Gnostic Technopoly

Gnosticism (very roughly) is the belief that the 'spiritual' is uncorrupted, while the material world is fallen.

We extend our being through the use of technology. For instance, when you drive, the car becomes an extension of you: you 'feel' through the car.

Technology allows us to do more and faster - but this means it also acts as a buffer between you and what you are doing. Your attention to the things on your journeys is more fleeting when you drive than when you walk. Your connection with the world around you becomes attenuated with the use of technology.

This is most accentuated with digital technologies, where it is possible to inhabit a virtual reality for hours on end, extending your being to every corner of the globe, but in a severely limited way.

It is in this sense that technopoly (ironically, given its intense materialism) favours the gnostic point of view, since it allows the mind to remove itself to a very large degree from the actual experience of physical reality.

(Modern, new world Christianity, with its denial of a sacramental vision of reality, also implicitly favours the gnostic, since it implies that the spiritual cannot be made present through the physical, except in the vaguest of ways.)

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