Not a Machine is essential reading these days.  In his latest essay, he makes the point that we are not in the habit of considering the long-term consequences of new technologies before adopting them.  If we were, we probably would not have become so enamored with smartphones:

‘ . . . I’m going to do a quick thought experiment. I’m going to offer some potential answers to one of the philosophical questions from above as related to the smartphone:

‘“What kind of world does this technology assume or promote?”

‘The smartphone promotes a world where individuals do not need other people, but are greatly dependent on technology. It promotes a world of instant gratification, of continuous surveillance, and of attention as a commodity. The world of the smartphone is one that is superficially connected. The connections that it promotes are disincarnate rather than incarnate, digital rather than analog, fleeting rather than long-term, and individualistic rather than communal. The kinds of connections that it promotes undermine incarnate, analog, long-term, and communal connections.

‘There is, of course, much more that could be said about the kind of world that the smartphone has created (some potentially positive, but most, I would argue, are negative), but if one were asked if they wanted a world where their connections with other people were increasingly superficial and transitory, where they didn’t need other people, were greatly dependent on technology, continuously surveilled, and where their attention was commodified, it’s hard to believe that they would answer in the affirmative. This is, of course, a conversation that most of us do not have when considering whether or not to use a smartphone (or at least how to use a smartphone), because most of us do not ask these kinds of critical questions about the technologies that we adopt’ (‘Progress Is a Lie We Tell Ourselves to Feel Better,’ hermanmiddleton.substack.com).

The problems Jeff points out in his essay are directly addressed in those lines.  The smartphone is aiding our transformation into subhumans.  But this didn’t happen overnight.  The smartphone is part of a longer process of technification that mankind has been undergoing for decades, even centuries, now.  We have been born into it, and we never question it, but perhaps we should:

‘Postman refers here to something I’ve referred to often, the fact that we in the modern world find ourselves in a mass social experiment that we have not opted into. Postman refers, in particular, to all of those things connected to electricity: television, radio, lights, air conditioning, computers, etc. It is not only electricity, however, that contributes to this experiment. Anything powered by an engine of any kind: the automobile, airplane, train, etc. should be included. Ultimately, one could include most inventions of the past 300 years-or-so, as well as the ecosystem that these new inventions have created.

‘ . . . In the modern era, it has always been the case that the incentives for new technology have been so great that no attempt to justify new technology has been necessary. When confronted with a new technology, the kinds of questions that one usually asks are: “Does it work?” “Does it make my life easier?” “Does it save me money?” These are utilitarian questions focused on the usefulness of a technology. The problem with these kinds of questions is that they are short-sighted and do not take into account the bigger picture. If we care about the world we live in, and the world that we will pass down to our children, the kinds of questions that we should be asking include: “What kind of world does this technology assume or promote?” “What human activity or capacity does this replace or diminish?” “Is the gain in efficiency worth what might be lost in the process?” And, relatedly, “What are the hidden costs?”

‘These are philosophical questions, but ironically they are also utilitarian questions: they simply ask us to view things with a longer timeline. One of the great problems in the modern world is that people’s attention spans have diminished substantially. What this means is that we have difficulty taking the long view, we would rather have our convenience and our shiny new objects in the short term, rather than waiting (or foregoing them completely if it’s clear that, long-term, they will have a deleterious effect on people and our society)’ (Ibid.).

One of the turning points in this process of dehumanizing technification was the television, the first electronic screen to become all-present in society:

‘“Television is our culture’s principal mode of knowing about itself. Therefore—and this is the critical point— how television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged. It is not merely that on the television screen entertainment is the metaphor for all discourse. It is that off the screen the same metaphor prevails…In courtrooms, classrooms, operating rooms, board rooms, churches and even airplanes, Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas; they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials. For the message of television as metaphor is not only that all the world is a stage but that the stage is located in Las Vegas, Nevada.” (Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 92-93)’ (Quoted by Herman Middleton in ‘When Everything Becomes Entertainment, Nothing Matters,’ hermanmiddleton.substack.com).

The connection to Jeff’s essay isn’t hard to catch.  Television has turned all of life into a sitcom:  Everything exists to entertain us.  So now when we see innocent people being beaten to death, our instinct to intervene is blunted; our conscience is silenced; we take on our accustomed role of passive viewer and await the resolution to the evil from someone or something ‘offstage’.  We have a far a weaker impetus to intervene than if we held to the older Christian view of the world – that every man is a precious and unrepeatable creation of God, that all of us are pricelessly valuable, that each of us will have to answer to God for how he treated his fellow human beings, especially those in need.

If we are going to recover that older, healthier worldview, we are going to have to make some difficult changes about how we view technology:

‘“To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple. Moreover, we have seen enough by now to know that technological changes in our modes of communication are even more ideology-laden than changes in our modes of transportation. Introduce the alphabet to a culture and you change its cognitive habits, its social relations, its notions of community, history and religion. Introduce the printing press with movable type, and you do the same. Introduce speed-of-light transmission of images and you make a cultural revolution. Without a vote. Without polemics. Without guerrilla resistance. Here is ideology, pure if not serene. Here is ideology without words, and all the more powerful for their absence. All that is required to make it stick is a population that devoutly believes in the inevitability of progress. And in this sense, all Americans are Marxists, for we believe nothing if not that history is moving us toward some preordained paradise and that technology is the force behind that movement.” Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 157-158’ (Quoted by Herman Middleton in ‘Progress Is a Lie We Tell Ourselves to Feel Better,’ hermanmiddleton.substack.com).

A more balanced approach to technology is urgently needed.  Technology, especially screen tech, is reprogramming us to be anti-social dopamine addicts who lack the motivation to do anything that requires self-sacrifice.  Innocent people are suffering because of this.

There’s no denying that advanced technology is deeply embedded in our culture (from which some positive benefits have obviously accrued), but we should not let it master us.  ‘All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable.  All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything’ (St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians 6:12).  For too long now, technology has mastered us.  It is time we regained mastery over it.  The salvation of souls and the health of human society and of the broader environment depend upon our doing that.

For those who want to take a step down that path of renewal, Mr Middleton offers a Technology Detox here.