It has been a few months since I last sent you a new commentary by writer and social critic Johann Christoph Arnold of Rifton, New York.  Arnold is the author of ten books, including Endangered: Your Child in a Hostile World.

Opium of the People?

Johann Christoph Arnold
February 25, 2006

America is in a deep spiritual crisis, like never before. The threat really isn't terrorism. It's something a lot more devastating--the spread of technology and the Internet, particularly to high school students and younger children.

This has one aim: to raise a generation of children and young people who are spiritually dull, who live according to logic and forget about God. We are raising a nation capable of any and every atrocity in the end, without raising an eyebrow, because of our own spiritual dullness. Every human being has a conscience, which is far superior to the intellect. If the conscience is silenced in us, we are doomed.

Technology is our Achilles heel, which in the end will be worse than any weapon of mass destruction. It will destroy us from within. This frightening trend can only be reversed if more and more citizens listen to their consciences and say, "Enough is enough." Technology puts the "I" in the center and ignores the fact that life is only worth living if "I" depend on my neighbor.

The classics were once an integral part of education. Just about every student read writers such as Aristotle, Novalis, Shakespeare and Dickens. Now, in schools in which every child has access to a computer, children are not even being taught the basic skills of life, such as how to express their thoughts and feelings in writing.

The website "MySpace" alone receives more hits than Google and AOL together. It has 90 billion visitors and about 4l million young users. On the outside it looks beautiful. It supplies anything children might want, giving them the false illusion that they are having community and fellowship with others all over the globe. Yet it does nothing but isolate children and put them emotionally out of touch with reality.

We are infatuated with the ability the Internet gives us. To be able to obtain everything that is available with the click of the mouse gives us power and makes us feel invincible. We also feel that the Internet is the solution to all of our emotional and spiritual problems. For every emotional disorder there is a self-help website or a group blog.

In 1843, Karl Marx said that "religion is the opium of the people." Today the Internet is the drug that cures all ills. We forget too quickly the old saying that "not everything that glitters is gold." The Internet has become our god, our idol. Yet we have never been lonelier or more isolated from other human beings.

What use is it to have all the possessions the world offers right in my living room if they separate me from other people? The essence of community is being systematically destroyed. If in any culture the minds and hearts of the children and youth have been captured, the war is already won.

The greatest challenge of education, the greatest challenge to parents and teachers, is not to teach our children reading, writing and arithmetic, which are important, but to see that they do not become spiritually dull.

[Johann Christoph Arnold (www.christopharnold.com) is an author of ten books and a pastor with the Bruderhof Communities (www.bruderhof.com).

Sam Hine (assistant) for Johann Christoph Arnold

samhine@mailstack.com