Becoming Dispossessed: Stepping Away from Twitter

I am taking an extended, perhaps permanent, break from Twitter. Here are my reasons.

I encourage you to begin by reading Paul Kingsnorth’s short story, written in the form of a letter: The Basilisk. He makes the case that our smart phones are like the mythical basilisk, a beast which kills you when its eyes lock with your eyes. He argues that these devices, combined with the very addictive content created specifically for them, such as social media apps and games, grip us, grab our attention and in the end possess us. They open a portal into which we are drawn and through which we are assaulted with a constant stream of content. It goes beyond the merely physical dopamine release that the “likes” produce. They very much can and do take over your life. We do become possessed by them.

Kingsnorth’s warning is ominous. Once one accepts that there are realities beyond or veiled by the material world—a.k.a. the supernatural—and also accepts that these realities may not all be benign, it raises the question of temptation and deception. Classical Christian theological teaching…