Spirituality vs. Technology
This post responds to a question I sometimes get regarding the corrosive effects of technology — especially smart phones — on our efforts to cultivate a higher quality of present-moment attention.
There is no inherent contradiction between maintaining a spiritual practice — that is, making conscious efforts to transform ourselves in accordance with our highest values — and keeping up with the fast pace of technological change. Here it’s useful to distinguish between spirituality as defined above and the practices associated with ideological, ethnic, religious, cultural, or tribal indoctrination. There is a critical distinction between religion and spirituality: religion often encourages an “us-versus-them” mentality (as in, “Ours is the true religion; they are idolatrous infidels”), whereas spirituality seeks the underlying unity of all phenomena. Of course, sincere religious practice can lead to authentic spiritual experiences, but fanatical religion can also lead to abuse, tyranny, crusades, and mass murder.
Technology changes our lives on the surface, but it does not change our essential needs and aspirations. To survive and thrive, everyone needs love, compassion and understanding, but no one really needs the latest gadget. If you work in the tech industry and, at the same time, you have a sincere spiritual practice, then your challenge is to align your livelihood with your spiritual values. Instead of manipulating your customers with products that addict them or arouse toxic mental states, provide things that nourish and support their highest ideals and aspirations. This is easier said than done. Today, our social discourse is dominated by algorithms embedded in apps, games, and social media platforms designed to “maximize user engagement” by keeping our attention fixated on a steady stream of content that elicits anger, outrage, fear, and loathing. As consumers of technology, we need to question whether we are using these devices and programs in ways that enhance growth and mutual understanding, or whether we’re just reinforcing our own alienation, dysfunction, and fear.
Most people think of meditation as a nice, gentle, and healthy thing to do. But when we look a little deeper, we see that meditation is also profoundly subversive and revolutionary. To cultivate a quality of attention that transcends craving, anger, and greed is to place ourselves beyond the reach of those who seek to exploit those very weaknesses for their own personal power and profit. To meditate is, if only for a few minutes at a time, to genuinely opt out of the power and domination games that make us miserable, and are driving our civilization toward disaster. As our practice deepens, our instincts about what we want to pay attention to and how we want to spend our time shift, slowly but surely, away from the darkness and toward the light.
True spirituality is not separate and distinct from technology or any other facet of life. We cannot compartmentalize it; we can only integrate it into everything we do. To engage in spiritual practice is to be willing to change, surrender, or abandon any facet of our life that undermines that practice. A good place to start is any activity, on or offline, that invites fear to dominate and eclipse the better angels of our nature.