This newly published book highlights the author’s concern that by developing and embracing technology to the extent that we have, we are fast losing what really matters in life: human relationships that are rich and meaningful.

There is a way out of our impersonal world, Andy Crouch tells us, into a world where knowing and being known is the heartbeat of our days, our households, and our economies. Where our human vulnerabilities are seen not as something to be escaped but the actual key to our becoming who were made to be together. Where technology serves us rather than masters us – and helps us become more human, not less.

Making contact

Crouch starts by explaining how a new-born baby in the first moments of life is searching for a face and when they find one that gazes back at them, they “fix their eyes on it, having found what they were most urgently looking for” (p3). The author argues that recognition is the first human task and the primary task of infancy. Without this, life cannot develop. Each of us builds our sense of self through our eyes in those initial stages of life. Everything else – feeding, crying, sleeping – is simply the support system for this most essential work of figuring out who we are by making contact with other people.

Technology has given us an easier life in many ways – but at a great cost.

The tragedy of modern life is that what starts off as natural and essential becomes less easy to maintain due to our technological advances and reliance upon such means to live our lives. Technology has given us an easier life in many ways – but at a great cost. Crouch believes we need to redress that imbalance by establishing and restoring true community as the basis for maintaining our humanity.

Fake communication

In one of the more interesting parts of the book the author distinguishes between personalised and personal. Technology has removed the personal element of so much of life and created a fake version called personalisation, in which it seems we are being treated as an individual and dealing with real people when it fact there are no people involved on the other side. This, according to Crouch, is the “shadow side of the bright promises and genuine achievements of the technological world . . . based all along on a false understanding of what human beings really are and what we most need” (pp.12-13)

We seem to be more connected via our use of technology, but often this produces a deeper loneliness, even despair, over a lack of true personal interaction. Crouch offers this book in the hope that it will show us how to rejoin the human race as it was intended, how in an impersonal world it is still possible to become true persons again.

We seem to be more connected via our use of technology, but often this produces a deeper loneliness, even despair, over a lack of true personal interaction.

At times it seems the author feeds us with lots of ideas and information, yet without the main theme being tackled. We are told lots about the world as we know it and how it robs us of those deeper relationships as we seek to live more fully in the world of devices and AI-driven technology. It isn’t until well past the halfway point of the book that start to be told “there is another way” (p.130).

Communities of households

In this later section of the book there is a good chapter on households which are fundamentally more than just families. They may include family members but are not restricted to our nearest relations or even the place where we live. A household is defined as “a community of persons who may well take shelter under one roof but also and more fundamentally take shelter under one another’s care and concern” (p131). This idea was central to life in the ancient world and is still so in many cultures today, but not in our advanced technological societies.

Somehow, the author contends, we must seek to rebuild these kinds of households. Clearly we cannot now abandon all forms of technology, so it is a matter of learning how to live with these within a more relationally rich environment.

There is little reference to scripture throughout the book, especially in the first half. Perhaps the book is intended more for those with good biblical knowledge who already know the scriptures well enough to find the appropriate passages to help in this task of rebuilding communities.

Clearly we cannot now abandon all forms of technology, so it is a matter of learning how to live with these within a more relationally rich environment.

The author is described as a ‘cultural critic’ which helps explain the nature of his book. Indeed our culture does need such criticism, and Crouch certainly provides an acutely insightful exploration of our relationship with technology at the expense of our relationships with each other. But it would have been good to have been given more practical solutions to the dilemma our society now finds itself in.

Overall, the book is worth buying and for some it will be quite eye-opening.

The Life We’re Looking For (240pp) is published by Hodder & Stoughton, and is available from Amazon for £10.22 (inc p&p).