Restlessness and Belonging

Augustinian Wisdom for the Digital Empire

Life is to be lived rather than consumed.

In a digital environment and market society where everything is for sale, the human face is one more object to exchange. Devices often hold our attention captive to advertisers, brand the face as a product through social media, and alter the conditions for human relationships apart from vulnerability and love. In this new empire, tech designers aim to keep users tied to screens with unprecedented power in what is described as the "attention economy." Emerging research recognizes the power of persuasive design, the negative impacts of digital multitasking, and the predatory nature of tactics to hook users. When unintended consequences merge with devious intent, our efficient innovations turn on all of us. This reflects the Augustinian concept of disordered love as well as knowledge devoid of wisdom.

We need greater moral vision to help us responsibly assess forms of technology, as Autumn Ridenour shows us in Restlessness and Belonging. All creation, Augustine maintains, is good. But when digital devices and social media rewire communication through personalized algorithms, they often dehumanize us in ways that divide our attention and draw us away from one another. Alternatively, the act of loving God, self, neighbor, and creation toward ordered ends serves as an interpretive guide for using, designing, and limiting devices to their proper role. Augustine's meditations on the beauty and interdependence of nature as well as the face of Christ lead us to reprioritize relational identity, moral agency, and belonging aimed at communion. Reflecting the face of the other opens a possibility for transformation through an encounter of reciprocation that ends in fellowship. This experience is the opposite of objectification—here, individuals are empowered more deeply as subjects to receive and enact virtue.

Reevaluating technology's power over our lives is an urgent social and ethical task. Loving God, self, and neighbor involves relating in ways beyond the mediated surface of technology. Recognizing the face as divine image and glory, practicing wisdom and virtue, and sharing in enriched presence, Augustinian pilgrims empower one another toward an eternal city formed by their common objects of love. The goal is to reimagine the way we consume technology before the technological empire consumes us.

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