POINTS OF VIEW AT HOME ON EARTH by Kyle Kramer
ADDRESSING OUR DIGITAL ADDICTIONS
42 • August 2022 / StAnthonyMessenger.org
As I described in my most recent book, Making Room, simplifying our lives can trim back those vines and enrich the soil so we can live with greater intentionality, freedom, virtue, and purpose—so that we can be the better people so desperately needed right now. In this and upcoming columns, I’d like to explore several themes that relate to the Gospel call to live more simply.
HEALTHY HABITS I’d like to begin with how we use digital technologies such as email and instant messaging, smartphones, social media, and streaming services. These technologies have come to have an outsized impact on our daily lives. We’re in the grip of a mass addiction to time- and attentionsucking digital distractions, which are literally rewiring our brains and eroding our ability to focus, to pray, or to relate to each other. If the digital world is like food, we have been bingeing indiscriminately. Simplifying and purifying our relationship with the digital world begins with carefully deciding what content and tools you engage with, just as we would favor dark leafy greens over unhealthy, processed snack foods. Pay close attention to how you feel when you’re scrolling endlessly through your social media feeds or when you’re sucked into yet another TikTok video, news feed item, or Netflix episode. Your intuition will help you know at a gut level whether something helps or hinders you in becoming the person you want to be. Guided by this feedback, you can choose carefully what you use. Trust that it is quite possible to thrive and stay reasonably informed while using these services less or not at all. After discerning which tools and media you want to keep in your “digital diet,” it’s important to develop good
AMENIC 181/ISTOCK
IF WE WANT A SOCIALLY JUST and ecologically flourishing world, we need better people. We must become the kind of people who can foster positive change. That was Jesus’ message. He didn’t take up political or military power and make sweeping, top-down societal changes. The kingdom he preached, worked for, and died for was interior. He changed people, one heart at a time, and he trusted that changed people would then change the world—which, we know from history, they did. If our Christian tradition is going to have any relevance moving forward, it will come from providing us a vision of what we could be and the practical guidance and communal support to grow toward that vision. In short, this is because our tradition helps us become better people who can imagine and create a better world— and become happier and more fulfilled in the process. What does it mean to be a good person? Even with such diversity among us, there are common threads. Good people have joy, connectedness to others, and internal freedom. They are generous. They embody the cardinal and theological virtues of our tradition: wisdom, justice, courage, temperance, faith, hope, and love. How might we become better people? It’s a combination of divine gift and disciplined human effort to discern and practice what helps us grow in virtue. I’ve found Jesus’ parable of the sower to be a great guide when considering the process of growing in virtue. I don’t want to become entangled in thorns, overwhelmed by the ways of the world. I don’t want to grow in thin soil, unprincipled and incapable of weathering the slightest adversity. I want to sink my roots in rich, deep soil and to bear the best fruit I can for the betterment of the living world. God may ultimately give the growth, but we help with the gardening.