There’s no doubt we are living in an unprecedented age of connectivity, digital progression and globalisation. It’s an attention economy, where humanity has become the product to be consumed and capitalised on. Attention is captured, exploited and sold every time we engage with our devices. This is having a devastating impact on society, particularly as it deconstructs and disenfranchises our humanity.
Humanity’s primal desires are for belonging and purpose. In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, uses the term ‘commune’ for our need to find union, a deep sense of belonging with others; and ‘community’ for to our need to find purpose in relation to others, to be able to contribute to our culture, to have a sense of self-determination, agency or free will. Haidt identifies something important, even if we might not fully agree with him. He argues there is currently in Western culture a disconnect in these desires for belonging and purpose, seen in the soaring mental health epidemic, with depression, self-harm and isolation being increasingly experienced by youth.
Our Purpose Is Found in Belonging
Genesis reveals we are created in the image of God. In the most fundamental sense, then, our belonging is found in our relationship to God. Additionally, people were created in community. God said it was not good for a man to be alone. Humanity was not created to flourish in isolation. Together, human beings work to tend to and protect the earth; to fill and subdue, it in line with the creator’s will and enjoying his blessing. In Ephesians 2 the apostle Paul writes that we are his workmanship created for good works. We could see this as a beautiful expression of the truth that belonging and purpose go together. It is from a place of union and belonging that we find our purpose.
Viktor Frankel argued in Man’s Search for Meaning that the essence of belonging and purpose is “to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Frankel argues that self-determination is an outworking of communing. Without communion, a person will never truly belong or find purpose. If an algorithm strips us of our self-determination and chooses for us, could it be argued that our belonging and purpose, so fundamental to our humanity, is being stripped away too?
Belonging and Purpose in a Disembodied World
In The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis holds two worlds in tension. One, the heavenly world, is vibrant, with embodied people of piercing joyful light. The other, the hellish world, is opaque, with dull, disembodied people. In the opaque world nobody lives together but everybody has what they want. In a similarly hellish sort of way, our electronic devices are great at giving us what we want in a disembodied online existence but we remain unfulfilled and increasingly disconnected from our humanity.
We each have a choice between these two worlds. Paul describes this choice in Romans 8:5–14 as being led by the Spirit of God or living according to what the flesh desires. The more we are led by the flesh, the more God’s image in us is fractured. The more time a person spends in one world, the more like that world they become, whether it be an embodied world full of loving relationships, or a world full of self.
Divorcing Our Humanity
There are all sorts of ways that our devices have the potential to enhance the negative impacts of sin and divorce us from our humanity. Human beings have the agency to determine our thoughts and actions, but this is undermined by devices and social media. We end up in echo chambers created by algorithms that feed our desires and exploit our fears. Without agency there’s less freedom to engage creatively with God’s world. Humans have capacity for language, dreaming, reason, self-awareness and extensive planning. But constant connectivity, endless notifications and doomscrolling can slowly suffocate our creativity.
Our relationships also suffer in a world dominated by the internet. Strangely, the most globally connected generations are also the ones experiencing unprecedented rates of isolation and social deprivation. We’ve exchanged love for likes, relationships for reels, friends for phones. And our devices steal our attention and so our time. Netflix CEO, Reed Hasting, has said “we’re competing with sleep, on the margin.”
Thus our agency, creativity, relationships and time fade into our screens. Jesus’s words apply surprisingly well to the effect that technology has on us, when it is harnessed by our disordered sinful desires: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” But he also reminds us that “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:10). It’s easy to be overcome by fear or apathy toward the influences of technology. However, knowing that Jesus leads us into the fullness of our humanity, may we be encouraged to adopt a different pattern of values and habits that nurture the embodied practice of community and belonging.
