Master Technology
In spite of the obvious damage that some social media inflicts on us, we continue to go back for more! Do we have any power left to stop the madness?
A former employee of Facebook published 10,000 pages of internal documents confirming our worst fears:
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– Winston Churchill said a fanatic is someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject. Facebook is turning us all into intolerant extremists.
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– Facebook is turning its platform into a member’s–only club. It enforces the rules for some, and ignores them for others.
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– Facebook is destroying our children, attacking their self-image with nonstop posts about how they should look with no regard to their fragile self-esteem.
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– Facebook is allowing terrorists and human traffickers to use their platform to engage in the most treacherous crimes against all mankind without blocking them, while simultaneously blocking any video it deems as “incorrect information” that runs against the big pockets of Big Pharma in the greatest act against Free Speech this country has ever experienced.
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– Facebook routinely blocks Jewish sites, while refusing to block anti-Semitic ones.
Facebook knows this and they are doing nothing to prevent it. Despite being the author of all these facts, they continue to sell the freedom dignity our fathers sacrificed and died for just to make a little more money.
Who can stop them?
What G-d Gives Us
In the portion of Bereshit which discusses the creation of the world, Hashem shows us the emergence of two new realities that changed man to this very day.
The first is when the snake enticed Eve to eat the fruit. She did and then she gave to Adam to eat. This was the first time that man exercised his free will, the ability to choose something other than what G-d commands and execute that decision without being stopped.
The moment they ate of the fruit, their free will was revealed.
They immediately discovered that they were naked. Without anything to protect them, they were at the mercy of their environment.
Immediately, they sewed fig leaves together. They made clothing.
Adam and Eve applied their knowledge to adapt to and ultimately exercise domain over their environment. This was the first instance of technology in human history.
Adam and Eve in our Time
Over the last two and a half centuries, our attitude towards technology was simple: If we have it, we use it.
This was a working model in the dawn of the telephone, the train, aspirin, and X-ray machines.
But now there are other types of technology that have side effects: nuclear weapons, smartphones, and social media.
We are long overdue to recognize the next phase of technology: Now that we have it, we must monitor how we use it.
In the Garden, there was only Hashem. Once Adam and Eve lost their closeness to Him, they had to “compensate” by creating technology.
Today, it feels like we have only technology. So much continuous distraction blocks us from Hashem. To compensate, we have to uncreate technology.
The Power to Bring Down Facebook
Maybe the American government will eventually rein in Facebook. But on the day of the whistleblower’s testimony, Facebook stock gained $30 billion in market value.
The smart money says social media gets away with it all.
That leaves it to us.
Facebook can stop the American government from regulating them. They can stop any government from regulating them.
But they cannot stop any of us from simply choosing not to use their platform.
We can survive with just email. We can get all the news we need with a subscription to a physical paper delivered to us every morning. Or even better, if you want to get rid of your anxiety – stop reading the news altogether! You won’t believe the results of disconnecting from nonstop panic incitement and negativity.
We can live without technologies that destroy our communities, our children, our marriages, and our soul. All we have to do to defeat the trillion-dollar behemoth is to simply walk away from it.
If we don’t click on posts that companies pay them to show on their platform, they lose money. It’s that simple.
A recent six-hour outage cost them $7 billion.
If enough people didn’t touch social media for just one week, it would shake the financial foundation of the company to its core. Responding to nothing else, they would make changes right away.
It’s a mitzvah to steer clear of the lashon hara, evil speech. It’s a mitzvah to stay away from bitul Torah, wasting our time when we should have been learning.
It’s a self-sacrifice to push away the great barrier forcing us away from our Maker. It’s an act of self-suffering to go through the inevitable withdrawal pains that will follow such a decision.
However, the Sages teach that the suffering we choose reduces the suffering the Satan prosecutes against us in the Heavenly Court. Even more, according to the suffering is the reward – so the rewards here are gigantic!
Our fathers sacrificed, suffered, and died for our freedom. In order to preserve the ability to exercise our free will any way we want – so we can willfully choose Hashem by performing His mitzvot, we must make the same sacrifices.
There is no other way.
For over two centuries, mankind leapt forward by blindly embracing all forms of technology. Today, we must take the next step by opening our eyes to reject parts of it.
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David Ben Horin lives in Afula with his wife and children. Since moving to Israel in 2002, David has discovered Torah, writing hi-tech, hiking, coding ReactJS Apps, and hearing stories about the Land of Israel from anyone excited to tell them. Check him out on Highway 60 or email him your favorite Israel story at:
