“The intellect that dallies with some sensible thing clearly is attached to it by some passion, such as desire, irritation, anger or rancour; and unless it becomes detached from that thing it will not be able to free itself from the passion affecting it.” - St. Maximos the Confessor

Sometimes I hate my smartphone. I might furiously stomp to a creek in the morning and throw it in, but I’m sure to find it again in the evening, safely under my pillow. And there I’ll lie in a torpor, belly up for hours beneath its surface, drinking in its endless duration of novelty with weary eyes and ears - Infinite thirst, meet the “doomscroll.”

Paul Kingsnorth, that erudite neo-Luddite, calls the smartphone a mobile hearth - a glowing, glossy simulacrum of the genuine heat of embodied familial and social life. It’s an escape to another world always in pocket, a guard against the vulnerability and risk of genuine love. But an image of fire can’t possibly warm the household; it only mesmerizes coldly. Its images provoke thirst, left deathly parched. We are promised community but find ourselves disassociated and alienated from our sense of place in creation.

It’s no wonder that I want to throw it in a creek; it’s no wonder that conscientious companies have seen the need to manufacture dumber phones in response to the smartphone’s monopoly. I’ve bought one of those (several actually), but here I am in the evening, typing this reflection on a Google Pixel 9 Pro (Hello, big brother!).

I want to free myself from any passionate attachment to my phone, to counter the desire, irritation, anger and rancor of my relation to it with the principal virtues that St. Maximos defines as, “intelligence, courage, self-restraint, [and] justice.” These he says, are the ‘image’ of the ‘heavenly’ man." (Centuries on Love, 2nd Cen. 79)

The earthy man, full of “stupidity, cowardice, licentiousness, injustice” is easily monetized, and shackled. The heavenly man is unchained, and St. Maximos encourages us,

“As we have borne the image of the earthy, let us also bear the image of the heavenly.”

Recently, I saw a video, I Simplified my Phone (Without Making it Dumb), that, happily, approaches the use of a smartphone with an ethos akin to St. Maximos’s principal virtues. I encourage you to watch it, but I want to conclude by summarizing Ryder Carrol’s three steps to creating a simple, intentional phone:

1. Make it Boring: Delete all social media apps from the phone; turn off all notifications; turn on the grey-scale mode; remove all the icons from the home screen. This is clearly a move toward self-restraint.
2. Make it Actionable: Think about what you really want the smartphone do for you, and only use it to do those things. This is an approach that requires thoughtful and firm resolve (courage).
3. Make it Contextual: As you play different roles during the day, consider how the smartphone can best serve your needs during those times. In the morning it can be a devotional tool; later it becomes a workday tool; in the evening it can prompt reflection and rest. This makes us think about our responsibilities, how we will show up for God and for others, which involves knowing what is proper and right (justice).

I have borne the image of the earthy man in relation to my smartphone up to now. With God’s help, I intend to approach things a little less stupidly in the future; maybe even intelligently, maybe even bearing some image of the heavenly man. I appreciate the gift of finding others who are trying to do the same.