Something Is Wrong

The Nine Contradictions of our Technological Age

We all know something is wrong with the world. But something is wrong with our technologies in particular.

I don’t mean to ignore the benefits of the industrial revolution, but there’s something off-putting about how profile pictures make us image-conscious, how “feeds” make us consumeristic, and how internet connectivity distracts us from life.

As I have focused my reading on technology over the last few years, I have noticed a contrast between the life the technologies want us to live and the life we want to live. Something is off. And as I think about each area where something is off, I recognize something our society lacks. This isn’t a missing slice in a freshly baked pie, it’s salt instead of sugar.

For example, I don’t think there’s ever been a time in history when so many people promoted being empathetic. Whole medical schools are based upon it. Compared to when I was a teenager, it seems commonplace now to talk about mental illness openly, so that you can learn, grow, empathize, etc..

So why, in a world of empathy, do we feel so numb? Is it the way in which we scroll through event after event, emotion after emotion, on social media? When we contribute to “Bell Let’s Talk” days with our stories, are we just participating in a slow decay of human relationship through ephemeral content?

Other things are wrong. People say we should “live-in-the-moment” yet nearly everyone distracts themselves with vibrating notifications. People say we have more autonomy, with unprecedented power to mold and shape our own story, yet we are more anxious then ever. People say, and the New Atheists like Richard Dawkins have argued, that the world is only material. So why does almost everyone still seek after spiritual experiences? Why do so many people think of themselves as spiritual yet live materialistic lives?

The world has never been more prosperous. And yet is there anyone you talk to who doesn’t feel like they’re on the verge of burning out? The contradictions are everywhere.

Technology plays a central role in all of these dilemmas.

I can’t stop thinking about it, what it says about us, and what it says about God.

Two years ago I woke up early in the morning and was unable to fall back to sleep. As I laid there I thought about the growing contradictions in our technological age.

I thought to myself, I want to figure this out. After failing to fall back asleep, I got up and walked over to my phone and tapped it. It was five o’clock. I grabbed a pencil, sat down, and started writing. Maybe this could be a book one day. By the time my kids woke up, I had more or less the following list of nine contradictions. I copied them onto my computer and saved them under a file called, “Something Is Wrong book,” or [[SiW Book]], as shorthand. I’ve continued to edit this over time, grouping the nine contradictions across three categories: Search, Touch, and See.

This is what we all feel in contrast to what we all need. This is What’s Wrong.

Search:

• Distracted in a Live-in-the-Moment World | Loss of Meaning

• Disenchanted in a Spiritual World | Loss of Wonder

• Numb in an Empathetic World | Loss of Affection

Touch:

• Lonely in a Connected World | Loss of Belonging

• Unmotivated and Polarized in an Everywhere-All-At-Once World | Loss of Agency

• Anxious in an Autonomous World | Loss of Peace

See:

• Burnt-Out in a Prosperous World | Loss of Rest

• Selfish in a Sharing World | Loss of Self-Giving

• Judgmental in an Inclusive World | Loss of Truth

Some of these contradictions are cliche. I won’t be the first to say our “always connected” world has left us more lonely and disconnected. But the fact that it’s cliche is the point. We need to reckon with reality.

Two days after I woke up to these ideas I went to church and sang the following line from a hymn:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.

Strangely Dim. That’s it. And that’s the ultimate contrast. The technological world is a strangely dim world, despite all the LED and XDR displays. We need the glory of Jesus. We need his grace.

If I were to write a book on this, perhaps it’d be called: What’s Wrong: How Our Strangely Dim Tech World Yearns For The Light of Heaven.

I believe that recognizing these contrasting desires and unfilled hopes is essential to capture our longing for eternity. We need to see how the lack of what we want reveals what we need. No one has written as beautifully on this in the last few hundred years as C.S. Lewis did in The Weight of Glory.

Lewis said we all recognize something is wrong, and the wrongness points to a rightness. We have a desire for a far off country, but we can be too shy to admit it. He writes:

I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter.

He continues:

These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

How can this not stir you?

Are you not, right now, like I am, trembling at the thought of a world in which all our hopes come true? Does it not inspire you? A world full of meaning, wonder, and beauty. A world where we belong, act with agency, yet always receive peace. A world of rest, of love, and joy. And not just a dreamworld or a movie on a flickering screen, but a real world, one we can touch and see. Imagine no longer searching or scrolling, but finally experiencing truth eternal — and the great secret of our heart revealed.

When I read Jesus’ promise of living water, I think of this world. When I listen to Paul’s sermons in the book of Acts, I imagine this kind of resurrection. When I recall the promise through Haggai of “the Desire of the nation” (Haggai 2:3), I get excited for this reality. As the Teacher said, “He has put eternity in their hearts” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

We all want this world, don’t we?

A YouTuber recently made a video decrying, “Technology isn’t fun anymore.” It seems to have struck a chord, surpassing over three million views.

There is something about technology which will always be lifeless, no matter how incredible ChatGPT poems might become.

In his book,

Samuel D. James

wrote about how the social internet shapes us through habit. We think and act in authenticity, outrage, shame, consumption, and meaninglessness because that is the nature of our digital liturgies.

James writes:

Our addiction to distraction and our struggle against discontentment are both really expressions of the fact that our devices have made us feel elsewhere than we really are. We are split in two, dividing our attention and our lives. And in our quietest, most honest moments, we know the day-in, day-out burden of living this way is not sustainable. It’s not what we’re meant for.

This is late in his book after he has made it clear, in many helpful ways, how the internet shapes us. I read his book a few months after I had been connecting the dots between the nine contradictions above and the human search for heaven. And so a huge smile grew on my face when I read James’ next sentence. It was a huge smile. I think I might have given a fist-punch into the air when I read this:

Here’s the good news: this feeling is itself evidence that we don’t have to live this way. C.S. Lewis believed that our most fundamental desires reveal, even if very partially, higher realities that could satisfy them.

He goes on to quote Lewis, who said:

A man’s physical hunger does not prove that man will get any bread; he may die of starvation on a raft in the Atlantic… But surely a man’s hunger does prove that he comes of a race which repairs its body by eating and inhabits a world where eatable substances exist.

We were made for another world. I was. So were you. You were not ultimately made to read Substack posts through an internet device. You were made for glory. You were made to worship. You were made for Jesus.

Even when your shoulders slump and eyes water, remember your misery reflects a desire for its opposite — joy. It’s the eternity in your heart groaning for the divine. The wrongness in your life reflects your desire for all to be made right. And that is good.

Man is so great that his greatness appears even in the consciousness of his misery. A tree does not know itself to be miserable. It is true that it is misery indeed to know one's self to be miserable; but then it is greatness also. In this way, all man's miseries go to prove his greatness.

- Blaise Pascal

Image created by Full of Eyes.

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Planning Ahead

I have not continued down the path of writing the What’s Wrong book. Well, not quite a book like that. Samuel James’ book, Digital Liturgies, already exists (they just came out with an updated version with discussion questions). And I know that writing a book at that quality is an incredible amount of work. James wrote a great book. Buy it. I chatted with him about the book in an episode for WWJT (my podcast).

Full conversation with Samuel James here.

Instead, I’m going down the path of an aspiring Pastor-Theologian. But I’m not forgetting this theme. My wife has heard me talk about it so much she cuts me off when I start to re-explain it. “The C.S. Lewis made-for-another-world thing” is how I tend to reference it.

One helpful aid in this line of thinking is Blaise Pascal. He seems to get this concept better than most. You can read (or reread) my TGCC article where I interact with his writing here: Exploring The Good in Digital Distractions.

As I continue to work on my PhD thesis, I want to dive deeper into desire and how it relates to technology and idolatry. Perhaps there’s an apologetic angle: the argument from technologically-mediated desire? Perhaps there’s a theological set of questions to answer: how does this fit with Augustine’s inner self? Or with Aquinas’ anthropology? Or with Calvin’s view of the heart? Or with Henri de Lubac’s view of nature? Or Herman Bavinck’s view of general revelation and the subconscious?

Many of you know my thesis aims to determine the extent to which AI Technologies can be said to be idolatrous. There are many potential connections. This is undoubtedly one of them.

Being in my first year, I joke that my ambitions are appropriately audacious, but I may need to narrow my scope at some point. For now, it is an absolute blessing and joy to read and write.

I plan to continue writing publicly in some form, at least once a month. When I write on other websites, I will link to it via this newsletter.

I’d love to explore this theme and the nine contradictions more—so let me know which ones piqued your curiosity. Your thoughts will help shape future posts!

I also will continue to produce podcasts. And I’ll often link to those at the bottom of my posts.

Thanks for reading. Keep on thinking.

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Recent podcasts I’ve produced:

Thinking About The Faith (Links: Website | Apple | Spotify):

• Q8: What is the Law of God Stated in the Ten Commandments?

• Q9: What Does God Require in the First, Second, and Third Commandments?

• Q10: What Does God Require in the Fourth and Fifth Commandments?

What Would Jesus Tech (Links: Website | Apple | Spotify | YouTube):

• A Tech Agenda for the Family, with Brad Littlejohn and Clare Morell

• Multiplying the Word: Growth & Institutions, with Caleb Wait

• Market Mania and Moral Formation, with Dr. Glenn Butner