After walking for more than an hour through a vast and unfamiliar forest whilst chatting with my brother-in-law about the nil-rate tax band, I turned to glance at the children following behind. One of them, my son, was not there. At first, we were not too worried. He is not an infant, but neither is he a man. He is at that awkward mid-teen stage of wanting independence whilst still comfortably depending on us.
A slight panic began to set in as it became apparent that he wasn’t just lagging behind at a slow pace. “Has he got his phone?” my brother-in-law asked. “He hasn’t got a phone,” I replied.
We split up and began calling his name, tracking back through the lacerating brambles and fallen trees, through the sinister fields of thick mud that could swallow a medium-sized badger whole. There’s a chance my fear was getting the better of me. Suddenly, there he was, a little shaken, but comforted by two elderly women who had found him some distance away calling for us. His football had rolled down a hill and by the time he retrieved it, his lovingly attentive family were long gone. At a crossroads, he took the wrong path.
Our lost boy is one of a very few his age without a phone. Our decision not to equip him with one has been met with curiosity at best and judgment at worst. “You have to get the boy a phone,” we have been told, followed ironically by: “You can’t shield him from the real world forever.”
It is exactly this detachment from reality that we are trying to guard against; an artificiality that pits man against God, woman against man and body against soul. Only in God can this harmony be restored , but with an upside-down value system we turn instead to the body of a new god in the form of artificial intelligence, the artificial child of a contraceptive mentality. Whilst I’m tempted to say that smartphones are the root of the rupture that we see in an increasingly artificial world, it would not be true; they themselves are the fruit of a much earlier rupture which took place in the garden of Eden.
Dr Paula Boddington, who was appointed by Elon Musk to develop a code of ethics around AI, is one of the few adults I know who doesn’t have a smartphone. Like the tech guys at Silicon Valley, who don’t give their kids smartphones, she knows only too well the dangers of unfettered access to an artificial world. “Sow a thought,” Emerson said, “and you reap an action…sow a habit and you reap a character, sow a character and you reap a destiny.” Whilst there are undeniable advantages to AI (using robots to clear landmines comes to mind) the danger of raising artificial intelligence to the status of a God is that we conform to the thing we worship, we be come more artificial and the destiny we reap becomes an artificial one.
Only in such an artificial value system can same-sex couples get married and have babies, can abortion be so widespread, can euthanasia be celebrated and can something like the transgender movement take hold. What is systematically eliminated in such a distorted worldview is the feminine element. All the hectoring of the feminists has come to this: feminism has succeeded in securing a great masculine victory.
Alice von Hildebrand, the Catholic theologian and author, writes: “We live in a world that has become more and more dehumanised, more and more heartless, a world dominated by technology, by machines. Their dehumanised designs embody the worst stereotypes of a godless masculinity. The machines cannot smile or of fer a word of comfort to the sick, who are desperately in need of understanding, patience and compassion in order to carry well the cross of suffering. Human persons are made of body and soul; the body cannot recover when the soul is neglected.” Unless we abandon what Karl Stern calls “the flight from woman” our amazing technological advances will be our spiritual downfall.
It is no wonder that the more technological we become the more we devalue human persons. As artificial intelligence beguiles us we are beguiled less by the broken smelly human before us. For as long as possible, we want our children to marvel at the mystery of humanity, not the efficiency of artificiality.
It is no surprise that it was two women who found and protected our son. It is no surprise that he ran into my arms to be embraced as soon as he saw us. Our hope is that these memories of femininity etch themselves into his masculine brain and recalibrate the broken harmony that exists between the sexes far more successfully than any app might be able to do.
Photo: This photo illustration depicts an ‘AI girl generator’ on a cell phone set against a computer screen showing multiple images of AI-generated ‘girls’. While such creations might appear relatively harmless, there are also increasing concerns about the use of AI to create so-called ‘deep fakes’ which manipulate images to make them look like actual people with an increasing level of realism. (Photo by STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images.)
This article originally appeared in the May 2023 edition of the Catholic Herald magazine. To read more quality Catholic journalism in the printed form subscribe here.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.