attention technology handing over power

It is tempting to see the advent of this crisis as technological, but for Crawford it’s more that the technology has created the perfect vehicles for our self-obsession. Individual choice has been fetishised to the point where we have thrown away many of the structures – family, church, community – that helped us to make good decisions, and handed more and more power to corporations.
Matthew Crawford (see previous post)

Obese mind

We increasingly encounter the world through these representations that are addressed to us, often with manipulative intent: video games, pornography, gambling apps on your phone,” he says. “These experiences are so exquisitely attuned to our appetites that they can swamp your ordinary way of being in the world. Just as food engineers have figured out how to make food hyper-palatable by manipulating fat, salt and sugar, similarly the media has become expert at making irresistible mental stimuli.” Distraction is a kind of obesity of the mind, in other words, with results that could be just as hazardous for our health.

Matthew Crawford

Keller: fuller knowledge & changed circumstance

Paul sees this fuller knowledge of God as a more critical thing to receive than a change of circumstances.  Without this powerful sense of God's reality, good circumstances can lead to overconfidence and spiritual indifference.  Who needs God, our hearts would conclude, when matters seem to be so in hand?  then again, without this enlightened heart, bad circumstances can lead to discouragement and despair, because the love of God would be an abstraction rather than the infinitely  consoling presence it should be.  Therefore knowing God better is what we must have above all if we are to face life in any circumstances.

Prayer, p21.