The Digital Revolution’s Challenges to Our Humanity: Part 5--The Spiritual

This is the final lectures on the challenges of the digital revolution on our humanity where we discuss its impact on the spiritual dimension.

All aspects of the spiritual dimension can be harmed by the digital revolution.  The spiritual dimension includes the Good (the virtues), the True and the Beautiful while culminating in our relationship with God who is ultimately the summation of everything that is Good, True and Beautiful. 

The Good:  as we saw in the prior episode, it promotes vices such as anger and pride while inhibiting the virtues through lack of in person interactions. 

The True: limitless access to knowledge can include false knowledge.  As we saw in our last episode, we all have biases and bias confirmation along with the false consensus effect that is dramatically increased through the echo chambers of the digital world all which can prevent us from seeing both truth in this world and the transcendent Truth of the spiritual dimension.

The Beautiful: the digital world with its focus on the visual sense reinforces a decades long fascination and idolatry of superficial or external beauty or attractiveness.  This prioritizes the external while downplaying the importance of having a beautiful soul.

Harmony with the Divine:  the limitless distractions that pander to our psychologic desires decreases our time both alone and with God.  Blaise Pascal opined that “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”  Our endless “doing” is preventing us from “being” and thus places our humanity in an imbalanced state that prevents us from nurturing our souls, enhancing our brain capabilities, or thinking of others (either other people or God) before our own desires.  By spending so much time in the psychologic dimension, it thus limits our time in the other dimensions providing fewer opportunities for transformational relationships either with others or more importantly with God.

References

 Distraction Sickness by Andrew Sullivan

Digital Media Technology and Your Spiritual Life: An Uneasy Alliance by Laurel Dovich

Technology and the Soul: The Spiritual Lessons of Digital Distraction by Joshua Hochshild

What Jesus Said About the Importance of Solitude by Bob Hostetler

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