“Technology makes us different people – people who are less inclined to be Catholic,” writes Colin Miller in Church Life Journal. Miller insists he is no luddite. He is merely reminding us that, for better or worse, we human beings are shaped by our actions. Consider how repetition and practice allow us to become proficient in music and sports. This also applies to the moral life. Repetition and practice of certain actions lead to the development of either virtues or vices. “Virtues are holy habits, vices are sinful ones. Christianity is all about becoming a saint, becoming a saint is about cultivating virtues [with the help of grace], and virtues are won by all the little ways we habituate ourselves every day.”
This might sound obvious. But Miller points out that the tools we use in our everyday actions also affect and shape us. There’s no avoiding it, since “what we do with our bodies is the way that we shape our souls.” The tool that probably most shapes us these days is the smart phone, the use of which forms within us an insatiable desire for novelty. “The phone trains me to get bored very easily, and it discourages my ability to focus or think deeply about anything – all I want is the latest trivial update, and that keeps my thinking in the shallow end.” Again, this happens whether we like it or not because of the type of tool the smart phone is and the kind of creature we are. Undisciplined use of the smart phone shapes us in a way that makes us impatient and inattentive to what is happening around us. This inhibits our formation in the virtues necessary to develop a prayer life. It prioritizes in our minds the virtual over the real, which undermines our capacity to live in community with others. It values the future at the expense of the past, which saps us of appreciation for the wisdom contained in tradition and the faith that has been handed down to us from those who came before us. He writes: “Our use of technology is not morally or religiously neutral. The kinds of devices we go about using all day long have a profound effect on the kind of people we are. And of course, that determines everything: what we like to do, who we like to hang out with, even the kinds of things we are likely to believe.” An effect of this, argues Miller, is that “more and more people and especially young people are checking out of the Church. They are simply not interested in it; they are interested in the things their material culture [abetted by the tools they use] makes them love.”
To counteract this, Miller encourages technological asceticism, by which we intentionally limit our use of screens so that we might experience the world differently – more incarnationally. “This real world, this world of flesh and bodies and living souls, is after all the world that the Lord of heaven and earth took to himself by taking on the same flesh, body and soul.” If Miller is right, we would do well to look for ways to cultivate our taste for the real, the embodied, and the sacred by moderating our use of or eschewing altogether those things that rob our interest in them.
posted 7/13/24
The Parish of St. Cecilia-St. Gabriel 