Pints With Aquinas - Can the Internet be Saved? | Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Episode Date: February 11, 2024

Father explores his disdain for the Internet and Internet technology in the context of his use and publicity on the Internet. How can he do both? Why does he dislike it? 🟣 Join Us on Locals (before we get banned on YT): https://mattfradd.locals.com/ 📖 Fr. Pine's Book: https://bit.ly/3lEsP8F 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🚫 FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd  

Hello, my name is Fr. Gregory Pine and I'm a Dominican friar of the province of St. Joseph. I teach at the Dominican House of Studies and I work as an assistant director for the Thomistic Institute and this is Pints for the Quinas. In this episode I would like to address the tension between on the one hand hating on the internet and on the other hand using the internet. Because here we are, you may have noticed that whether it's in content for Pints or for God's Planting or the Thomistic Institute or otherwise, I will often express reserve about internet technology or about the way in which the internet seems pitted against us or weaponized against us.

But on the other hand, I keep producing these videos or these podcasts for internet outlets. So what gives? Is that an inherent contradiction? Or if it is attention, how are we going to see our way through it? Here we go. Let's figure it out. Okay, quick summary of why I am made nervous by the internet. This is no surprise.

Everyone has commented upon this and they have commented upon this with more coherence and more insight than I will here at present. But the basic idea is you know we've got the internet now for 25-ish years and I don't know that we as a human community have done the best job of incorporating it into a human life. So people have commented upon the fact that we're transitioning from an electric age to a digital age and that with each kind of quantum leap as it were in the technology it places a certain strain on us as a human community because the threat is that rather than subordinating the technology to our ends the technology subordinates us to its ends, or that we in turn become slaves of the very technology we were meant to be masters of.

And I'm sure there are tons of futuristic shows and movies along these very lines, which probably end in like, I don't know, things becoming sentient and then just killing us. But I'm not going to look into that too terribly much, as you might imagine the reasons for which. But I think that the internet certainly poses challenges, or digital technology more broadly poses challenges. I was having a conversation with one of my brothers today and he was saying that the internet is basically like prime matter for those of you philosophy types who know what that means, you'll get it. And I was saying that the internet is kind of like an undefined or unspecified tool. By that, what I mean is, usually when you approach

an object or an artifact, you have some use in mind for it. So like, if you pick up a basketball, you're probably gonna play basketball with it. You might have some other use for it, but it's probably not too far from that primary use. Or like a saw. You pick up a saw, you're probably going to saw wood with it.

It doesn't make too terribly much sense to do anything else with it because the chances that that use would be destructive are pretty high. And that being said, there are various things that we can use for multifarious ends. You can have a kind of multi-tool as it were in your hand. But with the internet, the thing about it that's so bewildering or bemusing is that it can be potentially anything. Right? So you can use it to book your travel plans, you can use it to watch Catholic content, you can use it to doom scroll, you can use it for any number of reasons. And I think that a lot of us approach the Internet thinking like, I'm gonna use this

for efficiency or for productivity or for accessibility, but then we end up using it for getting lost or we end up using it for getting swallowed up. Which is crazy. And then we say to ourselves, wow, how many minutes have passed since I said that I was gonna do do action here i have been doing why crazy uh... but i think that that's just part of the internet that the internet is so amorphous and people have seized upon this fact

uh... specifically advertisers and algorithm writers and so they've made it such that the internet slips very subtly necessarily necessarily in that direction. So I think that one thing about the internet that can be nefarious is that it promises to connect you but it often ends up isolating you because rather than generating or rather than cultivating those connections for which we long, we end up feeling more acutely our own sadness and loneliness as

a result of the fact that we've been sucked into lower uses, crasser uses of the tool which has become unspecified or indeterminate in our hands even as we approached it with what we thought was a kind of particular or peculiar use in mind. So those are like kind of my basic reasons for the internet. I'm not so worried about like content on the internet. I think you're going to find good and bad content anywhere you go. And you can try to cultivate a space in which there's less bad content. On the internet, you know, you can do that by content blockers or by accountability

software, other things of that sort, just in the way that you might be made nervous by the public school curricula in your state and then put your kids in Catholic school or homeschool your kids, something along those lines. You know, you can create an environment in which it's easier for those people for whom you have responsibility to flourish, whether those be your kids or whether those be your friends or whether that be yourself. And I think that our use of the internet should reflect that, but like ordinarily we're doing that in an incarnate way, in an embodied

way. I think it's harder to do that on the internet because it's dis-incarnate, because it's disembodied. But all that being said, I think the internet can be used to get us incarnated and embodied once again. And some of this is coming from a conversation with a professor from the University of St. Thomas in Houston, whose last name I think is Harmon, Thomas Harmon, if I've gotten it wrong I apologize. But he gave this awesome paper at this conference that we were at in Navi Maria, Florida

on Thomas Aquinas on the Eucharist Pathways for Revival. And he was describing the Internet along the lines of demonic communication, like in the way that the Internet like specifically algorithms and advertisements manipulate you, kind of come to learn more and more your particular weaknesses or wounds, and manipulates you by making an experience of the internet which is all sleek but also proposing the very things by which you are most easily seduced.

He was describing this along the lines of demonic prophecy, which is fascinating, super cool. But he was also pretty sanguine about the use of the internet in the sense that he could see a kind of capacity in the digital age for us to reconnect, even in the midst of apparent conflict, or dissent, or polarization, you know, for us to reconnect, so to reclaim something of this

incarnate embodied human life. And so my basic idea on this is that, I think about this as a Dominican friar, so I think about this as in keeping with my own identity and my own mission. So thinking about the graces that God is giving me, the charism that shapes those, and then how I might be of service to those whom he sends me out to address in preaching and teaching. And what I'm calling this the new itinerancy. So maybe you've come across that word before, itinerancy comes from the Latin eter, which just means trip or journey, like an itinerary, you've come across that word too.

But Dominicans will refer to themselves, and a lot of the friars, you know, from the 12th and 13th century will refer to themselves as itinerants, right? So they move about in a way that's not true of monks, and often enough it's for this preaching and teaching mission. So I think in the 21st century, this new itinerancy asks of us to be present in those marketplaces where the people gather. And I think that the internet is just such a marketplace where the people gather. Some people have probably made arguments that it's too morally compromised or it's too morally compromising, and so as a result of which we shouldn't gather there. I haven't come to that judgment yet.

I don't think that the internet is inherently evil. I think that it can be used for a variety of evil uses, and I think that it tends to a variety of evil uses precisely because of the way that the algorithms are written, and the way that the advertisements are weaponized, and the way in which we as human beings prove ourselves weak and wounded in the use thereof. So I don't think that we as human beings can sustain a constant barrage of this type of influence as the one professor was describing it, this kind of demonic prophecy. I just don't think that we can hold up against it.

So I think that what we're responsible for is kind of going to the internet, finding what it is that we need or what it is that we enjoy or what it is that upbuilds us and edifies us as human beings and then getting off. So I think it's like when I talk about the new itinerancy, I think that the point is you do things that are local. Okay, so you do things that emerge or that issue organically from your relationships with your friends, you know, with your family, with your religious community, with your parish, with whomever else. All right? You do those local things for the people in the local setting. And then you might record them. All right?

You might put a microphone in there. You might put a camera in there. There's a chance that introducing whatever, a microphone or a camera could change the conversation and you want to minimize or mitigate against that. You want to have a good conversation. You want to come together and enjoy each other's company and invest in a kind of common conversation about a common project. But I think that other people can partake of that. Other people can share in that and you want to welcome them into that conversation. And so I think the internet can be used for just that reason or for just that end.

So this would be the first part of the new itinerancy is preference, the local and scale global. Okay. Again, we're talking tension here. We're talking something that's just not easy to navigate well, but I think can be done well. All right. So preference, the local community, whether that be your friendships with these friars with whom you record this podcast, or whether that be the relationships that you've cultivated in your city, in your parish community.

But then if you think that other people could profit from it, well then pose that invitation to the people in the local setting, but also through the internet to those in a more global setting. But when you do that, you need to recognize the fact that when you shift global, right, when you scale it global, there's a real risk that you get lost and you start thinking exclusively in terms of the global. Like I just want to grow this, I just want to project this, I just want to generate whatever like more followers or more money or more whatever else that motivates you. And then that's a real risk, right? Because then you can lose your contact with real people because views aren't real people,

you know, real people on the other end of those views, but views aren't real people. And they can subtly seduce and they can subtly distract and they can subtly disperse in ways in which we don't really account for too terribly well. So I think that whenever you scale global you have to do so with a mind to then driving back local. And what do I mean by that? Well, we can talk about it in each particular setting. So you think about with pints, I do these, you know, videos slash podcasts once a week, but then I also do these spiritual direction things once a month for the folks on locals.

I don't really participate too terribly much in the locals community, but I know that Matt does. And the idea there is that there'd be a kind of community that would grow up around the podcast. You've seen this with other things too. Like first things has Rafters groups where people get together and talk about the articles that they've read in the magazine. But here with like a podcast, I think you have a much bigger audience, a much wider audience. And so the idea is

that even if you're in relative isolation, even if you're at a distance from an ordinary Catholic community, you can participate here and profit from that fellowship, right? Profit from those relationships to grow up organically from following the same conversation and then contributing to it in a productive way. So I think that stuff can be really cool and especially if it concretizes, right? from following the same conversation and then contributing to it in a productive way. So I think that stuff can be really cool, and especially if it concretizes, right? If it embodies, if it incarnates in real relationships. And so I think that we should always be directing people that way.

I think about this too with respect to God's planning. Like relatively early on we said, let's have retreats, right? Let's do days of recollection, let's host pilgrimages precisely so that those who are in contact with us, who partake of the conversation can then partake of the community, like really partake of the community. And I think that we could probably do a better job along the lines of locals or something like, I don't know, like a Mighty Networks type situation or discord or whatever else of, of cultivating a conversation and ongoing phenomenon or engaging with the folks who listen to the podcast better.

But I think that those in-person events are super important. And I know of people who have met at those in-person events and whose lives have been changed as a result of the people whom they've met at those in-person events, which is really cool. Or I think about it with the Thomistic Institute. Like the Thomistic Institute has a big media postulate when you think about it with the podcast and Institute. Like the Thomistic Institute has a big media postulate

when you think about it with the podcast and with Aquinas 101 and with the other things that have been spun off Aquinas 101. But a lot of the advertisements at the end of that content is about starting a chapter. The Thomistic Institute is ultimately for the students on the university campuses themselves who congregate in chapters so that they can hear lectures,

participate in retreats, host book clubs, and do other things besides so that they can hear lectures, participate in retreats, host book clubs, and do other things besides so that they can be supported or nourished by those relationships in the context of an otherwise secular atmosphere. So I think that I am able to kind of navigate the apparent tension between on the one hand hating on the internet and on the other hand producing content for the internet because I think that you have to preference the local and then when you scale global send people back down to the local so I think about the internet is basically the agoras the marketplace it's where we go to meet and insofar as it's not wholly compromised or

compromising I think that we can do so without fear of losing our souls but we do so with a kind of trepidation mindful of the fact that it has a way of absorbing us it has a way of sucking us in and retaining us kind of trepidation, mindful of the fact that it has a way of absorbing us, it has a way of sucking us in and retaining us, kind of laying hold of us and not relinquishing us to those real relationships. So at every turn, in going global, we need to direct people back local so that they can invest in just those relationships with friends, with family, with a community of believers who have their eyes fixed on the prize so that they can persevere in their belief and in their practice of the faith unto salvation, which lies in store.

So this is what I've been describing as a new itinerancy. It's to preference the local, scale to global, send back local. And I'll probably come up with a better way of describing that, but if you have ideas, drop them in the comments, which for reasons of my own I probably won't read, so sorry about that. I just get lost in comments. That's one of the ways in which the internet absorbs. But maybe you can have a good conversation there, or maybe you can meet somebody there. I don't know. Alright, that's what I wanted to say. So this is Ponce with Aquinas. If you haven't yet, do subscribe to the channel. Get sweet email updates when other things come out by pushing the bell

If you haven't yet check out God's planning We had a podcast about this particular theme called our screens our souls not too long ago, which you might profit from And yeah, I wrote a book called prudence choose confidently live boldly which describes a lot of principles of Agency which go into making for a happy, healthy, holy human life where you make decisions and abide by them rather than getting lost in the in-between. So yeah, I think the end game is eventually you stop listening to this podcast or you stop watching these videos because you've built a life with a community wherein you find your peace, wherein you find your rest.

So it's good for your formation, it's good for your edification, it's good for your life here and now, especially if it's one otherwise cut off from many means of Christian life, but I think you're meant for otherwise, you're meant for more. Know that. All right, know my prayers for you, please pray for me and I look forward to chatting with you next time. I'm Pius of the Aquinas.