Here’s a day in the life of someone.
It’s always the same: falling out of bed, rushing to the shower, throwing clothes on and grabbing coffee, not getting enough sleep, and maybe hardly eating. No one looks up at the bus stop, their fingers on their phones, texting or talking inanely to unseen people.
At work, the boss stops and makes a face but says nothing—a sigh of relief. Work is done, left undone, and done poorly; it only matters if the boss is upset; nobody cares otherwise. After work, head home, grab a leftover pizza, then play video games for all hours. Rinse, repeat.
You might know this person, or maybe this describes your life. There is no future, no plans, and nothing much to look forward to. Aside from the dead-end job and gaming friends that live a thousand or more miles away, there is only a chasm of isolation and loneliness. To live like this is to be in the present moment only. Everything else can’t be faced.
Some IT professionals have nothing to do with computers when they aren’t at work. Other people turn their cell phones off when they leave employment and are at home. People give up on social media because they can’t stop looking at what others post and talk about. Could there be something fundamentally wrong with the internet?
The Internet was built to be an anonymous medium for communications. Our anonymity begins with IP addresses that hide where we live and who we are in the real world. If people don’t adopt fake names and even fake personas when they post on websites, their use of their real names hardly matters as you could never see them or visit them. Could you be close friends with someone who hides their identity from you?
Anonymity on the internet causes problems that can’t be imagined. Unscrupulous people encourage the vulnerable among us to do all kinds of things up to and including committing suicide. Pornography is rampant, and children are targeted through the cell phones parents unwittingly give them. Security threats are unavoidable, with some people losing their savings to scammers. Let’s also not forget the cyberbullying that occurs because anonymous people can feel little or no responsibility for how they treat others.
It is becoming clear that influential people use the internet to manipulate us. Algorithms exist to steer us to website material that suits an advertiser, and we are likewise subtly influenced to form opinions that serve elites and the political agendas of privileged people. We are drawn in and entangled in an unreal world that affects what we buy and how we live. Ironically, in the early days, the internet was known as “the web.” It is that, and we are like entangled insects waiting for our appointment with a spider.
When people first started living in cities, no sewers or water systems existed. The resulting problems with sanitation meant that cities a hundred or more years ago were often disease-ridden, and their inhabitants were not in the best of health. We are now living in a world community with connections to everyone. With the internet so comparatively new and facing a situation analogous to learning to live correctly in a city, what likelihood is there that this unique piece of infrastructure is working as it should? Could the internet as it exists now be like living in a city years ago, except that our ill health is emotional and mental instead of physical? Is it a mere coincidence that the internet has taken hold among us while rates of mental illness, depression, and suicide have skyrocketed?
We have lost so much in the last few decades and gained only a little. Our relationships with others are shallow, while our interests, concerns, and issues run deep. We know more about what concerns us but less about our immediate neighbors.
In the Roman Catholic Church, we are invited to a relationship with an infinite God that is knowable and personal. We are accepted the way we are and asked to change our lives gradually.
Jesus came in human form to share our humanity. Now, we are called to share in his divinity. Will you answer his call?