Alan Jacobs, arguing re: digital technology’s negative effects on us and our kids that everyone knows all this—by this he means that screens are making us miserable, that they’re terrible for our kids' mental health (and they’re terrible tools for their education), that Silicon Valley cares not at all about these adverse effects—which means that our problem runs deeper than mere ignorance:

So our problem is not a lack of knowledge; it’s a deficiency of will and a malformation of desire. St. Augustine explained it all to us 1600 years ago: My actions are determined by my will, and my will is driven by what I love. We do badly by our children because we do not love them sufficiently or properly; we do badly by our neighbors for the same reason; we do badly by ourselves for the same reason, because narcissists — and one of the things everyone knows is that all the forces named above breed narcissists — do not rightly love themselves.

Those of us who care about the future of our children, our neighbors, and ourselves don’t need to repeat what everyone already knows. We need to devote our full attention to one question and one question only: How do we love rightly and teach others to love rightly? If that’s not our constant meditation, we’re wasting our time. If we cannot redirect our desires towards better things than Silicon Valley, AKA Vanity Fair, sells, then nothing, literally nothing, will get better.

Larry Crabb:

The spirituality of a community can be measured not merely by its doctrinal statement but by the passions that are most deeply aroused. Is our passion for worship elbowing out our passion for self? Does our passion to trust nudge aside our passion to control? Does our passion to grow make us willing to suffer whatever pain is needed? Is our passion to obey relieving the pressure to do something right? Instead, is it causing us to delight with anything we do right?

Spiritual passions, those generated by realizing the staggering provisions of the New Covenant, are the centerpiece of spiritual community. They are what we pour into one another. Truly spiritual passions communicate more truth to deeper places in people than well-presented teaching, because they can exist only if the gospel is true.

It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.

W. H. Auden, with an apt description of the “consuming” mind that devours cultural artifacts rather than savoring them:

When we read more books, look at more pictures, listen to more music, than we can possibly absorb the result of such gluttony is not a cultured mind but a consuming one; what it reads, looks at, listens to, is immediately forgotten, leaving no more traces behind it than yesterday’s newspaper.