The 19^th-century Danish philosopher and theologian, Søren Kierkegaard, wrote on the meaning of individual choice in his present age of mass printing, ubiquitous information, and ‘universalist’ philosophies. For Kierkegaard, the decision to act requires that an individual confront the social and personal and embrace the anxiety found in the “leap of faith.” In recent years, a disquieting awareness of the time spent on my phone, a desire to spend time differently, and a skepticism of “progress,” I opted out of social media and the smartphone. This letter is a Kierkegaardian interpretation of our cultural malaise and personal confession. In an increasingly algorithmic age, the act of truly making a choice requires inward solitude, the very conditions the digital world negates.

Kierkegaard chose a life of study over marriage – a decision which brought him sadness and deep reflection on his faith. His work challenged contemporary philosophy, which emphasized conscious life as an expression of our collective institutions. For Kierkegaard, this was unsatisfying and unappreciative of the individual experience and challenges to social convention. If faith and God are mere manifestations of culture, what is Truth? Is free will itself a construct?

Criticisms of social media usually focus on toxic politics, bullying, and self-esteem for young people. In looking at studies on brain science alone, we avoid our subjective experience. What is spirituality or the life of the mind but meditation and wrestling with our mind through some discipline without excessive sensory stimulation? To experience the evenings and weekends without devices, I began the fall season with a landline phone and no Wi-Fi (except while at work). How realistic was this? How much of my own psychology, repression or sublimation, shape my attitude toward technology? Could others like parents, caretakers, or gig workers afford this choice? Is this mere nostalgia? The nihilist may ask, does it matter either way?

The most significant immediate change is the solitude of the mind. The lack of digital stimulation obligated me to experience and sit with both the pleasant and unpleasant – my thoughts, feelings, and sensations. In time, an aliveness came in my relationship to space. Time was more still: A half-hour had more to offer, a day passes with awareness that isn’t subverted toward posting. My waking hours turned toward the productive – study, exercise, introspection, music, and journaling, or pausing to lie in bed. At the gym I may feel a desire to take a picture of myself and post a workout, instead I sit with the confident and erotic feeling, reflecting on the exhibitionist desire.

When awake at night and struggling to sleep, I would prefer to scroll to distract the unpleasant thoughts or memories of love and family that may arise in restlessness. Does it matter if I scrolled YouTube instead of drawing or doodling? In mere doodling, I necessarily allow the mind to wonder with only the stimulation of the light of the room, tracing of the pencil, and the impermanence of emotion.

For Kierkegaard, in any action, we must face the anxiety, the “fear and trembling” and the act with incomplete information. In the “leap,” the choice to negate social affirmation and the fear of missing out, we face our own psyche. Kierkegaard interprets the story of Abraham and Isaac to demonstrate the radicalism of individual choice. How can Abraham murder, sacrifice his own son, which any person in civilized society would condemn? The horrible choice is matched only by the trembling before God’s revealed word. Society would put him to death, but to disobey God is to deny what is temporally and metaphysically supreme over the social.

Across traditions, the individual act in the face of the collective is a sacred journey. The Bhagavad Gita describes the Hindu warrior Arjuna lamenting his duty to war against his own neighbors and friends. The God Krishna instructs him against attachments and ‘cost-benefit’ analysis that negate spiritual duty. God demands that Arjuna act in the face of uncertainty. In the Greek tragedy of Antigone, the heroine defies her father, the king, to provide her brother proper burial rites after his death in battle. The proper rites demonstrate both her love and devotion to family and the respect for the Gods. Antigone must defy society, face uncertainty, punishment, and rejection by the father, to approach the higher spiritual good.

To make an authentic decision in the digital age is no small task. To our own peril we have rejected what remains of the individual. Nonconformist action is reduced to the logic of market conformity: you are both responsible for your phone addiction, yet you are a fool to oppose technological progress. If Kierkegaard questioned the printing press, we face the endless scroll. To choose silence in our time is not nostalgia – it is an act of faith.

Chenjeri lives in Klamath Falls