How to Resist the Acceleration, Aggression, and Illusion of the Internet

In his well-known work The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis makes the sobering point about the reality of love, and what happens to hearts kept from meaningful connection with others:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

While it is easy to imagine such a quote in the context of romantic love, it applies more broadly to any relation between humans. Lewis himself included this paragraph in his chapter titled ‘Charity,’ addressing the more broad affection “between self and the human Other.” 

As startling as Lewis’ imagery may be, I believe we allow our hearts to be thus isolated in ways less perceptible to us than “hobbies and little luxuries.” I find it interesting that Lewis’ description of where a heart becomes corrupt––in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless––is also a fitting description of how we engage online: safe behind screens, cloaked in the darkness of anonymity, motionless doomscrolling, in the airless frenzy of outrage. Indeed, many online spaces could be viewed as caskets––an open abyss of soullessness. 

This is one of the subtly sinister effects of the internet: it can act as the safe, dark casket where souls are kept isolated, all the while giving the illusion of meaningful connection. Such subtlety is only realized retrospectively, as we come to find ourselves operating more and more as soulless non-persons.

The Online Life

There are at least four features of online life that contribute to and compound this subtle soul erosion. Online life is 1) Accelerated, 2) Aggressive, 3) Fragile, and 4) Illusion. 

Online Life is Accelerated

Hartmut Rosa describes the program of modernity as bringing everything under control. Part of this control is sought through shrinking the world via technology. Online communication has done wonders to connect people in ways unimaginable to previous generations. (The early American government relied on the printing and distribution of newspapers to keep their colonies connected!) 

However, such advancement and immediate connection to people and information has accelerated our society. We are getting more done with more information at our disposal. Thus, the speed at which information cycles through our feeds is astounding. Major cultural events are announced within minutes. Dozens of articles and blog posts soon follow with commentary and critique. Newsletters flood our inboxes. Endless content is always just a page refresh away. 

One casualty of such speed is the stifling of reflection. Why take time to give sustained thought to any given topic or event when it will likely be buried under myriad more in a matter of days (maybe even hours)?

Yes, more information is at our fingertips, but our ability to grasp and grapple with it has atrophied.

Online Life is Aggressive

Rosa notes that the more accelerated our world becomes, the easier and more likely we are to adopt a position of aggression towards it. This aggressive disposition, he says, is the source of much depression and despair. And nowhere is this aggression in response to acceleration seen more intensely than online. 

This ever-accelerating deluge of aggression encourages aggressive impulses. Like information Whack-a-Mole, we try to keep up with each individual bit of information as it ״pops up”, while simultaneously developing reflexes of frustration. The less we are able to keep up, the more aggressive we become toward the appearance of each new byte of content. Our only tool against such acceleration is rage. Andrew Root notes the repulsive reality that within such an accelerated framework a fight will almost always be recognized and rewarded. Outrage moves faster than non-outrage. Aggression is our mode of performance.

Our inability to reflect deeply over time coupled with instincts that have become fine tuned for frustration and aggression have resulted in fragility. 

Online Life is Fragile

This acceleration, particularly online, has stripped us of a crucial requisite to be fully formed as persons: resistance. One of Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s underlying premises in The Coddling of the American Mind is that persons––specifically children––are not fragile, rather they are anti-fragile. That is, their formation is not stunted by resistance and strain, but it actually requires and is strengthened by it. Humans need resistance and strain––even suffering––to become whole persons. They require tens of thousands of unsupervised interactions of such resistance, moments where they work through disagreements and thicken as individuals. 

The online life provides us the perception of resistance and strain––thousands of “interactions” with those we disagree with––while protecting us in Lewis’ casket of safety and anonymity. Rather than engage deeply and thicken as individuals, we simply log off, mute, or block the resistance. The result is the elimination of relationships and situations that would form us into anti-fragile persons. Thus, online life is populated with thin persons aggressively interacting at an accelerated rate. 

Online Life is Illusion

Haidt has long described the smartphone as an “experience blocker.” That is, it provides some level of experience, but largely blocks the real and varied experiences needed to develop in life. These experience blockers have become the primary medium through which we experience much of our world!

The result is that our experiences are gravely distorted. We are led to impose aggressive characteristics on others. We are trained to assume malicious intent. We are encouraged to speak quickly (with responses we would rarely share in person). Samuel James, in his book Digital Liturgies, shares a story of being aggressively disagreed with and blocked on social media only to be greeted politely by the same individual in person––with no mention of the online angst! I am sure that experience is not unique to Samuel. Very few people behave in the “real world” the way they do online. Simply put, online life is not real life. 

However, one of the more pernicious delusions of online life is its perception of balance. We believe ourselves to be consuming information across a spectrum and interacting with perspectives from various viewpoints. But this is not how the algorithm works.

I recently scrolled across a humorous video parodying the algorithm’s power. It was an interaction between a man and The Algorithm. The Algorithm begins, “You watched that raccoon video for 2.5 seconds. Would you like to see more raccoons? I can show you thousands.” To which the man responds “No, that’s way too many raccoons.” The Algorithm immediately responds, “It’s out of my hands now. You are the raccoon king.”

This silly example emphasizes a reality we all admit when pressed but choose to ignore: like begets like; view begets view. We are not seeing a varied, balanced assortment of opinions and perspectives. Rather, what we like, share, or spend more than a few seconds watching is what we will continue to see. 

Connection That Renews

If online life accelerates, aggresses, thins, and deceives us, what practices can counteract these trends? 

Leisure over Acceleration

We cannot stop the machine of society, but we can take small moments each day to slow down. Many are becoming increasingly aware of their need to do so to maintain sanity.

Wendell Berry, poet and notorious advocate for the slow life, reveals his approach to increasing aggression in a poem: 

“Better than any argument is to rise at dawn
and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup”

I am not promoting a full retreat from online engagement and disagreement, but there is something to be said about removing oneself from online discourse and “touching grass.” It doesn’t have to be picking berries––anything painfully slow will do. 

Compassion over Aggression

The internet encourages us to believe that we know more about someone than we do––their background, views, motives––and to respond with aggression. It is interesting, however, that Jesus––the only person to actually know everything about others––seldom adopted a posture of aggression toward them.

Rather, Jesus’ default disposition was one of compassion. Aggression seeks to inflict suffering, compassion seeks to inhabit suffering––specifically, the suffering of another. This is what compassion means—to suffer with. 

Unchecked aggression is folly––it does not result in vibrant flourishing (Pr. 14:29). Rather, God’s holy people are instructed to clothe themselves with compassion (Col. 3:12). This requires real, in-person relationships. We must replace the laptop with the tabletop, inviting others into our homes for meals and conversations that penetrate deeper than HTML. 

Resonance over Fragility

Resonance is Rosa’s term for a different way of relating to the world that cultivates vibrant human existence. For Rosa, resonance is the antidote to our accelerated and aggressive experience of the world. However, to resonate with the world requires exposure. We cannot remain blocked from the world or others, but must remain in a posture of openness and expectation. To resonate with others and the world demands a certain presence that inevitably comes with a lot of discomfort. 

For example, the resonant experience of a mountain top sunset is guarded behind the grueling hike to the summit. The resonance of an autumn evening with a few close friends around a fire is one stop along the very long road of relational resistance and reconciliation.

The result of resonance, though, is transformation––a thickening of the self. It is through being affected by another or an experience––one that has the discomfort of unpredictability––that we are changed. To become vibrant, thick, anti-fragile persons requires the resistance of resonance. 

Truth over Illusion

We need to consistently have the illusion of online existence shattered by true stories. The primary story for this should be Scripture. The Psalms are particularly helpful in this way. The psalmists bring their very palpable vain imaginations about others, about themselves, even about God to God and have them reimagined. In this way, the Psalms model for us dialogue with God as illusion-breaking.

David consistently has the illusions of his experience confronted and transformed by the revelation of the LORD. David brings the illusion of God’s absence to God. He is reminded of his bountiful steadfast love, and David’s heart sings (Ps. 13:1-6). Again, David brings the illusion of his enemies' insurmountable numbers to God. He is reminded of the shield that is his LORD, and David rests in anti-fragility (Ps. 3:1-5). 

David’s illusions are undone by the truth of God. Likewise, we need the light of Scripture to shine through the smokescreen of online life. 

***

We cannot stop society’s acceleration or the internet’s intensifying aggression. But we can choose how much we expose ourselves to the dark places that deform us. We can prioritize offline dialogue, substitute hospitality for hostility, and seek resonant encounters beyond the vibrations of our devices.

Lewis warned that love locked away becomes unredeemable. Likewise, souls left in the online casket shrink rather than grow. Yet Jesus calls his disciples into the real world—a life thickened through the resistance of bearing burdens, dying to ourselves, and loving our neighbor.