Letter #80: First Steps
Difficulty level: extreme.
Happy Father’s Day!
We’ve hit up against a problem I find genuinely difficult. In principle, I accept the theory that the internet can be changed from a demon that torments us into a tool that serves us. Supposedly the mind is the real disease, not the machine: get your intentions right, and you can assert your humanity over your devices.
In practice, as many of our readers have astutely noted, it just doesn’t seem to work that way. Not only are the apps we use most often tailor-coded to hack our brains, but something about the medium itself seems to drag each of us into the lowest sinkholes of his or her character.
Still, here we all are on Substack, in one of the healthiest digital corners I’ve ever carved out, and none of us is about to log off for good. Online brain is a disease we all have to risk contracting if we want to be involved with the most pressing business of modern life. That’s why this is hard for me, emotionally as well as intellectually: I’ve rarely met a problem this deep that sheer discipline alone couldn’t solve.
I take some comfort from St. Augustine, who wrote about how maddeningly impossible he found it to keep from eating too much from time to time. Funnily enough, he said, it would be easier if he could just give up food altogether. Instead, “we have to hold the bridle of the throat at a midpoint between slack and tension. And who, O Lord, is never carried away to some degree beyond the constraints of necessity?”
In other words, this willpower stuff—which should be so basic—is just hard. But God must mean for us to work it out, or he would have saved us from exposure to temptation altogether. He could have made us to live by absorbing nutrients from the atmosphere like some kind of flatworm.
Of course, the minute you put it that way, you realize why he didn’t. Who the hell wants to be a flatworm? The struggle to master ourselves is inherent in the excellence of the things that bring us joy, and the struggle increases as the joys increase. If you want to be the kind of creature that can taste steak, you have to be the kind of creature that fights against gluttony. That’s the deal.
And now we’ve reached a stage in the development of our species where we’re confronted with a new seduction of the mind, a slipperier wrestling partner than we’ve ever faced. The internet is a genuine advance in world history, which means it brings with it a genuine increase in the degree of life’s difficulty, like leveling up in a video game. We’re fighting, as a species, to extend our humanity into the digital world. It’s like we’re babies learning to stand up for the first time, and God—who must have known this day would come—is pushing us to figure out our next steps. How else could we learn to walk toward him?
Love,
Spencer
 | A guest post by
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Fortuitously, as this posted, I was reading from the Summa Theologica about how Baptism infuses in us habits of virtue, but it is up to us to make individual acts of those virtues. God does not leave us orphans, but gives us grace “sufficient to stand but free to fall.”
Agreed with all of the above. Nothing of worth comes without some form of discipline. Education, love of another, marriage, parenthood, and even worthwhile hobbies take time and dedication as well as study to fully master and enjoy. The internet is a tool, but also a great temptation. My wife never needed the internet for temptation; open any book or magazine in front of her, and it is as if you have opened a trap door. You will not see her for hours. She rereads Jane Austin as if it is the Torah. She derives great joy in her deep dives, and more power to her. Without her ability to read and discern, she would be much less joyful and happy. However, if indulged too much or at the wrong times, children do not get picked up, dinner burns (I’m doing most of the cooking) or other things happen. I have my escapes, and TV used to be a big time waster for me in the past, but also the way to decompress after a too-busy day.
For a few years, I had played first-person shooters after dinner, in order to relax. I finished a game, and wanted to brag a bit, but realized I had devoted hours of pushing a trigger button, learning nothing and developing no useful skill instead of accomplishing something of worth. I have found other worthwhile pursuits, and haven’t played a game since then. My life is richer as a result.
Like any other temptation, the internet should be supervised when the young are using it until they are older (perhaps 35 or so; mirrors my view on voting rights). We do restrict alcohol, tobacco products and other things (gambling). Brain maturation only occurs in the mid 20’s so I suspect lower age limits are pecuniary rather than logical. However, it seems inappropriate to ask someone to die for the country but not allow a say in things (voting, etc).
My personal experience mirrors St. Augustine. I have had to lose substantial amounts of weight, and it would have been far easier to quit eating altogether than to moderate eating, which I have to do for the rest of my life. Once fat cells are born, they never die and are always screaming for their next meal. One who quits smoking, drugs or drinking can abstain forever, but those who have successfully lost weight must eat less than their never fat peers to maintain the same weight. Such is the lot of my previous overindulgences.
Like any other useful tool, from the first rock thrown in anger to the printing press, from the wheel to aircraft, or anything else imaginable, it can be abused, and must be mastered. Never before has a medium been so tailor-made to addict the vulnerable. Following subsidiarity, the first and most important guard should be the parents. Failing that, move up the ladder to the least intrusive level that is effective. Difficult when so many in “control” seem to be bending the ‘net to their own uses.