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Opium of the People?Mar 20, 2006
America is in a deep spiritual crisis, like never before. The threat really isn’t terrorism. It’s something a lot more devastating--the spread of technology and the Internet, particularly to high school students and younger children. This has one aim: to raise a generation of children and young people who are spiritually dull, who live according to logic and forget about God. We are raising a nation capable of any and every atrocity in the end, without raising an eyebrow, because of our own spiritual dullness. Every human being has a conscience, which is far superior to the intellect. If the conscience is silenced in us, we are doomed. Technology is our Achilles heel, which in the end will be worse than any weapon of mass destruction. It will destroy us from within. This frightening trend can only be reversed if more and more citizens listen to their consciences and say, “Enough is enough.” Technology puts the “I” in the center and ignores the fact that life is only worth living if “I” depend on my neighbor. The classics were once an integral part of education. Just about every student read writers such as Aristotle, Novalis, Shakespeare and Dickens. Now, in schools in which every child has access to a computer, children are not even being taught the basic skills of life, such as how to express their thoughts and feelings in writing. The website “MySpace” alone receives more hits than Google and AOL together. It has 90 billion visitors and about 4l million young users. On the outside it looks beautiful. It supplies anything children might want, giving them the false illusion that they are having community and fellowship with others all over the globe. Yet it does nothing but isolate children and put them emotionally out of touch with reality. We are infatuated with the ability the Internet gives us. To be able to obtain everything that is available with the click of the mouse gives us power and makes us feel invincible. We also feel that the Internet is the solution to all of our emotional and spiritual problems. For every emotional disorder there is a self-help website or a group blog. In 1843, Karl Marx said that “religion is the opium of the people.” Today the Internet is the drug that cures all ills. We forget too quickly the old saying that “not everything that glitters is gold.” The Internet has become our god, our idol. Yet we have never been lonelier or more isolated from other human beings. What use is it to have all the possessions the world offers right in my living room if they separate me from other people? The essence of community is being systematically destroyed. If in any culture the minds and hearts of the children and youth have been captured, the war is already won. The greatest challenge of education, the greatest challenge to parents and teachers, is not to teach our children reading, writing and arithmetic, which are important, but to see that they do not become spiritually dull.
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several things came to mind, as i read your article…
“Every human being has a conscience, which is far superior to the intellect.” i’m not sure that statement is accurate. or, rather, it’s too simplistic. as if it’s not important to be intellectual, as long as you’re moral...which then begs the question “why you can’t be both”. and what good is morality, if you have no understanding of what you’re doing other than perhaps “fear”.
you say, “Now, in schools in which every child has access to a computer, children are not even being taught the basic skills of life, such as how to express their thoughts and feelings in writing.”, but then turn around and say, “The greatest challenge of education, the greatest challenge to parents and teachers, is not to teach our children reading, writing and arithmetic, which are important, but to see that they do not become spiritually dull.”.
so they’re not being taught to read and write well enough, but then you really don’t want that focused on…
and then there is the fact that you are assailing the use of the internet...on the internet. :|
you want to reach the same audience that you don’t want to be there.
articles like this trouble me, because i see the internet as having opened up the world to me. and to anyone who wants to take advantage of it. i’ve met people from all over the globe and learned more about their cultures, etc, than i ever would have done without access to the internet.
as a child during the cold war, i remember “russians” as being “the enemy”, so imagine my fascination some years later to meet and talk with a young man in st petersburg. chances of me ever going to st petersburg? slim to none. ability to meet and talk and make the world a smaller place by using the internet? HUGE.
tools can always be used poorly. a hammer can kill. that doesn’t mean hammers are inately “bad”. means you need to use it properly. same with the internet, i think? and my use of the internet and my being intellectual...okay, endeavouring to be :D...are not causing a spiritual deficit within me. in fact, quite the opposite.