The Greek Tragedy of High Tech

Technology is like Greek philosophy: The focus is so primed on human achievements that Hashem’s contribution is rendered irrelevant to obsolete. This leads us to the deadly delusion that we don’t have to listen to Him. 

The Egyptians tried to annihilate us. The Persians tried to obliterate us. The Greeks got smart.  

Satan knows not to tell you to turn on the computer on Shabbat. It would be too direct. We would find such a suggestion so abominable; we would reject it out of hand.  

But what about the newspaper? You can argue that it’s okay to read about the national elections. As you read on, you slowly connect to the world outside Shabbat. God fades into the distance.  

The Satan, and all his client nations, are masters of doing it subtlety.  

What is the media’s first rule? Show don’t tell. Present the facts so that the audience will reach the conclusion you wanted them to reach in the first place.  

Why try to destroy the Jews physically when you can get them to kill themselves spiritually?  

This is the war we face today.  

From Soil to Silicon: God is in the Grains and the Gadgets 

Food is easy to bless.  

Bread comes from wheat, and wheat must be grown every year, or we will all starve to death. It’s a blessing where we see very clearly how Hashem sends the rain that waters the field that grows the wheat that feeds our families.  

God is with us in every meal, always creating and recreating the building blocks for our physical existence.  

But what about stone? Stone has been around for a long time. It’s easy to be convinced that in this tiny example, God did something “millions of years ago,” and walked away. Stone doesn’t breathe, grow, change, or even move.  

How about sand? Sand is the erosion of stone over a very long period of time.  

In this next tiny example, you can say the same.  

Oil is sediment deposited inside the bowels of the earth that requires man and his strong right arm to extract.  

A computer consists of a screen, plastic casing, a keyboard, a microchip, and lots of wires.  

The screen is made up of sand. The microchip is made of silicon, which is melted sand. The keyboard and casings are plastic, which is a form of oil, as is the wire covering. What’s inside the wire covering is copper that was mined from a stone that Hashem set in a place thousands of years ago.  It’s all powered by electricity, which is mostly coal, another stone left to sit for ages.  

A computer is made up of things that Hashem set in place long before He created man. It “comes to life” only when humans process everything into a new creation.  

Like the Greeks who told us that Hashem created the world millions of years ago and left it for humans to rule, computers were materials Hashem left millions of years ago until man did something with them.  

In both scenarios, Hashem is minimized to the point that we are force-fed the lie that we don’t have to listen to Him anymore. Man is the new king of the universe, or shall I say metaverse.  

Nobody says this out loud. It’s not subtle enough.  

But we live according to this philosophy. 

Look at the civilization technology created, especially in cities where it flourishes. They conduct their lives as if only humans rule over them.  

Finding God in the Gigabytes 

This makes life much harder for anyone who wants to get close to Hashem. Even in Israel. High-tech rules the roost over here. If you want “quality” of life, learn PHP or SEO. 

GOD? That is so 16th-century Poland.  

This doesn’t render technology inherently bad.  

The Torah is clear that anything in this world can be used for good or for bad. It’s bad to use a pig for food, but it’s good to use one for clothing, shoes, or paintbrushes. 

It simply means that technology is a loaded gun. You must know the dangers involved while you are using it so that you don’t suffer massive injury.   

Once we understand that our world uses technology to quietly minimize God, we can develop ways to nullify its impact.  

Strategies for Spiritual Survival 

Here are some simple ways to reverse the “minimization” or “obsolescence” of God by minimizing ourselves: 

1. Go outside! Do you want to defeat the forces of Gog and Magog?  
    
   Gog is Hebrew for roof. Break free and look at a cloud. Do you know that you are looking at something two kilometers away? Hashem makes the clouds. It’s how He takes water from the sea and desalinates it so He can send it back down to where He decides to send rain.  
    
   There is no technology that exists that can produce rain on demand at any location.  
    

2. Look at the stars.The closest star is 40 trillion kilometers away. Those lights you see are only a dust speck of the size of the universe Hashem creates. The light you see from the nearest star is over four light years away¹! It took four years for just the light to travel the distance from its home to your eyes.

Technology cannot reach these bodies, let alone recreate them. We don’t have the ability to communicate with them.

The more you see the greatness of Hashem’s creation, the more you are minimized, and the more God and His word are restored to their rightful throne in our heads and our hearts.

Once you leave the roof, you understand how small you are and how insignificant your technology is in relation to He Who creates everything.

 

3. Breathe. We need the breath of God, right now. Hashem sustains our life every moment. Your next breath proves that Hashem is active in His world, in your world, right now.  

Hashem sends rain to the earth, causing the plants grow. They convert the carbon dioxide you exhale into breathable oxygen. God gives you lungs that take in the oxygen and transport it to the blood vessels in your body.  

Every second, Hashem is breathing life into you. If He “stopped working” like the Hellenists maintain, for just 10 minutes, you would be dead.

 

For just about every human device ever made, there were blackouts. The “blue screen of death,” an unexpected re-boot, the screen going blank for some unexplained reason until you check the socket and see the kids playing.  

Even spaceships stall. They have shutdown mechanisms and restart procedures. 

The human body doesn’t shut down. There are no blackouts. The same is true for every creature among the two million animal species and one million insect species. Of the trillions of creatures on the earth, not one needs to turn off and restart itself. 

By celebrating life, and everything Hashem has made, does make, and will continue to make, our personal and communal tale of technology can have a much happier ending.  

¹ A light year is the distance that light travels in a vacuum in one Julian year. One light year is approximately 5.879 trillion miles. 

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David Ben Horin lives in Afula with his family, millions of sunflowers, and Matilda, our local camel. David‘s Israeli startup, 300 Marketing Solutions, is a lean marketing agency for startups and small businesses that creates and promotes SEO-optimized ROI-driven to the right audience on LinkedIn to make your business the star of the show.