‘Screen Culture Breeds Human Passivity’

 

Jeff LeJeune raised an important point in one of his recent articles that is worthy of further examination.  Jeff writes (I’m reversing the order a bit),

‘This is where the desensitization comes in. When audiences see brutality so often it barely nags the conscience, when electronic screens have replaced person-to-person interaction, the emotional alarm system fails. We’ve become spectators–scrolling past horror for the sake of staying in our lane, or something.’

‘According to social psychology, individuals are more likely to act alone—but in a group, responsibility is diluted. Add social media, and the urge to record kills the impulse to intervene. But when someone like Holly intervenes anyway—with all the cost—what does the urge to film say about us?

‘How many laughs and likes does it take before brutal violence becomes entertainment and “content”?’

‘So I ask you: was this simply the Bystander Effect—where everyone assumes someone else will act—or is it something darker: a culture so overstimulated we’ve lost our capacity for empathy?’ (‘When Violence Goes Viral: Bystander Effect or National Desensitization?,’ thehayride.com).

We fully agree with Jeff’s analysis, that at the root of this anti-social apathy/psychopathy lies our rejection of Christ:  No one can really love his neighbor if he does not love God above all.  But we believe there is something driving this separation of man from God, and Jeff touched on it in his questions, which is why put them last.  He alludes to that driver in his comments about social media and overstimulation.  It is our contention that the ubiquity of the electronic screen (the enabler of social media, overstimulation, etc.) is the force that is severing mankind from his Creator and Savior and making our love toward our neighbor grow cold.

To back up our thesis, we are going to draw on some material from Herman Middleton, whose Substack You Are Not a Machine is essential reading these days.  In his latest essay, he makes the point that we are not in the habit of considering the long-term consequences of new technologies before adopting them.  If we were, we probably would not have become so enamored with smartphones:

‘ . . . I’m going to do a quick thought experiment. I’m going to offer some potential answers to one of the philosophical questions from above as related to the smartphone:

‘“What kind of world does this technology assume or promote?”

‘The smartphone promotes a world where individuals do not need other people, but are greatly dependent on technology. It promotes a world of instant gratification, of continuous surveillance, and of attention as a commodity. The world of the smartphone is one that is superficially connected. The connections that it promotes are disincarnate rather than incarnate, digital rather than analog, fleeting rather than long-term, and individualistic rather than communal. The kinds of connections that it promotes undermine incarnate, analog, long-term, and communal connections.

‘There is, of course, much more that could be said about the kind of world that the smartphone has created (some potentially positive, but most, I would argue, are negative), but if one were asked if they wanted a world where their connections with other people were increasingly superficial and transitory, where they didn’t need other people, were greatly dependent on technology, continuously surveilled, and where their attention was commodified, it’s hard to believe that they would answer in the affirmative. This is, of course, a conversation that most of us do not have when considering whether or not to use a smartphone (or at least how to use a smartphone), because most of us do not ask these kinds of critical questions about the technologies that we adopt’ (‘Progress Is a Lie We Tell Ourselves to Feel Better,’ hermanmiddleton.substack.com).

The problems Jeff points out in his essay are directly addressed in those lines.  The smartphone is aiding our transformation into subhumans.  But this didn’t happen overnight.  The smartphone is part of a longer process of technification that mankind has been undergoing for decades, even centuries, now.  We have been born into it, and we never question it, but perhaps we should:

‘Postman refers here to something I’ve referred to often, the fact that we in the modern world find ourselves in a mass social experiment that we have not opted into. Postman refers, in particular, to all of those things connected to electricity: television, radio, lights, air conditioning, computers, etc. It is not only electricity, however, that contributes to this experiment. Anything powered by an engine of any kind: the automobile, airplane, train, etc. should be included. Ultimately, one could include most inventions of the past 300 years-or-so, as well as the ecosystem that these new inventions have created.

‘ . . . In the modern era, it has always been the case that the incentives for new technology have been so great that no attempt to justify new technology has been necessary. When confronted with a new technology, the kinds of questions that one usually asks are: “Does it work?” “Does it make my life easier?” “Does it save me money?” These are utilitarian questions focused on the usefulness of a technology. The problem with these kinds of questions is that they are short-sighted and do not take into account the bigger picture. If we care about the world we live in, and the world that we will pass down to our children, the kinds of questions that we should be asking include: “What kind of world does this technology assume or promote?” “What human activity or capacity does this replace or diminish?” “Is the gain in efficiency worth what might be lost in the process?” And, relatedly, “What are the hidden costs?”

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2025/08/garlington-screen-culture-breeds-human-passivity/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!