When tech holds us captive, here’s how to find liberation

The last of a three-part series exploring the implications of technology.

James Lawrence

James is Canon Missioner at Blackburn Cathedral. He researches technology and theology at Oxford University.

A person wearing a heavy backpack of tech, connected by tangled cables to other technology behind him, walks towards a simpler space.

In my previous article, I outlined Heidegger’s suspicions about the technological age in which we live. We noticed that Heidegger saw a ‘way of being’ which lay underneath all the tech that fills our lives and that as members of a technological society, we have been shaped, or you could say ‘discipled’, to live in a certain way. This ‘way of being’, the essence of technology, is to see everything in the world primarily as a collection of tools and resources to be extracted as and when they are needed.

In contrast with the technology optimists that we looked at in the first article, Heidegger wants us to see that modern technology is not made up of neutral tools to be used for good or bad, nor is it simply a natural extension of human activity that we have been doing since the stone age. Modern technology has shaped a technological society and the members of that society, so that we position everything in the natural world (including ourselves and our neighbours) into resources to be mined.

So, if that is Heidegger’s diagnosis of modern technology – which he dubbed Gestell, what can we do about it? What is Heidegger’s solution to the problem that he identified? Is there a way to live free of the Gestell of modern technology? However, before we get to that question we first have to ask if it’s actually possible to do anything. Because, if Heidegger’s view of modern technology is correct and our thinking and being in the world have been so shaped by the essence of technology, we might be stuck within a way of thinking that has shaped us with no way to change.

A method or technique is simply a technology of self-transformation and therefore keeps us entrapped within the technological essence.

There are two reasons why we might not be able to fix the problem of technology that Heidegger has revealed to us.

Firstly, the problem of being trapped within a system that has formed our thinking: How could we think our way out of this technological age if we have already been shaped by that age’s way of being in the world? If the technological system is as totalising and has so powerfully shaped the minds of people within the society in the way that Heidegger suggests it would seem almost impossible to think beyond or around the system and therefore break out of it.

Secondly, there is the problem of using technological thinking to solve the problem of technological thinking. This second point is a natural extension of the first: within a technological society it will feel most natural to devise a series of techniques or methods that could be used to set people free from the technological age but, because they are techniques, they would do nothing more than reinforce the problems of technological thinking. Or to put it another way, we need a new way of thinking and being in the world that does not lead to just another method. A method or technique is simply a technology of self-transformation and therefore keeps us entrapped within the technological essence. Self-help books are the most obvious example of this. As Brian Brock says, “What must at all costs be avoided is trying to meet the problems raised by technological thinking using yet another technological or formalist decision-making method. The problem of technology lies in its addiction to methods of thinking and perceiving.”

Heidegger’s solution to the problem of Gestell is to invite members of a technological society to live open-handedly rather than grasping at the natural world.

Heidegger’s proposed solution to Gestell lies in another German word: Gelassenheit. If Gestell was about ‘positionality’, or ‘enframing’ then Gelassenheit refers to ‘releasement’, ‘tranquility’ or ‘letting things be for themselves’.

Heidegger develops the term Gelassenheit by inviting his readers to reject the desire that they find within themselves to force the natural world to conform to their needs. Secondly, and similarly, to invite the world around to present itself to the person rather than for the person. Heidegger’s solution to the problem of Gestell is to invite members of a technological society to live open-handedly rather than grasping at the natural world. The solution he offers is at the level of desire rather than activity. This is Heidegger’s only option given the diagnosis, if he were to offer a step-by-step solution to the problem of Gestell or a set of activities he would only be enframing the problem of enframing: one cannot use techniques to solve the problems of a technological age.

As Christopher Merwin says, “Heidegger’s account of releasement is neither a wholly active not, a wholly passive disposition… Heidegger is not a Neo-Luddite, and he does not think we can or should entirely abandon technology. Gelassenheit is not meant to overcome technology, but to place in check the tendency of technology to render everything into an object for use and production… Gelassenheit releases us from the danger of technology and opens us to alternative ways of relating to reality.”

Social media turns the human beings who use it into the content that it sells, we have become the resource that the machine is mining.

As a Christian and a priest in the Church of England, there is a lot about Heidegger’s analysis of our technological age that I find very compelling. I instinctively resonate with his existential description of the essence of modern technology as Gestell. When I observe my own habits, and when I listen to the stories of my parishioners, I see example after example of the technology in our lives training our sensibilities to treat the natural world as nothing more than a resource to be plundered for our needs and pleasures.

I think Heidegger’s concept of Gestell gives a real insight into why we are so far failing to curb our use of fossil fuels despite the near universal consensus that it would be a good and right thing to do. As a society, we have become conditioned to see nature as nothing more than a source of fuel to be harnessed. Our societal addiction to hydrocarbons begins with the assumption that oil is there for our use. It is only the Gestell mindset of a technological age which would make that assumption: oil isn’t there to be for itself but is instead positioned within the inventory as a useful and therefore valuable commodity to be harvested and deployed.

Beyond the natural resources of the creation within which we live, I see Heidegger’s analysis of Gestell at work in the attitudes of people to one another. It is becoming increasingly hard not to treat other human beings as nothing more than resources to be used or discarded depending on whether they fulfil their purpose or not. The ‘intention’ of the social media algorithm (obviously, this is an anthropomorphism: algorithms don’t have intentions) is to turn each of its users into content creators. We are encouraged to post, like, and share and we often fail to notice that the content we are ‘creating’ is ourselves. Social media turns the human beings who use it into the content that it sells, we have become the resource that the machine is mining. And while social media provides a stark example of human beings becoming little more than resources to be harvested, the effects of this technological mindset are not restricted to the virtual environment. When I fail to notice to person across the counter from me in the coffee shop, or the Uber driver, or the sales assistant, I am slipping into the Gestell mindset which characterises the problem of technology.

While I think Heidegger articulates the problem of technology more clearly and insightfully than almost anyone else in the modern era, I think his solution would benefit from deeper reflection on the Christian tradition.

Here we find a person through whom our minds can be transformed, who can set us free from the patterns of thinking of this world, who can reshape our desires.

Firstly, within the Christian tradition, there has long been the recognition of competing forces of discipleship. In the Christian worldview there is no neutral space of existence, our attitudes and desires are always being trained by one thing or another. In his letter to the church in Rome, Paul puts it like this: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” Paul tells us that ‘the world’, or in our case ‘the essence of modern technology’, is constantly pulling our thinking into conformity with it. But Paul goes on to point us to something that Heidegger cannot, the voice from outside the system. In the face of a totalising and all-compassing technological society which en-fames everything as a resource waiting to be used, Heidegger’s encouragement is Gelassenheit, to, by force of will, release yourself and the world from the drive to Gestell. Heidegger has no other hope than the willpower of the individual to liberate themselves from the system because he has no other site of hope, nothing outside the system. Paul on the other hand points us to God. A source of transformation and life that is not conformed to the world and is not dependent on the world for existence but nevertheless, by an act of grace, has chosen to reveal himself within the world for the sake of the world. Here we find a person through whom our minds can be transformed, who can set us free from the patterns of thinking of this world, who can reshape our desires. This is the gift of prayer, a space to be and to allow God and the world to be. For many Christians, the experience of prayer is that through sheer inactivity and silence, they are (slowly, sometimes imperceptibly) transformed.

However, Heidegger alerted us to a significant difficulty in finding our way out of the technological mindset. Am I suggesting that we turn God into a method for transforming our minds so that we might escape the pitfalls of modern technological thinking? I hope not. While it is certainly possible to attempt to turn prayer into a technique for getting God to give you what you want, that is not what I’m suggesting here. I’m aiming instead of the sort of prayer that Mother Teresa famously described when she was once asked in an interview, "What do you say when you pray?" She replied, "Nothing, I just listen." The reporter then asked, "Well then, what does God say to you?" To which she answered: "Nothing much, He listens too."

Review

Belief

Culture

Film & TV

20 September 2024

4 min read

Kate Winslett delivers the performance of her life, in a film that doesn’t look away

The true quality of witness shines in Lee Miller’s biopic.

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

Two war photographers creep along a shadowy corridor.

Kate Winslett and Andy Samberg in Lee.

Sky Cinema.

If we might indulge an absurd anachronism, I wonder what the American photojournalist Lee Miller would have done, had she been one of the women at the foot of the cross. To my mind, she would have held her nerve to record – on her German-made Rolleiflex camera held at her abdomen – not only the horror of the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth and the criminals beside him, but also the suffering of his mother and the other women who looked on.

I’ve had these ruminations since I watched Miller’s biopic, Lee, on its UK premiere. In passing, I should record that Kate Winslet delivers the performance of her life in the title role, because it’s in the quality of her interpretation that I’m led to consider the nature of what it means to witness, which is an act at the heart of humanity as well as central to the Christian faith.

Witnessing is what reporters, at their best, do if they are to honour their vocation. Especially war reporters. But the act of witnessing isn’t confined to journalists. The case for professional witness can be made for other jobs – police officers, aid workers, medics, lawyers all come to mind.

It’s just that this movie shows witness at its sharpest end. “Even when I wanted to look away, I knew I couldn’t,” says Lee Miller. That imperative, not to look away, is central to our human story and I would argue that this is because it’s central to my faith, which has at its centre a God who doesn’t look away.

That’s why Lee Miller made me think of the historical event of the crucifixion. The Church down the ages has been inclined to turn the cross into the Christ’s great victory – rather as reportage of the Second World War has concentrated on its conclusive victory rather than the horrors that Miller recorded.

Her magazine employer, Vogue, at first declined to publish her photos of the liberation of concentration camps Dachau and Buchenwald, in part because it detracted from the joy of that victory (though they were subsequently published in the US). If you will, Vogue looked away.

I’ve found that to go down this path with Miller, accompanied by faith, a kind of terrible road to Emmaus, delivers some unexpected reactions.

We’re called to refuse to look away from the grotesque horrors of the cross, to resist it becoming simply a jewellery symbol on a pendant, to acknowledge its centrality in man’s inhumanity to man and, ultimately, our God’s choice to share that experience. “Jesus Christ,” mutters Miller at the door of a room, possibly a gas chamber, stacked with skeletal corpses, before entering to take her photographs. Jesus Christ, indeed.

This is not to make a claim for Miller as a figure of faith. It is rather to make the claim that those of us of faith should be highly alert to where we might find the witness to it. Over the past week, I have to say I’ve found it in the work of Miller, not only in the hell of the camps, but in the shaven heads of collaborator women, the frightened children and even in that bath in Hitler’s Munich apartment.

In the last of those, there she is, naked, washing herself clean from the dirt of Dachau, which stains the bathmat from her boots in the foreground. Here is a witness to a spiritual defiance, the portrait of Hitler propped on the bath edge as she is cleansed. It’s not just that he hasn’t won, it’s that death itself hasn’t won.

I’ve found that to go down this path with Miller, accompanied by faith, a kind of terrible road to Emmaus, delivers some unexpected reactions. And they’re not the kind of reactions normally associated with faith.

The first is anger. It clearly accompanied Miller throughout her work: Anger at military discrimination against her womanhood; rage that Vogue censored her work. We could all do with being more angry at injustice, especially those of us of religious faith. Note that when American Vogue published her photos, they headlined them “Believe It!” True belief, arguably, is angry.

My second takeaway is the danger of real witness. Miller described her work as "a matter of getting out on a damn limb and sawing it off behind you". Discipleship can, maybe should, be like that.

The third is the cost of witness. Miller’s war left her with depression and what today would be called PTSD. Not looking away has its price. The cost of witness to disciples may not be as extreme as it was in the first century of its practice, but we should also be aware that it’s not a cosy lifestyle choice either.

For Miller, part of the price of her witness was alienation from her son, Antony. In the movie, though (spoiler alert), he discovers after her death how devoted to him she was. At a stretch I would say he was a son in whom she was well pleased.

That’s not to imbue her with something messianic. It is perhaps to say, with the poet Philip Larkin, that what will survive of us, especially those who have witnessed the worst of humanity and come through, is love.