Is digital resistance worth it?

The book of Ecclesiastes admonishes readers, “Say not, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this” (Ecclesiastes 7:10). Nostalgia is a powerful thing, and biblical wisdom literature is realistic about how the anxieties of the present can make the past look better than it really was.

For conservatives like me, this is a point worth remembering when talking about technology. Whether it’s the effects of social media algorithms on political polarization, or screen addiction’s sweeping threats to mental and emotional health, the challenges of our blue light age are real and pressing. But we need to remember that the digital age is upon us in great part because the tools really do help us. In fact, we may need to stop and ask whether resistance to digital technopoly is, for most people anyway, even worth it?

In a recent edition of The Free Press newsletter, economist Tyler Cowen answered this question definitively: No, resisting digital life is not worth it. “The Case for Living Online” is a succinct, personal, and thoughtful counterargument to the growing center-right skepticism toward the internet. Cowen’s argument is as well-put as it is familiar: Without the web, most of us, including the ones who bemoan it, would not have the knowledge, friendships, and opportunities we enjoy. “I believe that by spending time online I will meet and befriend a collection of individuals around the world, who are pretty much exactly the people I want to be in touch with,” Cowen writes.

He calls this curated community “the perfect people for me.” Digital life’s great gift, according to Cowen, is that instead of enduring the myriad limitations and frustrations of only knowing the people close enough for physical presence, citizens of the web can be seen, understood, and related to by those who share fundamental convictions, interests, and values. Cowen concludes “I would rather have thinner relationships with “the perfect people for me” than regular bear hugs and beer guzzlings with “people who are in the 87th percentile for me.”

This is a serious point that deserves serious thought. For one thing, Cowen is right that many writers who lob verbal grenades toward Big Tech benefit from the professional and personal networks Big Tech’s creations open up. Second, this isn’t 2002 anymore. The migration of people, assets, and institutions to the web means opting out of a totally virtual existence has a much greater power to exclude or burden us. There is a sense in which the more brazenly the web dominates our lives, the less sense it makes for any one human to opt out.

One tension that I think Cowen (unintentionally) identifies is that the humanistic case for an embodied, face-to-face life is simultaneously the most common one and the weakest. Most books, including bestsellers like Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, rely on evolutionary psychological models to extol the greatness of the logged-off brain. But these arguments have a gaping spiritual hole. It can be true that up to now, the human brain has been designed for the printed page and eye contact, while also being true that virtual life simply represents the unavoidable next phase of our species.

The Christian argument against digital life is much different. A Christian anthropology, working from the Genesis narrative in which human persons are the crowning jewel of a real, physical cosmos, constantly directs attention toward the material world. The Creator speaks actual language. The image of God is visible in male and female bodies. Adam works the ground. Eve gives birth. Salvation consists of blood sacrifice, covenant consists of written word, and community means people living close enough to love and help.

A Christian theology of digital technology, in other words, is actually a theology of the body, and the great friction between virtual life and embodied life is that we were created for the latter, not the former.

Secular thinkers, including those more skeptical toward the digital age, might worry that grounding analog resilience in religious narrative sells the humane benefits of books and sex short. But I think the opposite is true. This story of what human beings are makes sense of the internet era’s many paradoxes. Our friend lists feel friendless because that’s not what friendship is. Knowing more actually increases our anxiety because our souls cannot even pretend omniscience.

And even the power our computerized existences now give us to curate the “perfect people” for us seems, upon deeper reflection, like a genteel way for us to curve in on ourselves. As philosopher Hartmut Rosa observes in The Uncontrollability of the World, our most joyous moments in this life are the ones in which things and people are happening to us, not because of us. Only relinquishing our desire to control results in the self-forgetfulness that helps us find meaning: ultimately because, of course, true meaning is a Person whom we cannot control.

Cowen’s case for living online surely speaks for many. Those without a transcendent view of human nature and purpose will find it very difficult in the years ahead to convince themselves and others that the disadvantages of analog are worth it. That’s why the transcendence matters. Embodied life matters because it comes from God. Taste and see that the Lord, and the world and life he gave to you, are good.