When I have to be somewhere at a certain time, my brain kicks off a very complex system of calculations. When do I need to be there without causing myself social anxiety or embarrassment? I subtract a few minutes from the time I'm told to arrive. How long does it take me to get there? Calculations ensue based on mode of travel, traffic, back roads taken, etc. And a final question: What kind of time-buffer do I need to add so that I'm not stressed in travel?
All of that means that I would reliably arrive outside of my college classrooms 20 minutes prior to class starting. At least as a Freshman—I got much better at wrangling my anxiety, because later it would be just 15 minutes early.
So I'm sitting at a table, waiting to get into an auditorium for a special class that day (I recall it being abnormal, since this wasn't where I usually waited). The doors were open and I could hear the professor's lecture from where I was sitting. He was summarizing a philosophical argument and said something like the following:
"Religion was employed to maintain control over the behavior of the masses. Government can only do so much to determine behavior, but religion—that's a system that drives people from within."
This assertion of institutions exerting either external or internal control was very offensive to me at the time. I remember scowling and thinking of all of my arguments had I the chance to debate this idea. I wasn't religious because I was an unagentic part of the masses. I was above all of that because I had real faith in the real truth. In my defensive reaction, I wasn't able to hear the systemic critique. It wasn't about faith or belief or conviction—it wasn't even about existential "truth." What I missed was what these philosophers were warning about.
I can't remember the professor's actual words, nor can I remember which philosophers he was lecturing on—I don't even know what the class was; it could have been philosophy, political science, or something else. Therefore, I can't unpack specific arguments or references, but from what I remember, the real issue that the professor was taking about was control, and one of the most cogent, real-world attempts at control of the masses right now is in the technology space, specifically through data hoarding and mass surveillance.
To set the stage, I do think that both government and religion broadly can end up using the same technology for the same means (especially when unchecked). The means in question: power and control; the technology: surveillance. In this article, I am using "religion" to refer specifically to American Christianity, since this is the religious system with which I am most familiar (and "religion" is already a word with significant bias towards Protestant Christianity).
Always Observed
My faith tradition instilled an idea that has been extremely difficult for me to work through. From very young, I was told that God was watching me. He could see every action; hear every word; and even know my own thoughts and feelings. Generally, this was supposed to be something comforting. A benevolent God would be able to look upon my heart and know why I misbehaved or said something hurtful or did something I know I shouldn't do.
Perhaps because of my proclivity to anxiety (see timing calculations above), I really took this at face value: there was an all-powerful Being that was constantly observing everything about me. Even though culturally this was intended to be a positive aspect, I felt the other side of this constancy in which judgment was always looming above me like a sword of Damocles. In a way, this teaching interrupted my agency, because I lived in fear of swift punishment that was sure to follow any deviant act, like listening to good music on a Sunday or reading any kind of philosophy or identifying with feminists.
Instead of providing me with comfort and confidence as promised by the messages of a God/Christ who is our advocate, I was trapped in calculations of whether my intentions matched up with my behavior enough, or if I had made enough performances of faith to merit divine favor and avoid punishment or problems. Even scarier is that I was so conditioned to these calculations and the mental weight of knowing I was being watched that I had no idea how much that was wearing down my energy, mental health, and spirit. (Insert plug for therapy here #WorthIt)
Again, I want to reiterate that the critique here is not your personal faith or belief. I'm not interested in determining whether your church or mine or someone else's has a better explanation, method, or doctrine. My neuroses are also my neuroses; my problems are my problems. What's interesting to me is how religion can employ a seemingly simple teaching like "God is watching," to control behavior from within.
A potent example for me is my confusion about feminism. No one told me personally that being upset with misogyny and the systemic oppression of women was a bad thing, but because of the combination of both cultural attitude (anti-feminism) and the application of constant observation created an attitude within me that controlled my behavior despite that behavior being in conflict with my own values. I recall proclaiming that, "Feminism is a bad," to women of my faith who considered themselves feminists. This was my attempt to perform observable behavior in alignment with the faith culture, but in every other way supporting and advocating for women's equality and rights. Instead of being aware of my actual values and beliefs, the feeling of constant observation made me invent ways to appear aligned with external expectations and ignore or justify other behaviors that disagreed with that alignment.
I don't think this is unique to me, because I see similar behavior–value conflicts among friends, family, and even online apologetics. "God is watching" and this is good for those who feel they're in the right (God has validated their behavior and is eagerly awaiting the opportunity to exact justice on "the other"). "God is watching" is bad for those who feel guilty (whether legitimate guilt for wrong-doing or manufactured guilt for humility, anxiety, or any other Christian-flavored motivation for self-abasement).
The technology here is often tied to the surveillance of God (although, perhaps not as consciously as in my case). How else does God know how to judge you in the afterlife? He would have to know what you've done and why. And that kind of data is only gathered through a complete, unbroken view of you, your behavior, your speech, and your thoughts. All of the inner feelings, the doubts, the concerns, the pain, the secret acts, the shame, that you would prefer to stay yours—to stay private—must be accessible and presentable in your celestial court case.
Whether or not a religion is intentionally and consciously attempting to control people and exercise dominion over them, the technology is there at the ready.
Button, Button, Who Has the Button?
As we so often see, religion (especially that Christian flavor we've talked about) blends well into the world of technology. In a way, they are so interrelated for the exact reason that the eavesdropped professor was critiquing: they are attempting to control the masses. Maybe that's with the best of intentions. Tech for a better, safer, healthier, more knowledgable world. Religion for pro-social community-building, inspiring the best of humanity. Religion and tech are trying to make a better world. Sometimes, they are trying to make a utopia, which is, deceptively, not a good place, despite all appearances to the contrary. In the U.S., religion (in principle) is not supposed to be coupled with the power of the state, so technology seems to be taking the place at the seat of power, attempting to do what religion isn't allowed to do: realize the utopian programming.
"Yet these utopians are emblematic of persistent themes in technological discourse today: faith that technology is both the question and the answer, and belief that our machines can bring a perfect world within reach." —God and the Chip: Religion and the Culture of Technology, by William A. Stahl, 1999, page 50-51
There are tech companies (you've likely heard their names a lot recently) whose product is surveillance. The marketing goes like this: What if you lived in a world where there was no crime? Your safety, solved. How? By stopping crime before it happens.
Whether the method is mass surveillance to "find the bad guys" or deep data that can predict when someone is about to commit a crime, the companies all make the same promise that we can get to a world where crime is gone and everyone is safe. It sounds lovely, but rings hollow when you consider the actual cost, and the actual outcome. Near as I can tell, all of these roads lead to authoritarianism. How else do you strip out all privacy? How else do you control enough people? How else do you repeat the same message regardless of evidence to back it up?
Silicon Valley has been pursuing creating a God through artificial intelligence, but from my experience of religion, we've already created a God without requiring super intelligence, because we've created mass surveillance technology. Although in religion, you can at least pray to God and hope for His favor to fall upon you. Private companies that can determine whether you live or die because you fit a profile "enough" despite biases and mistakes is God's constant observation without God's intervention and promise of both justice and mercy.
The more we allow surveillance to have a place in society, the less freedom we have. Not less freedom to commit anti-social crime—that's always available to us—but the freedom to think in alignment with our values; the freedom to challenge assumptions or messages; the freedom to innovate; the freedom to explore. When people and companies talk about safety, but require our data and our privacy to realize that safety, they are not interested in actual safety, they are interested in control.
God is the one with the data and the ability to observe everyone, all the time. God is watching. Who do we want to be our God?