Last week, I introduced a small section of Paul Kingsnorth’s recent book, Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity. I talked about some of the negative impacts the Age of the Machine is having on us mentally, physically, emotionally, and intellectually. The mental health crisis in young people is greatly influenced by social media and AI. Relationships have in many ways been reduced to pixels on a screen or social media likes. AI is making it more and more difficult to tell what is real from what is fake.
Once we have been red-pilled and start to see the damage these technologies are causing, we have to figure out what to do about it. Kingsnorth spends hundreds of well-researched pages explaining the dangers of the Machine and the history of the Machine. But he also gives some solutions. As Christians, we need to decide how we are going to live with smartphones and AI as witnesses to Christ.
In reality, we desperately need the witness of people who are turning away from the technocratic giant that is eating away at our humanity. From dumbphones to shutting off social media to not watching television, these people reveal that there is much more to life than the siren call of the blue screen. I know multiple priests who carry dumbphones. I’ve already written about the change in relationships within my college students when I told them we would not be focusing on a social media presence but instead on building in-person relationships.
Kingsnorth offers two options for setting limits with technology; he suggests that in the Age of the Machine we must learn to live as either a “cooked barbarian” or a “raw barbarian.” All of us need to draw lines in the sand with technology and practice technological ascesis. I would argue that we Westerners need to re-embrace the asceticism of our ancestors in the Faith.
The cooked ascetic/barbarian still uses some level of technology. They may need to temperately use social media and other tools for their job because it is required of them, but they need to decide when enough is enough. Kingsnorth explains the cooked ascetic:
Technological askesis for the cooked barbarian, who must exist in the world that the technium built, consists mainly in the careful drawing of lines. We choose the limits of our engagement and then stick to them. Those limits might involve, for example, a proscription on the time spent engaging with screens, or a rule about the type of technology that will be used. Personally, for example, I have drawn my lines at smartphones, ‘health passports’; scanning a QR code or using a state-run digital currency. Oh, and implanting a chip in my brain. The lines have to be updated all the time. I have never engaged with an AI, for example, and I never will if I can help it: but the question now is whether I will even know it’s happening. And what new tech lies around the corner that I will soon have to decide about?
Kingsnorth is adamant that we must stick to the limits we set. We must be willing to suffer the consequences. One of the unfortunate practices that the Western Church has lost in recent decades is a more intense form of asceticism. This has made us soft and unwilling to suffer. We need to return to a more sacrificial and ascetical way of life in order to prepare for the sacrifices we must make in the years ahead. The Christian life is hard. It is not easy, comfortable, or filled with earthly honor, comfort, and riches. We worship a thorn-crowned King.
The second option is one that was chosen by many of the saints. That is the way of the raw barbarian. The raw barbarian is much more radical and drastic in their approach to technology. Kingsnorth describes the raw barbarian:
The world of the raw ascetic is one in which you take a hammer to your smartphone, sell your laptop, turn off the internet forever and find others who think like you. Perhaps you have already found them, through your years online in the cooked world. You band together with them, you build an analogue, real-world community, and you never swipe another screen. You bring your children up to understand that the blue light is as dangerous as cocaine, and as delicious. You see the Amish as your lodestones. You make real things with your hands, you pursue nature and truth and beauty. You have all the best jokes, because you have had to fight to tell them, and you know what the real world tastes like.
Raw ascetics who come to mind would be saints such as the Desert Fathers, St. Francis, and St. Benedict. Those who realized they could not and would not play the world’s games. They chose a completely radical way of living. They were deemed foolish and even crazy, but their legacies endure because of the spiritual fruit their radical ascesis produced.
We must set clear lines in the sand now before the wave of AI takes over our lives permanently. Our human nature matters. The fact that God made us body and soul means that both matter. Our relationships are not meant to be lived behind a screen. We need to become more intentional about building in-person relationships and communities. We need to teach young people to take breaks from their devices. Ultimately, we need to fully embrace the Incarnation.
Christ took on our human nature body and soul. Why do we now believe that we no longer need to live an incarnate reality? Why are we content with an increasingly disincarnate world? We should be utilizing the prophetic office we were given at baptism and start asking which spirit is leading us away from our God-created humanity. Who is operating in all of this? The Lord is not leading us to forsake our humanity, and it is pretty clear who is, if we read the signs and examine the fruit.
