Quitting the Internet

The changes I’ve observed in myself since I quit my smartphone have been deep. Perhaps more cautiously I should say that I see the beginning of changes: but they are changes in feeling and pace, in the atmosphere of my inner life above all. And I begin to see that these changes are, yes, related to the removal of the smartphone as a device, but they also feel fundamentally related to the change of my relationship with the internet that jettisoning the smartphone has inaugurated. Basically, I can feel that I am beginning to recover from what the internet did to my life.

I’m a Gen Xer. I missed computers in high school by a year: I received no instruction (the year after me was the first). I first got internet access when I began my seminary studies in 1996. I found Orthodoxy without the internet. But as I reflect now, I see that the growing availability of the internet shifted my attention away from the “places” where I learned the faith — basically, the services, Orthodox books, and other believers. My eventual apostasy I can largely correlate to existential and intellectual wrestling that happened online and through online venues. (I should say also that my eventual recovery of Christian faith was not prompted by the internet — it was prompted by attending Mass in the Extraordinary Form, accompanied by the college schola, at Thomas Aquinas College early one Sunday morning. I came home to the Orthodox Church but I will be forever grateful to Catholic Traditionalists for the gift of the Old Mass to which they have cleaved faithfully in spite of all opposition.)

I am not blaming the internet for my sin. But I’m noting the correlation. The internet has a “spirit.” Increasingly I think it is not a “spirit” I want to be shaping my life.

As I reflect, the increasing integration of the internet into my daily life tracked an overall increase in idle curiosity, impatience, speed, cerebralization (for want of a better word), and the generation of more and more “wants” (distinct from “needs”).

Now, post-smartphone, I am online only during the workday, almost entirely for practical, work-related purposes. (I am also online to post on Substack, usually in the wee hours before the U.S. stock market opens, but so far, thankfully, it feels very different from social media.) Post-smartphone and post-social media, I find myself increasingly seeing only rather “plain vanilla” news (I work in finance, so I read the Wall Street Journal every day, along with whatever news trickles through the sell-side analysis I see, and I do check Zerohedge for breaking news, I am a little ashamed to admit). Am I missing anything substantive? I don’t believe I am. In fact I know I am not.

Would I have been more likely to fall for the covid psyop if I’d been like this? I don’t think so. I think I would have figured out what was going on even sooner (full disclosure: I more or less bought the mainstream narrative until May, 2020).

I’m driving more slowly now. Is this a coincidence? I’m buying fewer books. Is this a coincidence? All of a sudden I find myself thinking that the King James Bible, my Old Believer prayerbook, St John of Kronstadt, St Tikhon of Zadonsk, St Dorotheos of Gaza, the Ladder, a book or two by Paul Evdokimov and Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh might be all I ever need (at least, I think I could get the bookshelf smaller and growing less quickly).

I think about some newly translated treatise of Fr Sergius Bulgakov now and — is that just idle curiosity? Do I need to read about Fr Sergius’ study of the imiaslavie controversy? No, I need to love the Lord, pray more fervently, study my sins, serve my family, bear my crosses and “fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ,” sing in my heart the praises of the Lord’s beauty and the beauty of His creation, give glory to God for all things. I need to light the lampada in front of the holy icons. I need to step out onto my deck with a cup of tea and breathe. I need to have a quiet and peaceful heart when I am with my little girl. I need to be the father I want her to remember. The husband I want my wife to have. None of this is helped by the internet. Indeed it’s harmed by it. Everything the internet provides I can have “by the sweat of my brow” and it will be real, not a fever dream.

“Acquire the Spirit of Peace and thousands around you will be saved,” said my patron saint, Seraphim of Sarov.

Aside from the workday, I now never look at the internet (I have not watched TV in decades). I am changing as a consequence. There is more space — space for grace, space for serendipity, space for boredom, space for thought and feeling that arise from within, space for quiet. I feel something of what life felt like before the world changed, and I believe I can get more of it back.

Sending prayers and blessings to you all, and beseeching your prayers in return.

Christ is Risen!