Arianna Huffington* worries that technology, and especially social media, is creating a dystopian world no one will want to live in.
The paradox of so much of our technology is that it keeps us locked in an eternal present, while at the same time creating an eternal archive that never fades away.
The result isn’t just higher levels of anxiety, depression and loneliness, it also makes it harder for us to grow and evolve.
Evolution did not stop when we evolved from the apes.
There is an instinct embedded in us, our fourth instinct, beyond the more recognised instincts of survival, sex and power, that drives us to evolve through our mistakes, pain, and self-discovery.
However, we’ve reached a dangerous moment in our culture where we assume a state of arrested development, from which no growth or improvement is assumed possible.
Growth cannot happen without the necessary ingredients of redemption, forgiveness and self-forgiveness.
If we’re not allowed to learn from our mistakes, atone for them, become better people, then we can grow neither individually nor collectively.
True change at the systemic level has to be accompanied by change at the personal level.
As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it: The line separating good and evil passes not through States, nor between classes, nor between political parties — but right through every human heart.”
Redemption allows us to thrive by being released from our worst moments — that’s exactly what our modern technology and current culture make it increasingly difficult to do.
By keeping our worst moments in the foreground forever, we’re never able to be released from them, to evolve and make ourselves and our world better.
In business, we extol the growth mindset, but a world without redemption enshrines its opposite: The much-despised fixed mindset.
Academic, Leon Botstein describes social media as an accelerant to arson.
“Everything moves rapidly and out of control. So, the slightest spark creates an avalanche of retribution. There’s no room for error,” he says.
We’ve all seen it happen. An offensive tweet is sent out, or one is found from a decade ago, and the algorithms fire up a storm — one that will live forever.
It happens every day on social media. It’s happening to someone right now as you read this — and it has to stop.
We can choose to be a society in which we widen the circle of our concern, or we can become a circular firing squad. It won’t be the first time in history.
During the French Revolution, prominent revolutionaries who had worked together to bring down the French aristocracy started accusing and killing each other.
Robespierre introduced the reign of virtue, which became the Reign of Terror.
One of the revolutionaries, Georges Danton, was led to the guillotine for urging moderation.
“Robespierre will follow me,” he prophesied to his executioner, and indeed three months later it was Robespierre who was led to the guillotine.
In a reign of virtuous terror no one is virtuous enough.
Forgiveness doesn’t suspend judgment, it doesn’t mean not holding people accountable or ignoring injustices or forgetting the past.
It simply allows the offender the possibility of atonement and progress.
Of course, forgiveness is not easy, but who wants to live in a world where there is no forgiveness, no compassion and no love?
Forgiveness is not just essential for our spiritual health. Studies have shown that forgiveness is also good for our mental and physical health.
In a study by researchers from Hope College, participants were asked to think about someone who had mistreated them.
While they ruminated on past slights, their stress responses went up — with increased blood pressure, heart rate, facial tension and sweating.
When the same participants were asked to think about forgiving their transgressors, their physical arousal subsided.
Forgiveness has also been found to lower levels of stress, anxiety and depression, decrease heart attack risk, improve our sleep and even lower cholesterol levels.
This brings us back to technology’s role.
What we need, to allow for both individual and collective redemption, is to use technology in ways that augment our fundamental need to grow and evolve, instead of working against it.
Just because our technology encourages context collapse and the call-out culture that ensues doesn’t mean we have to participate in it.
Another example of improving our use of technology are laws enshrining the right to be forgotten, which provides a way for people to have private information about them removed from internet search engines.
The rule is in effect in the European Union and several other countries.
Earlier this year, The Boston Globe launched its ‘Fresh Start’ program, which allowed people named in stories to apply to have the information updated or removed.
We all want change, both for ourselves and for our society, and for that to happen, we have to create a culture in which we’re allowed to be forgiven and learn from our mistakes.
That means forgiving others, and forgiving ourselves.
Our purpose in life isn’t to be perfect, but to always strive and work toward becoming better.
When our technology works against this fundamental drive, we need to re-evaluate our relationship with technology.
We have to ask ourselves if we are allowing it to create a dystopian world no one would want to live in, fuelling conflict and hate and shrinking our humanity.
As theologian Barbara Holmes put it: “Love is the greatest mystery of all. Not love as a warm and fuzzy feeling, but love as the animating force that holds us together.”
*Arianna Huffington is the founder and Chief Executive of Thrive Global; the founder of The Huffington Post, and the author of 15 books, including, most recently, Thrive and The Sleep Revolution.
She can be contacted through the Thrive Global website.
