The fallacy that 'technology is neutral' is one I've tackled again and again in my writing over the years, including several times in this series. It's one of the founding myths of our techno-culture. I don't buy it.
Soon we are all going to have to choose between giving in to the temptation to 'usher' this new thing in, or retreating and refusing to work for it. We will all have to make our own choices.
That technology is neutral is likely the biggest delusion of our time. Made all the more disastrous by being held as "obvious" by those who nominally run things and all of their minions. Or at least that's what they say, they certainly don't *act* as if it is neutral. They act like it will gain them power, profit and prestige. The engine, so to speak, of mundane history.
We will probably have to learn otherwise the hard way.
Definitely agree that tech is not neutral. I sure as hell don't want to work for it. The razor's edge question for me right now is to what extent am I asked to work with it, as a circumstantial good while using something that is overall a source of greater evil than good. That fact that I'm writing here means I still believe that this can be done. But how much, and in what forms?
If belief was the sh*t that you are describing it as, I would wholeheartedly agree with your advice to get rid of it. Any god that one can conjure up, or any god that one needs to use 'mystical occult powers' to conjure up is definitely not worth believing in.
However, I've found that there's a whole lot more to the spiritual world, and to God, than the straw man you've set up here. I can't really address all of that here in this forum....
As regards to tech, I agree that 'the hammer' doesn't need to be ascribed mystical spooky qualities, and that's not my point. But I can't deny that, by in large, engagement with tech has led most human beings away from meaningful intimacy with one another, with their own souls and self-awareness, and with the land. I'd call that evil, as I would anything that serves to drive people away from love, goodness, truth and beauty. There's no need for magic or spirits to make that argument. It seems to me a fairly obvious conclusion from looking at the lives of people around me - and my own direct life experiences.
Yes! The 'Butlerian Jihad' that had taken place thousands of years before the events in Dune - Paul's post reminded me of it too. All thinking machines were destroyed* and a permanent taboo against them remained firmly embedded in human culture.
*A few survived and went into hiding and were to become the ultimate protagonists and major threat to humanity of the whole saga, which Frank Herbert sadly didn't live long enough to complete. Leto's Golden Path was intended to help defend against them, and some of his visions hint at the true threat. More recently the story was finished by his son Brian, based on his father's notes, but alas it's not a great read.
If there isn't a more fully worked out "theology of technology" somewhere, then there should be. I am certainly not equipped to undertake such a project. But I think your comment (and the one about Dune) kind of lays it out. There are tools and technologies and practices which strengthen and develop us in body, mind, soul and spirit and there are those that weaken and sicken us. I completely agree technological progress was a bait and switch. We took the bait of unlimited power and ended up the less for it.
If you haven't already done so, Jack, you might consider Ellul's work, which was an attempt at such a theology. His Presence in the Modern World, recently translated, asks how the Christian might cope with a world dominated by 'technique'. Ellul was writing before the arrival of the Internet but his work has lost none of its pertinence, in my opinion. He thought deeply about the transformative effect of technique (which was more than just technology) on the human spirit.
Yes what is real and what is living will defeat what is unreal and dead. But in the meantime? In the meantime many will willingly die and allow themselves to be eaten/consumed by the Machine. Those of us who see all this can only do one thing - keep living and keep being real authentic humans. Whatever will be will be and we must trust in God to lead us through it all.
Paul, I'd also be interested in hearing your practical thoughts on disciplined use of this tool (the internet). If we're going to engage (I'm not saying all should), what are the practical boundaries to hold? I think about this alot. We're working on some guidelines for our community - only set hours of possible use, no smart phones or wifi, only one community desktop, etc. Haven't got it dialed in yet, but it feels like a very important area to create some external limits.
I'll start off by saying that I'm never totally sure that any engagement with the internet is ultimately worth it - I can imagine a time when we'll just cut the cord (literally) and be done with the thing.
That said, our little project here is trying to help folks make a transition out of the Machine, and part of that has involved having some bridges and interfaces with the system, rather than just going fully out of the electric world. We do have some friends who live that way, and sometimes I long to do the same. We spent about a half year with no internet or phone on-site, but it ended up being rather impractical because we had to drive to the town library any time we needed to email guests or do other business, often related to hospitality and maintaining family relationships. It ironically led to more time in a machine (the car) and less time on our land.
Our community setup is that every long term resident or family unit lives in a small, non-electric dwelling. Our family of 4 has spent the past 5 1/2 years in a 314 square foot yurt. This summer we'll have 3 single folks living in little dwellings out in the woods (a wall tent, a lean-to, and another small shelter). Then, we have a guest house for short-term guests who aren't comfortable camping. It has running water and electricity. We encourage guests who are healthy and comfortable with the outdoors to camp. This helps keep the tech out of the most intimate aspects of our life.
We keep a 180 square foot office in a corner of an outbuilding. It's wired and has phone and internet. We're working to consolidate it to one desktop computer with a cable, rather than laptops. The idea is that necessary business can be done in the office, but that you have to make the conscious decision to go there and do the work, rather than having the internet 'at hand' in a smart phone as an extension of your mind and desire throughout the day.
We're currently working out our 'Rule of Life' that residents and long-term guests follow, and it will include something about relationship with the internet and tech in general. We may set some hourly/time boundaries for internet use as well as the space boundaries we've set up. The general goal is to use it as a tool, when necessary, and to eliminate using it for meeting emotional/psychological desires. We plan to keep discerning how it's aligning with the wider goal of supporting deeper life in Christ.
Right now, I see the primary advantages of using the internet as: 1. Ease of communication with guests, friends, and family. 2. Learning from profound thinkers (via substack, etc) to help intellectually frame our relationship with the wider world, and to research practical information on land management methods, etc. 3. Interacting with a wider community than we would if we were totally off-line. This conversation here is a good example of #3. We've had some wonderful real-world connections that wouldn't have happened without our small online presence - so I can't deny the significant benefits to our project that have come through the interface of tech. Yet, I always want to keep it somewhat yoked to real-world connections.
We also benefit hugely from using electric freezers for food storage, and electric power tools for construction. We're trying to keep developing our systems in ways that we could live without these items if/when it becomes necessary.
It's something I feel we need to remain vigilant about, and continue to discern as time goes on. I do like the idea of regular times of 'internet fasting' as some others have mentioned on this thread - offline on the Sabbath, and then some longer monthly and/or annual times totally away.
On another level, I regularly feel the attraction to using the internet to fill inner emptiness - and it becomes another realm in which to practice asceticism and battling with the passions. Even with the spiritual disciplines it's a battle - and it's almost impossible for me to imagine a sane relationship with the internet without conscious spiritual practice.
Why not on paper? That's an idea we are considering now, with a Dutch group of friends, who are writing about the same issues as you are doing here. Of course it's much more work and harder to realize. But on the other hand: in that way we need to be a community again, with people who print and paste and draw and copy and bring the secret underground newsletter around.
I think it is intoxicating in a very dynamic way because this revolution as Paul stated does feel different than everything else before it and none of us will probably live to see it completed in its full form. After all the information revolution of the printing press probably was not calmed until well after the 1700s. Once it finished its work it gave way to the digital revolution, and that was about 300 years. I think it is intoxicating also because there is so much potential, even from a romantic perspective. While there is a great deal of techno-pessimism that we will drive ourselves to extinction or we won't even be remotely human anymore, there is also the hope that a new world of adventure and wonder and discovery may open up and I think there are many people who crave something like that. Both scientists and poets and adventurers.
As we come closer and closer to a world that feels like science fiction, and believe me, it really does, there is the hope that instead of a monster coming through the portal, we jump through ourselves into a world of mystery, might, and magic.
How do you figure AI offers a "glimmer of hope" to the next generation? You mean that it's gimmicks would compensate for or prevent the death of natural ecosystems?
If anything is going to accelerate the world's descent into a toxic industrial ruin, it's AI.
I can't say I agree with the notion of some AI democracy. Do we demand that everyone has equal access to nuclear codes? It's a trap. There's a reason you can't sleep. It's deisgned to stop us all sleeping.
How sure can we be about this climate disaster? If we really feel it's the end, then we'll embrace anything. But what if it's not? Because nobody knows where this is going.
The question, I think, comes down to whether or not AI--broadly conceived--gives us a net advantage or a net loss. If the latter, then degree of access would not be to one's advantage--even if in the short run it might seem so. At this point, it is still a judgement call, but with more and more evidence for the negative case, as Paul lays out.
I side with those who see the advent of AI as a net loss. Others obviously differ. At the very least, we will have to abide the consequences of our own discernment and choice. And seeing how, as you say, the "elite" are unlikely to relinquish the short-term power accrual of AI--regardless of the actual long term downsides-- we will probably have to suffer the consequences either way, no matter what we choose.
Could you say anything more about how one might go about this? I have the same experience that Optera describes. My heart is open and I pray for guidance, but so far there's only silence.
Thank you Kati, I love every word of this. I have picked up the scent and am trying to follow it but can't find where it's coming from! And I want to figure it out, but of course it doesn't work like that. I long for something like what happened to Paul, but I know it won't happen that way for everyone. It's a good practice, to be OK with not knowing.
Accepting the concept of not knowing is a big step. Orthodoxy thrives on mystery, being content to accept that some things just "are" and cannot be explained.
It’s a normal human impulse to want to find a reward for our efforts, for seeking. I’ve had long dry spells myself where prayer is numb and without feeling. I’ve had times when God felt very far away from me and out of reach. But it’s the people I’ve met and known in my life that love Him deeply that have always helped me to persevere. They are His signposts along the way. We seek Him because He is grand and mysterious but often (especially when life is difficult or times are dark) we must open ourselves to finding Him in the real people we know and love in life. I’ve been fortunate to have had many very faithful Christians in my life that have shown me both His love and that He is real as well as taught me how to persevere even when prayer is dry and my heart feels numb.
Those faithful souls have guided me along the path towards Him. They’ve been there all along and all I had to do was to accept that He gives us people and nature and beauty and often that is enough. A whole life spent in pursuit of Him thinking you’ll feel His presence in some grand mystical way can often leave you with doubts. But a life spent humbly accepting the small wonders afforded to us can help us to push on to the very end - and it’s this final perseverance that will assure us that we WILL in fact see His face and know Him forever and ever.
Thank you, all of this is helpful. It's hard because I am firmly embedded in a very secular family and don't really know any Christians. And am not free on Sundays to visit local churches in search of community, so it's alone and with books that I'm searching. Definitely not ideal, but even words online like yours inspire me to persevere. And I appreciate hearing that I don't need to have a grand mystical experience, that it can be more humble.
Been there, sister! Silence is painful, but trust me, silence is a good sign -- we need even more silence, not less; God is not some ego in the sky yacking. "Silence is the language of God" the great Jalal al-Din Rumi said. "The wellspring and destiny of these ritual Sabbaths, though, is a deeper Sabbath—the 'Sabbath of the heart'—what we Orthodox call hesychia, or holy silence—'the heart's stillness, unbroken by any thought.' This is a Sabbath 'beyond religion,' kept also by birds and flowers and all living things, not just once a week, nor once every seven years, but in an ever-present Now," the not-so-great me said in The Sunlilies, just some whatever-book.
Yes, thank you for these reminders that silence is holy. I have been wanting to read Sunlilies for some time, but at New Years made a commitment not to buy anything for myself for one year. Save a copy for me and I will order it on January 1 next year!
Rachel, which country are you in? I'd be more than happy to send you my copy if you're in the UK. It's a book you must read if youre looking to find the sacred in everyday life. I found it integral to myself accepting my Christianity.
That is kind of you, Andrew. I'm in the US though, and am enjoying this practice of not giving myself the things I want right away. Although, what you say makes me think this book should be classed as a necessity, in which case....
I too have been listening to Townes Van Zandt almost daily after work. The album Rear View Mirror is the one I have obsessed over. It’s a live album. The cut of Waiting Around to Die is how he is meant to be heard. The entire track is so beautiful. I just watched a documentary on him. His voice and the guitar playing is top notch, accompanied with a violinist or fiddle.
Yes, we're basically already there. Soon most social media and large parts of the internet will largely be made up of AI talking to itself in an unending loop. AI generated listicles on Buzzfeed going viral on social media algorithms powered by AI where, eventually, AI generated art and text, learning from the algorithms, will become their own virality machine as they learn from already viral AI art and text so the front page of the internet, or at least the first things we as human engage with online, will be AI generated.
My hope is that this will just break the internet and make it essentially worthless.
My most pressing fear with regard to AI is how it's made propaganda free and effortless.
Maybe it'll be like Chernobyl -- after the runaway AI-to-AI chain reaction, dump a bunch of concrete on the internet, and then wolves come back & live high off the ruins.
Yes, I also think this is already happening. We have enough trust problems as it is, with dishonest governments, media and ongoing culture wars. Add AI into the mix and very soon - in a matter of months - it will not be possible to know whether anything you see or hear is real. If this leads people to turn off, so much the better.
I doubt that will matter much, in terms of consumption or use of the internet. Many are already skeptical of the truthiness of much of what they read online for other reasons unrelated to AI, but they still live very online. And as for the "normies"... as long as it is entertaining and engaging, they will gladly consume.
It's kind of either/or, I think. Either it's on the creepy side of the "uncanny valley" (which means we can tell it's fake) and it isn't able to fool us, or it's on the credible side, in which case many people simply won't care whether it is fake or not. I honestly think the hope that this will cause internet use to fall off a cliff is quite unlikely to be fulfilled.
Since technology is barreling ahead at a pace far outpacing what society, culture, and politics can develop, I wouldn't be surprised if there are (semi-)official efforts to "force" belief in some of what we see on the internet. That news story that was partially cobbled together by AI? If you doubt it's true, perhaps you're a weird conspiracist. That change to church doctrine that was based on recommendations partially compiled by an AI? You might be a heretic, or at least, unfaithful to your creed. And so on.
I suspect it's not possible to re-bottle the genie. I just can't see a way out....
So then, the question that arises for me is what, or rather, Who, is still unfathomably larger than the gollum that is being created? And how do we align with that Reality to face the genie while remaining sane?
I've answered above but will again here. I think the answer is juggling. Literally. Hear me out (& Paul I know you will get this)).... Does anyone remember model Cara Delevingne's story about when she was attacked by Harvey Weinstein during one of his private meetings with potential talent? Unlike other victims who ran or cried or screamed (or sadly succumbed) she jumped up off the couch and started singing and tap dancing. It's a heartbreaking scenario to describe but I think her survival mechanism choosing that particular expression as a form of defensive was simple genius. Think about it. She shocked him, for one. Secondly, she was being creative and this, as a force, has power. Thirdly, it's the trickster at work, and for the good/greater good. So why juggling? Today I had my two little neighbours over and grabbed three passionfruit from my fruit bowl. I remembered in my teens I had a year where I learned to juggle and juggled a lot. So I did. Today in a tiny kitchen in the Southern Highlands of NSW, Australia I juggled three passionfruit and I felt (in real time) a lovely force flow through me AND identified it as the opposing force to what I experience staring at my phone &/or laptop. So whatever your 'juggling' might be, I think it's the creative human spirit as made manifest through the physical body that is our greatest defence against the runaway genie running a muck and likely not going back into any bottle any time soon.
Yes!!!! Don't play the expected game, don't think you are the victim or underdog - make the whatever it is thingie dance to your tune instead. Or at least don't even engage with its frequency - do your own thing and it won't have anything to attach itself to. I'm rubbish at juggling but I can sing loudly :).
Ah, utilize one's Right Hemisphere of their brain - as Iain McGilchrist would say - the creative part that perceives the whole situation and can respond accordingly. I see no other way...
I wanted to add - I pray for young people. They are consumed by their phones and technology and sadly are really not living. It is difficult to even carry on a conversation with him as they are more interested in checking their messages, news, FB, Twitter, etc. It makes me crazy as human connection is way more important than any of the above and yet they can't see it.
I feel this too. I try and speculate that their paths somehow warrant a default of dissociation and one that they will triumphantly overcome. i.e 'analogue' becomes the new black.
Yes. If the rough beast that is shuffling toward us is the AntiChrist, and it may be, there is no human solution. In Christ we find freedom from the drive for power, money, and pleasure.
The false idols we set up are exposed and knocked down as the traps they are. In Christ is thing that we really hunger for, genuine selfless love embodied in a true, holy, wise, self-giving person, God incarnate. Who else is worthy of our worship?
The Second Coming
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
This poem, from Yeats, one of those early 20th C. occultists, is one of the most succinct and beautiful descriptions of our dilemma. It, and Marshal McCluhan’s Understanding Media, come back around from my college days. I remember how excited all my humanist, Marxist professors (who were not all of my professors) were about ringing in what was new and especially ringing out our Christian past. Even then, the world was getting ripe for what we are up against now, and even decades before my entrance into Holy Orthodoxy, I felt myself providentially resisting it. We don’t know what will happen to us, but we are seeing, if we look, the need for us to lean into Christ like our lives depend on it, because they do.
"The U.S. Department of Defense".... yep, that ties in with Marshall McLuhan's perception of imploding Western... empire and consciousness. Before the Roman empire "collapsed" the architectural structure of the Middle Ages was already in place as a series of relatively small cities behind big walls... to defend them. If I understand the phenomenon correctly.
I share your concerns. But on the other hand - if I were a Silicon Valley tech type, talking up the capabilities of AI would be part of my media hype strategy, in the same way that I would have been telling people 15 years ago that in 15 years’ time we’d all be driving driverless cars. Do we believe the hype?
I currently am far more concerned about what the internet is doing to our minds than I am what ChatGPT is capable of. I might be proved wrong, of course.
With all that said, the Bible is full of examples of what happens when people start worshipping things that aren’t God. It isn’t pretty. Our culture evidently worships technology, and specifically the screen. That, it is now evident, isn’t pretty either. The call to Christians I am afraid surely has to be to evangelise. We don’t like it because it scares us and we know society is hostile. But I think the answer has to be to worship God again. The most radical suggestion of all.
I wonder if the truly Satanic element of it lies in its convincing large swathes of people that there isn’t really anything all that special about human beings and we’re basically just complex algorithms ourselves. A lot of people seem to have fallen for that notion.
Thanks. I'm not just writing here about AI though, but about the whole Internet and what it is. AI is just the latest manifestation of something much bigger. It's been going on for a long time.
St. Don Bosco had a vision where he saw a dark box in every living whereby the devil entered in. It started there, and it comes sweetened with good content and subtly bad content. It is much more intense with cell phones available everywhere and the internet.
This was a fantastic read! After our conversation my mind has been labouring to find a way to redeem this, to no avail. I woke up yesterday morning thinking about deception. This is where things get really tricky. I think the first deception will be to think we can redeem this kind of technology. Certainly we have the physical and mental fortitude to beat weapons into ploughshares but this is something entirely other. Thank you. Look forward to part two.
If you're going to read Steiner, then please, please read James Hillman, Jungian teacher & writer, especially his 'A Terrible Love of War,' & 'The thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World' to begin with to explore the source of the "demons" within us, not "out there."
Hi Paul, you say it's obvious, now that is a very biblical thought, but when I look around I find it hard to distinguish between psychological causes inside and demonic causes outside. Do you have experiences in this? Why is it obvious?
Even when Gollem speaks (to the NY Times for example) I hear echos of empty people and technicians and angry teenagers and shallow journalists who provide the big data that Gollem is quoting from.
And to go back to McLuhan: I don't know if this technology it is an extension of our conciousness or just an extension of the digital part in our minds.
For what it's worth, Harari traces a straight line from the invention of writing simultaneous with the invention of empire -- at first, just a form of numerical data storage on clay tablets, because managing the complexities of empire became too much for bodily memories alone -- to the invention of highly-distributed, shapeshifting collective form of writing known as the internet. It's not an explanation, just an alternative description of the feeling that the evolution of technology -- from empire, to data storage, to writing, to internet, to generative AI -- has a life of its own, but I find Berdayev's thoughts on the "inner apocalypse of history" helpful: "Man is compelled to realize that the processes of history are fatal, inhuman forces, quite indifferent to his fate, forces as merciless as they are non-human. We find this merciless non-humanity in the history of the formation of states and empires, in the struggles of tribes and nations, in revolutions and reactions, in wars, in the industrial-capitalistic process and flowering of states and peoples, in the very formation and development of civilization. Evidently, the means with which history operates...cannot be humanized.. [But in the Christian vision], every single human soul has more meaning and value than the whole of history with its empires, its wars and revolutions, its blossoming and fading civilizations. And because of this, the break with history is inevitable—a judgment upon history must be passed."
Is it possible that the filioque is a very important heresy in this respect, given its crystallisation of the idea that spirit might go forth out of word?
I doubt if the filioque would have been considered a heresy had it not been dogmatized in the West. Had it remained simply a Latin theologoumenon, which is how it started out, it would not have become such a bone of contention. I think that the Orthodox disagreements with Rome lay largely in our rejection of certain broad aspects of the Augustinian legacy, primarily in the areas of anthropology and soteriology.
In terms of the subject at hand however, I'm inclined to believe that the chief culprit was nominalism. The best short summary of the problem that I've run across comes from the great American literary and cultural critic Marion Montgomery:
"What is effected by Nominalism, as it is appropriated out of Occam's intricate arguments, is an instrument of power over nature justified on the authority of autonomous intellect, whereby the Platonic idea of the transcendent model is presumed a creation by autonomous intellect itself through its signs [i.e., words -- M.M. makes this apparent earlier in the essay], as first divorced from but then in turn imposed upon nature. In the Christian tradition, nature is created and therefore both dependent upon and from its Creator. Hence my epithet of Modernism as an inverted Platonism, in which reality becomes dependent upon autonomous intellect itself. It follows at last from this gnostic assumption that truth itself is that which is decreed by intellect. By the power of autonomous intellect, then, such truth is made universal -- according, of course, to the extent of power exercised by the particular universalizing, autonomous intellect. This is to say that a principle, subjectively authorized, becomes a dogma to be imposed as a limit against rival intellectual subjectivisms, an ideology to be established by force if necessary, providing only that there is a sufficient power for its enforcement."
Grasp that paragraph and I think you have a very good idea of what's been going on. For 500 years we have used our "autonomous intellect" to dominate nature, which has been viewed as mere matter. Now at long last we have begun to turn that intellect against ourselves.
I think that you and the author you cite are right about writing. We may have already talked about this on Paul's site. As someone who spent many hours on both sides of the couch in psychoanalysis, I learned how powerful the... Verb is, and how powerful the effects of language's structure are in and on us. One of the problems comes from the fact that words, whether written or pronounced ones, are.... images. We could say that written words are... graven images, couldn't we, now ?
For sure, it is Man INCARNATed, which means, translated ? into flesh and blood who is capable of mercy. The very idea of INCARNATion is inseparable from flesh and blood, and flesh and blood are material, and inspired by the breath of life. Machines, while material... are not inspired by the breath of life. If Paul is talking about artificial intelligence, and the mechanical machines, he could maybe compare our actions in this domain to our actions in attempting to create flesh and blood life in a laboratory setting, for example.
I like what I wrote above about the idea of Man incarnate as being capable of mercy. Being incarnated means being assigned within the domain, the limits of a physical body, with all the constraints that that entails. We do not see each other the same way in a crowd or outside of one. Alone on a hiking path, or in the middle of a big city in the rush hour.
The paradox of the singular, the particular and the category ? I often refer to the unction of the anonymous woman (at Bethany) which... ushers in the Passion in the Gospels.
If you look closely at this incident in the four gospels, in its different forms, it is talking about this... insoluble paradox.
The paradox lies in the fact ? that you cannot see the general and the particular at the same time, from the same perspective/place. But they are both important, and to neglect one is to put the other in danger, no ?
Perhaps this has been moving in this direction since the Garden of Eden. The words of the serpent to Eve and her response sound chillingly like an algorithm.
I do feel that one benefit of our times is that they are making the spiritual contest increasingly clear - live in/under the mystery of God, or try to become 'as dods'. Humility vs. pride. Surrender vs. control. Self-emptying vs. self-will. Deification through faith vs. 'making god(s)' through tech. I suppose the choices were always there, but these times do seem to make them more explicit.
Hi Claudia, was it me you wanted further clarification from? Here is a quote from the original piece - “‘First contact’ was the emergence of social media, in which algorithms were used to manipulate our attention and divert it towards the screens and the corporations behind them.” The article goes on to ask what is behind the technology. I suggest the same thing is behind technology that was behind the whisper in Eve’s ear. It’s not even that well disguised. Like the algorithm of the computer popping up a product on your computer after hearing you talk about going to dinner with a friend, and like Eve you see it is pleasing to the eye and good to eat, so without thinking you place an order, or as the original article suggests, you keep scrolling thinking there may be more you need. But I would take the article one step further and suggest the desire to create an AI that is beyond algorithm influence, is itself, the desire, a result of algorithms leading the programmers into the need for more.
Here's hoping you're right ...
The fallacy that 'technology is neutral' is one I've tackled again and again in my writing over the years, including several times in this series. It's one of the founding myths of our techno-culture. I don't buy it.
Soon we are all going to have to choose between giving in to the temptation to 'usher' this new thing in, or retreating and refusing to work for it. We will all have to make our own choices.
That technology is neutral is likely the biggest delusion of our time. Made all the more disastrous by being held as "obvious" by those who nominally run things and all of their minions. Or at least that's what they say, they certainly don't *act* as if it is neutral. They act like it will gain them power, profit and prestige. The engine, so to speak, of mundane history.
We will probably have to learn otherwise the hard way.
Paul, Jack,
Definitely agree that tech is not neutral. I sure as hell don't want to work for it. The razor's edge question for me right now is to what extent am I asked to work with it, as a circumstantial good while using something that is overall a source of greater evil than good. That fact that I'm writing here means I still believe that this can be done. But how much, and in what forms?
I'm looking forward to the next essay, Paul!
If belief was the sh*t that you are describing it as, I would wholeheartedly agree with your advice to get rid of it. Any god that one can conjure up, or any god that one needs to use 'mystical occult powers' to conjure up is definitely not worth believing in.
However, I've found that there's a whole lot more to the spiritual world, and to God, than the straw man you've set up here. I can't really address all of that here in this forum....
As regards to tech, I agree that 'the hammer' doesn't need to be ascribed mystical spooky qualities, and that's not my point. But I can't deny that, by in large, engagement with tech has led most human beings away from meaningful intimacy with one another, with their own souls and self-awareness, and with the land. I'd call that evil, as I would anything that serves to drive people away from love, goodness, truth and beauty. There's no need for magic or spirits to make that argument. It seems to me a fairly obvious conclusion from looking at the lives of people around me - and my own direct life experiences.
I recently saw about a device using 80,000 mouse brain cells. The horror.
Yes! The 'Butlerian Jihad' that had taken place thousands of years before the events in Dune - Paul's post reminded me of it too. All thinking machines were destroyed* and a permanent taboo against them remained firmly embedded in human culture.
*A few survived and went into hiding and were to become the ultimate protagonists and major threat to humanity of the whole saga, which Frank Herbert sadly didn't live long enough to complete. Leto's Golden Path was intended to help defend against them, and some of his visions hint at the true threat. More recently the story was finished by his son Brian, based on his father's notes, but alas it's not a great read.
If there isn't a more fully worked out "theology of technology" somewhere, then there should be. I am certainly not equipped to undertake such a project. But I think your comment (and the one about Dune) kind of lays it out. There are tools and technologies and practices which strengthen and develop us in body, mind, soul and spirit and there are those that weaken and sicken us. I completely agree technological progress was a bait and switch. We took the bait of unlimited power and ended up the less for it.
If you haven't already done so, Jack, you might consider Ellul's work, which was an attempt at such a theology. His Presence in the Modern World, recently translated, asks how the Christian might cope with a world dominated by 'technique'. Ellul was writing before the arrival of the Internet but his work has lost none of its pertinence, in my opinion. He thought deeply about the transformative effect of technique (which was more than just technology) on the human spirit.
Yes what is real and what is living will defeat what is unreal and dead. But in the meantime? In the meantime many will willingly die and allow themselves to be eaten/consumed by the Machine. Those of us who see all this can only do one thing - keep living and keep being real authentic humans. Whatever will be will be and we must trust in God to lead us through it all.
Ha, my thought exactly. I'm ready to shut it off but I'd miss this and a couple others.
I have considered it. I might. We'll see.
A Wild Christianity Magazine!!!
I would subscribe, anyway.
Paul, I'd also be interested in hearing your practical thoughts on disciplined use of this tool (the internet). If we're going to engage (I'm not saying all should), what are the practical boundaries to hold? I think about this alot. We're working on some guidelines for our community - only set hours of possible use, no smart phones or wifi, only one community desktop, etc. Haven't got it dialed in yet, but it feels like a very important area to create some external limits.
Hold on for the next essay. But I'd very much like to hear your thoughts in the meantime.
I'll start off by saying that I'm never totally sure that any engagement with the internet is ultimately worth it - I can imagine a time when we'll just cut the cord (literally) and be done with the thing.
That said, our little project here is trying to help folks make a transition out of the Machine, and part of that has involved having some bridges and interfaces with the system, rather than just going fully out of the electric world. We do have some friends who live that way, and sometimes I long to do the same. We spent about a half year with no internet or phone on-site, but it ended up being rather impractical because we had to drive to the town library any time we needed to email guests or do other business, often related to hospitality and maintaining family relationships. It ironically led to more time in a machine (the car) and less time on our land.
Our community setup is that every long term resident or family unit lives in a small, non-electric dwelling. Our family of 4 has spent the past 5 1/2 years in a 314 square foot yurt. This summer we'll have 3 single folks living in little dwellings out in the woods (a wall tent, a lean-to, and another small shelter). Then, we have a guest house for short-term guests who aren't comfortable camping. It has running water and electricity. We encourage guests who are healthy and comfortable with the outdoors to camp. This helps keep the tech out of the most intimate aspects of our life.
We keep a 180 square foot office in a corner of an outbuilding. It's wired and has phone and internet. We're working to consolidate it to one desktop computer with a cable, rather than laptops. The idea is that necessary business can be done in the office, but that you have to make the conscious decision to go there and do the work, rather than having the internet 'at hand' in a smart phone as an extension of your mind and desire throughout the day.
We're currently working out our 'Rule of Life' that residents and long-term guests follow, and it will include something about relationship with the internet and tech in general. We may set some hourly/time boundaries for internet use as well as the space boundaries we've set up. The general goal is to use it as a tool, when necessary, and to eliminate using it for meeting emotional/psychological desires. We plan to keep discerning how it's aligning with the wider goal of supporting deeper life in Christ.
Right now, I see the primary advantages of using the internet as: 1. Ease of communication with guests, friends, and family. 2. Learning from profound thinkers (via substack, etc) to help intellectually frame our relationship with the wider world, and to research practical information on land management methods, etc. 3. Interacting with a wider community than we would if we were totally off-line. This conversation here is a good example of #3. We've had some wonderful real-world connections that wouldn't have happened without our small online presence - so I can't deny the significant benefits to our project that have come through the interface of tech. Yet, I always want to keep it somewhat yoked to real-world connections.
We also benefit hugely from using electric freezers for food storage, and electric power tools for construction. We're trying to keep developing our systems in ways that we could live without these items if/when it becomes necessary.
It's something I feel we need to remain vigilant about, and continue to discern as time goes on. I do like the idea of regular times of 'internet fasting' as some others have mentioned on this thread - offline on the Sabbath, and then some longer monthly and/or annual times totally away.
On another level, I regularly feel the attraction to using the internet to fill inner emptiness - and it becomes another realm in which to practice asceticism and battling with the passions. Even with the spiritual disciplines it's a battle - and it's almost impossible for me to imagine a sane relationship with the internet without conscious spiritual practice.
Mark- You are on the ground working it out. I would also be interested in what you come up with. -Jack
The practical boundaries are the Middle Path. Whether using technology or making dinner, one should do so while
On the Middle Path. The practical boundaries were first articulated 2,600 years ago.
Why not on paper? That's an idea we are considering now, with a Dutch group of friends, who are writing about the same issues as you are doing here. Of course it's much more work and harder to realize. But on the other hand: in that way we need to be a community again, with people who print and paste and draw and copy and bring the secret underground newsletter around.
My wife and I printed up this latest essay and read it over breakfast (while our son read Calvin and Hobbes, which helped balance the mood).
I think it is intoxicating in a very dynamic way because this revolution as Paul stated does feel different than everything else before it and none of us will probably live to see it completed in its full form. After all the information revolution of the printing press probably was not calmed until well after the 1700s. Once it finished its work it gave way to the digital revolution, and that was about 300 years. I think it is intoxicating also because there is so much potential, even from a romantic perspective. While there is a great deal of techno-pessimism that we will drive ourselves to extinction or we won't even be remotely human anymore, there is also the hope that a new world of adventure and wonder and discovery may open up and I think there are many people who crave something like that. Both scientists and poets and adventurers.
As we come closer and closer to a world that feels like science fiction, and believe me, it really does, there is the hope that instead of a monster coming through the portal, we jump through ourselves into a world of mystery, might, and magic.
How do you figure AI offers a "glimmer of hope" to the next generation? You mean that it's gimmicks would compensate for or prevent the death of natural ecosystems?
If anything is going to accelerate the world's descent into a toxic industrial ruin, it's AI.
I can't say I agree with the notion of some AI democracy. Do we demand that everyone has equal access to nuclear codes? It's a trap. There's a reason you can't sleep. It's deisgned to stop us all sleeping.
How sure can we be about this climate disaster? If we really feel it's the end, then we'll embrace anything. But what if it's not? Because nobody knows where this is going.
A hyper-capitalism and nano-oligarchy, if anything.
The question, I think, comes down to whether or not AI--broadly conceived--gives us a net advantage or a net loss. If the latter, then degree of access would not be to one's advantage--even if in the short run it might seem so. At this point, it is still a judgement call, but with more and more evidence for the negative case, as Paul lays out.
I side with those who see the advent of AI as a net loss. Others obviously differ. At the very least, we will have to abide the consequences of our own discernment and choice. And seeing how, as you say, the "elite" are unlikely to relinquish the short-term power accrual of AI--regardless of the actual long term downsides-- we will probably have to suffer the consequences either way, no matter what we choose.
He most definitely wants you. Seek Him. Never cease. That’s your mission. Seek Him to the bitter end.
Could you say anything more about how one might go about this? I have the same experience that Optera describes. My heart is open and I pray for guidance, but so far there's only silence.
Thank you Kati, I love every word of this. I have picked up the scent and am trying to follow it but can't find where it's coming from! And I want to figure it out, but of course it doesn't work like that. I long for something like what happened to Paul, but I know it won't happen that way for everyone. It's a good practice, to be OK with not knowing.
Accepting the concept of not knowing is a big step. Orthodoxy thrives on mystery, being content to accept that some things just "are" and cannot be explained.
It’s a normal human impulse to want to find a reward for our efforts, for seeking. I’ve had long dry spells myself where prayer is numb and without feeling. I’ve had times when God felt very far away from me and out of reach. But it’s the people I’ve met and known in my life that love Him deeply that have always helped me to persevere. They are His signposts along the way. We seek Him because He is grand and mysterious but often (especially when life is difficult or times are dark) we must open ourselves to finding Him in the real people we know and love in life. I’ve been fortunate to have had many very faithful Christians in my life that have shown me both His love and that He is real as well as taught me how to persevere even when prayer is dry and my heart feels numb.
Those faithful souls have guided me along the path towards Him. They’ve been there all along and all I had to do was to accept that He gives us people and nature and beauty and often that is enough. A whole life spent in pursuit of Him thinking you’ll feel His presence in some grand mystical way can often leave you with doubts. But a life spent humbly accepting the small wonders afforded to us can help us to push on to the very end - and it’s this final perseverance that will assure us that we WILL in fact see His face and know Him forever and ever.
Thank you, all of this is helpful. It's hard because I am firmly embedded in a very secular family and don't really know any Christians. And am not free on Sundays to visit local churches in search of community, so it's alone and with books that I'm searching. Definitely not ideal, but even words online like yours inspire me to persevere. And I appreciate hearing that I don't need to have a grand mystical experience, that it can be more humble.
Been there, sister! Silence is painful, but trust me, silence is a good sign -- we need even more silence, not less; God is not some ego in the sky yacking. "Silence is the language of God" the great Jalal al-Din Rumi said. "The wellspring and destiny of these ritual Sabbaths, though, is a deeper Sabbath—the 'Sabbath of the heart'—what we Orthodox call hesychia, or holy silence—'the heart's stillness, unbroken by any thought.' This is a Sabbath 'beyond religion,' kept also by birds and flowers and all living things, not just once a week, nor once every seven years, but in an ever-present Now," the not-so-great me said in The Sunlilies, just some whatever-book.
Yes, thank you for these reminders that silence is holy. I have been wanting to read Sunlilies for some time, but at New Years made a commitment not to buy anything for myself for one year. Save a copy for me and I will order it on January 1 next year!
Rachel, which country are you in? I'd be more than happy to send you my copy if you're in the UK. It's a book you must read if youre looking to find the sacred in everyday life. I found it integral to myself accepting my Christianity.
That is kind of you, Andrew. I'm in the US though, and am enjoying this practice of not giving myself the things I want right away. Although, what you say makes me think this book should be classed as a necessity, in which case....
I too have been listening to Townes Van Zandt almost daily after work. The album Rear View Mirror is the one I have obsessed over. It’s a live album. The cut of Waiting Around to Die is how he is meant to be heard. The entire track is so beautiful. I just watched a documentary on him. His voice and the guitar playing is top notch, accompanied with a violinist or fiddle.
Yes, we're basically already there. Soon most social media and large parts of the internet will largely be made up of AI talking to itself in an unending loop. AI generated listicles on Buzzfeed going viral on social media algorithms powered by AI where, eventually, AI generated art and text, learning from the algorithms, will become their own virality machine as they learn from already viral AI art and text so the front page of the internet, or at least the first things we as human engage with online, will be AI generated.
My hope is that this will just break the internet and make it essentially worthless.
My most pressing fear with regard to AI is how it's made propaganda free and effortless.
I wrote a bit about it here: https://radicaledward.substack.com/p/democracy-is-not-ready-for-pope-in
Maybe it'll be like Chernobyl -- after the runaway AI-to-AI chain reaction, dump a bunch of concrete on the internet, and then wolves come back & live high off the ruins.
Bring on the cement!
Yes, I also think this is already happening. We have enough trust problems as it is, with dishonest governments, media and ongoing culture wars. Add AI into the mix and very soon - in a matter of months - it will not be possible to know whether anything you see or hear is real. If this leads people to turn off, so much the better.
Please get your next essay in before that happens!
The phrase you quote "reality collapse" really captures that well
I doubt that will matter much, in terms of consumption or use of the internet. Many are already skeptical of the truthiness of much of what they read online for other reasons unrelated to AI, but they still live very online. And as for the "normies"... as long as it is entertaining and engaging, they will gladly consume.
It's kind of either/or, I think. Either it's on the creepy side of the "uncanny valley" (which means we can tell it's fake) and it isn't able to fool us, or it's on the credible side, in which case many people simply won't care whether it is fake or not. I honestly think the hope that this will cause internet use to fall off a cliff is quite unlikely to be fulfilled.
Since technology is barreling ahead at a pace far outpacing what society, culture, and politics can develop, I wouldn't be surprised if there are (semi-)official efforts to "force" belief in some of what we see on the internet. That news story that was partially cobbled together by AI? If you doubt it's true, perhaps you're a weird conspiracist. That change to church doctrine that was based on recommendations partially compiled by an AI? You might be a heretic, or at least, unfaithful to your creed. And so on.
Might we see the return of print media I wonder!?
Somewhat like the unpleasant question of belling a cat, how does one get that particular genie back into the bottle?
I suspect that one has to square up to the genie.
Square?
Square up = british expression meaning prepare to fight
I could snarl and hiss and fold back my ears, but I doubt it would do any good.
I'm not even sure whom to hiss at.
Am I hearing a bell ringing or is it my imagination?
To carry on the fairy tale metaphor, I suppose the correct 'magic word' might do the trick.
I suspect it's not possible to re-bottle the genie. I just can't see a way out....
So then, the question that arises for me is what, or rather, Who, is still unfathomably larger than the gollum that is being created? And how do we align with that Reality to face the genie while remaining sane?
Buddha-nature is unfathomably larger. The Middle Path is the only path.
"...remaining sane?..." I was thinking more about the challenge of remaining alive. Those robot dogs don't look at all friendly to me.
I've answered above but will again here. I think the answer is juggling. Literally. Hear me out (& Paul I know you will get this)).... Does anyone remember model Cara Delevingne's story about when she was attacked by Harvey Weinstein during one of his private meetings with potential talent? Unlike other victims who ran or cried or screamed (or sadly succumbed) she jumped up off the couch and started singing and tap dancing. It's a heartbreaking scenario to describe but I think her survival mechanism choosing that particular expression as a form of defensive was simple genius. Think about it. She shocked him, for one. Secondly, she was being creative and this, as a force, has power. Thirdly, it's the trickster at work, and for the good/greater good. So why juggling? Today I had my two little neighbours over and grabbed three passionfruit from my fruit bowl. I remembered in my teens I had a year where I learned to juggle and juggled a lot. So I did. Today in a tiny kitchen in the Southern Highlands of NSW, Australia I juggled three passionfruit and I felt (in real time) a lovely force flow through me AND identified it as the opposing force to what I experience staring at my phone &/or laptop. So whatever your 'juggling' might be, I think it's the creative human spirit as made manifest through the physical body that is our greatest defence against the runaway genie running a muck and likely not going back into any bottle any time soon.
Yes!!!! Don't play the expected game, don't think you are the victim or underdog - make the whatever it is thingie dance to your tune instead. Or at least don't even engage with its frequency - do your own thing and it won't have anything to attach itself to. I'm rubbish at juggling but I can sing loudly :).
Ah, utilize one's Right Hemisphere of their brain - as Iain McGilchrist would say - the creative part that perceives the whole situation and can respond accordingly. I see no other way...
Thank you for sharing this - that is fantastic. We are here to "LIVE" and staring at our computers/phones for a long time is not living......
I wanted to add - I pray for young people. They are consumed by their phones and technology and sadly are really not living. It is difficult to even carry on a conversation with him as they are more interested in checking their messages, news, FB, Twitter, etc. It makes me crazy as human connection is way more important than any of the above and yet they can't see it.
I feel this too. I try and speculate that their paths somehow warrant a default of dissociation and one that they will triumphantly overcome. i.e 'analogue' becomes the new black.
following Christ?
Yes. If the rough beast that is shuffling toward us is the AntiChrist, and it may be, there is no human solution. In Christ we find freedom from the drive for power, money, and pleasure.
The false idols we set up are exposed and knocked down as the traps they are. In Christ is thing that we really hunger for, genuine selfless love embodied in a true, holy, wise, self-giving person, God incarnate. Who else is worthy of our worship?
The Second Coming
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
This poem, from Yeats, one of those early 20th C. occultists, is one of the most succinct and beautiful descriptions of our dilemma. It, and Marshal McCluhan’s Understanding Media, come back around from my college days. I remember how excited all my humanist, Marxist professors (who were not all of my professors) were about ringing in what was new and especially ringing out our Christian past. Even then, the world was getting ripe for what we are up against now, and even decades before my entrance into Holy Orthodoxy, I felt myself providentially resisting it. We don’t know what will happen to us, but we are seeing, if we look, the need for us to lean into Christ like our lives depend on it, because they do.
For non-Christians, there will be Antichrist. But the Fathers have said that for Christians, there is no Antichrist, only Christ.
And I write this after being flabbergasted at the degree of God's providence in my life recently; sorry, I can't say more about this.
I agree! Also the entity that "ushered in" the internet was the U.S. Department of Defense, and that's a fact of life. I recently wrote this one. https://takecontrol.substack.com/p/internet-surveillance-and-censorship
"The U.S. Department of Defense".... yep, that ties in with Marshall McLuhan's perception of imploding Western... empire and consciousness. Before the Roman empire "collapsed" the architectural structure of the Middle Ages was already in place as a series of relatively small cities behind big walls... to defend them. If I understand the phenomenon correctly.
A must read for anyone who hasn't done so yet:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/guide-understanding-hoax-century-thirteen-ways-looking-disinformation
I share your concerns. But on the other hand - if I were a Silicon Valley tech type, talking up the capabilities of AI would be part of my media hype strategy, in the same way that I would have been telling people 15 years ago that in 15 years’ time we’d all be driving driverless cars. Do we believe the hype?
I currently am far more concerned about what the internet is doing to our minds than I am what ChatGPT is capable of. I might be proved wrong, of course.
With all that said, the Bible is full of examples of what happens when people start worshipping things that aren’t God. It isn’t pretty. Our culture evidently worships technology, and specifically the screen. That, it is now evident, isn’t pretty either. The call to Christians I am afraid surely has to be to evangelise. We don’t like it because it scares us and we know society is hostile. But I think the answer has to be to worship God again. The most radical suggestion of all.
I wonder if the truly Satanic element of it lies in its convincing large swathes of people that there isn’t really anything all that special about human beings and we’re basically just complex algorithms ourselves. A lot of people seem to have fallen for that notion.
Evidently...evident. That’s what I get for posting a quick comment on my phone!
okay, as long as you weren't driving a driverless car.
Thanks. I'm not just writing here about AI though, but about the whole Internet and what it is. AI is just the latest manifestation of something much bigger. It's been going on for a long time.
That kind of reinforces the Tower of Babel parallel that I made further down in the comments, I think. I may have to expand those thoughts elsewhere.
St. Don Bosco had a vision where he saw a dark box in every living whereby the devil entered in. It started there, and it comes sweetened with good content and subtly bad content. It is much more intense with cell phones available everywhere and the internet.
That's intriguing indeed! Do you have a source for it?
I am still looking. It may be apocryphal.
This was a fantastic read! After our conversation my mind has been labouring to find a way to redeem this, to no avail. I woke up yesterday morning thinking about deception. This is where things get really tricky. I think the first deception will be to think we can redeem this kind of technology. Certainly we have the physical and mental fortitude to beat weapons into ploughshares but this is something entirely other. Thank you. Look forward to part two.
Thanks Shari. I was inspired by talking to you. Our thoughts seem to be running parallel in a lot of ways. More on that in the sequel.
Perhaps Jesus’s words to his disciples when they couldn’t cast out demons would be helpful. These only come out through prayer and fasting.
If you're going to read Steiner, then please, please read James Hillman, Jungian teacher & writer, especially his 'A Terrible Love of War,' & 'The thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World' to begin with to explore the source of the "demons" within us, not "out there."
Demons are both within and without.
If you also ocate demons "without", do you locate them outside human agency?
Yes. The denial of their existence is part of the great destruction we face.
Obviously.
Hi Paul, you say it's obvious, now that is a very biblical thought, but when I look around I find it hard to distinguish between psychological causes inside and demonic causes outside. Do you have experiences in this? Why is it obvious?
Even when Gollem speaks (to the NY Times for example) I hear echos of empty people and technicians and angry teenagers and shallow journalists who provide the big data that Gollem is quoting from.
And to go back to McLuhan: I don't know if this technology it is an extension of our conciousness or just an extension of the digital part in our minds.
For what it's worth, Harari traces a straight line from the invention of writing simultaneous with the invention of empire -- at first, just a form of numerical data storage on clay tablets, because managing the complexities of empire became too much for bodily memories alone -- to the invention of highly-distributed, shapeshifting collective form of writing known as the internet. It's not an explanation, just an alternative description of the feeling that the evolution of technology -- from empire, to data storage, to writing, to internet, to generative AI -- has a life of its own, but I find Berdayev's thoughts on the "inner apocalypse of history" helpful: "Man is compelled to realize that the processes of history are fatal, inhuman forces, quite indifferent to his fate, forces as merciless as they are non-human. We find this merciless non-humanity in the history of the formation of states and empires, in the struggles of tribes and nations, in revolutions and reactions, in wars, in the industrial-capitalistic process and flowering of states and peoples, in the very formation and development of civilization. Evidently, the means with which history operates...cannot be humanized.. [But in the Christian vision], every single human soul has more meaning and value than the whole of history with its empires, its wars and revolutions, its blossoming and fading civilizations. And because of this, the break with history is inevitable—a judgment upon history must be passed."
Is it possible that the filioque is a very important heresy in this respect, given its crystallisation of the idea that spirit might go forth out of word?
I doubt if the filioque would have been considered a heresy had it not been dogmatized in the West. Had it remained simply a Latin theologoumenon, which is how it started out, it would not have become such a bone of contention. I think that the Orthodox disagreements with Rome lay largely in our rejection of certain broad aspects of the Augustinian legacy, primarily in the areas of anthropology and soteriology.
In terms of the subject at hand however, I'm inclined to believe that the chief culprit was nominalism. The best short summary of the problem that I've run across comes from the great American literary and cultural critic Marion Montgomery:
"What is effected by Nominalism, as it is appropriated out of Occam's intricate arguments, is an instrument of power over nature justified on the authority of autonomous intellect, whereby the Platonic idea of the transcendent model is presumed a creation by autonomous intellect itself through its signs [i.e., words -- M.M. makes this apparent earlier in the essay], as first divorced from but then in turn imposed upon nature. In the Christian tradition, nature is created and therefore both dependent upon and from its Creator. Hence my epithet of Modernism as an inverted Platonism, in which reality becomes dependent upon autonomous intellect itself. It follows at last from this gnostic assumption that truth itself is that which is decreed by intellect. By the power of autonomous intellect, then, such truth is made universal -- according, of course, to the extent of power exercised by the particular universalizing, autonomous intellect. This is to say that a principle, subjectively authorized, becomes a dogma to be imposed as a limit against rival intellectual subjectivisms, an ideology to be established by force if necessary, providing only that there is a sufficient power for its enforcement."
Grasp that paragraph and I think you have a very good idea of what's been going on. For 500 years we have used our "autonomous intellect" to dominate nature, which has been viewed as mere matter. Now at long last we have begun to turn that intellect against ourselves.
I think that you and the author you cite are right about writing. We may have already talked about this on Paul's site. As someone who spent many hours on both sides of the couch in psychoanalysis, I learned how powerful the... Verb is, and how powerful the effects of language's structure are in and on us. One of the problems comes from the fact that words, whether written or pronounced ones, are.... images. We could say that written words are... graven images, couldn't we, now ?
For sure, it is Man INCARNATed, which means, translated ? into flesh and blood who is capable of mercy. The very idea of INCARNATion is inseparable from flesh and blood, and flesh and blood are material, and inspired by the breath of life. Machines, while material... are not inspired by the breath of life. If Paul is talking about artificial intelligence, and the mechanical machines, he could maybe compare our actions in this domain to our actions in attempting to create flesh and blood life in a laboratory setting, for example.
I like what I wrote above about the idea of Man incarnate as being capable of mercy. Being incarnated means being assigned within the domain, the limits of a physical body, with all the constraints that that entails. We do not see each other the same way in a crowd or outside of one. Alone on a hiking path, or in the middle of a big city in the rush hour.
The paradox of the singular, the particular and the category ? I often refer to the unction of the anonymous woman (at Bethany) which... ushers in the Passion in the Gospels.
If you look closely at this incident in the four gospels, in its different forms, it is talking about this... insoluble paradox.
The paradox lies in the fact ? that you cannot see the general and the particular at the same time, from the same perspective/place. But they are both important, and to neglect one is to put the other in danger, no ?
That Harare meme reminds me of that famous quote about Josef Stalin, that he was Genghis Khan with a telephone in one hand.
Perhaps this has been moving in this direction since the Garden of Eden. The words of the serpent to Eve and her response sound chillingly like an algorithm.
I do feel that one benefit of our times is that they are making the spiritual contest increasingly clear - live in/under the mystery of God, or try to become 'as dods'. Humility vs. pride. Surrender vs. control. Self-emptying vs. self-will. Deification through faith vs. 'making god(s)' through tech. I suppose the choices were always there, but these times do seem to make them more explicit.
Could you explain that further? I'm trying to make an equivalence between the conversation cited and an algorithm, and I'm failing...
Hi Claudia, was it me you wanted further clarification from? Here is a quote from the original piece - “‘First contact’ was the emergence of social media, in which algorithms were used to manipulate our attention and divert it towards the screens and the corporations behind them.” The article goes on to ask what is behind the technology. I suggest the same thing is behind technology that was behind the whisper in Eve’s ear. It’s not even that well disguised. Like the algorithm of the computer popping up a product on your computer after hearing you talk about going to dinner with a friend, and like Eve you see it is pleasing to the eye and good to eat, so without thinking you place an order, or as the original article suggests, you keep scrolling thinking there may be more you need. But I would take the article one step further and suggest the desire to create an AI that is beyond algorithm influence, is itself, the desire, a result of algorithms leading the programmers into the need for more.