Soul Is Making a Comeback
When technology envelopes all of life, will we remember that we are more than just machines?
Everything seems to suppress soul. We live to catalyze efficient products. Our labour is counted, quantified, and measured. Human resource departments view us as human resources. They measure our performance by mechanical standards, and our salary relies on whether or not we have added value to a corporation. Work commodifies humans as resources; it is why HR departments exist. You are coal to be mined.
Education threatens to collapse under the weight of technical totality. We must adapt by integrating new techniques, new AI-powered tools, and, above all, screens. Small matter that all data show that by such techniques our learning outcomes shrivel. Small matter that students lack the basic humane skills of those from even a decade ago.
Machines mash the soul, weakening it, so that our brains might be nimble and acquire much data and information for the sake of employing it for effective ends. Here, effective always means the most profitable one.
An old life is hard to find. Smartphones authenticate our apps. We need apps to bank, to get jobs, to link into our AI-powered tractors, and to partner for contract jobs on the digital marketplace.
Where do we find an old path?
Whose steps can I follow in life?
Can wisdom be wise today?
Should I set aside savings for a home worth three times my annual salary, the mythical home that no longer exists? Should I work at one company and rely on the non-existent pension for my retirement today?
Our world squeezes spirit and manufactures machines. Darkness presses in. Yet light sometimes appears in the strangest of places.
The machine has overplayed its cards. A revolution has begun. New phones no longer have their glimmer. It is all being seen for what it is. Nothing for no end to go nowhere. Granted, we will not emancipate from technology; we should not do so anyway.
But we may awake from a slumber. We might find that all the productivity our human nature can muster still fails to make the soul soar. Happiness is not the same as excess.
Soul is making a comeback. I see it among students and peers, though not yet among the elderly. One wonders at the data. Will the old become more machine-like than the young?
In saying all of this, I still only mean a minority. Most still march along the technological track. Few, but still some few, have begun the revolution. They find each other online (ironic!), but they head to retreats together, write letters together, and celebrate tech-free evenings. They exist. I know them. I am them.
They tend to be young. They tend to be conscientious. They grew up with it all, and they reject its all-totalizing eye.
And maybe this vanguard can awaken its people from a false consciousness to see with eyes unclouded by the cloud.
Oh, so you did not like the term false consciousness? Well, Marcuse was right. But you can call it mass hysteria because it sounds very scientific! It is all machine-speak to me. I can measure it. It has mass. And hysteria—that sounds like a real scientific condition.
Or maybe we can let Marcuse have his day, since he was right on almost nothing else!
Besides, science and magic. They are one. Our words turn concepts into truths because they can be counted, measured, and quantified. If it has scientific measurement attached to it, we believe it.
But when did you measure out a soul upon a table? When did you extend spirit over space? How often have you counted mind?
Mary Midgley was right about us. We replaced magic with science, and we fear words because they lack pRoGrEsS. We must go forward, grow, and get to the stars. Build the tower on the starpath to the heavens. We will get there! And find our god staring in the mirror at us.
I will stay here below for now.
For within, I can see boundless countries. Mind can travel places my senses alone cannot take me.
Has not God made us to find rest from our restless labours, so that we might know we have limits? Not limits to burden us, but for freedom. For freedom, we are set free.
The old paths still stand. We must mow away the overgrown grass. But the path can hold us. We can hold it. Because I suspect—no, believe—that the more the machine and its technique envelop us, the more we will notice our lack of spiritual sight. And the more our souls will yearn for something more than this restless life.
And then, soul will make its comeback
I hope.