The Extinction of Experience
Christine Rosen
What first drew me to Christine Rosen's book was its title. The possibility that experience itself might be disappearing troubled me.
Much of my life has been spent listening to the experiences of others. As a physician and later as a spiritual director, I have come to appreciate how deeply we are formed by what we live through, by our encounters with others, and by the meaning we gradually discover within them.
Spiritual direction begins with human experience. We bring our lives as they are, hoping to recognize something of God's presence within them.
But what happens when technology begins to change not only the experiences we have, but our very capacity to recognize and understand them?
Attention, presence, and experience are closely connected. How we attend to life shapes what we notice. What we notice influences what we remember, what we value, and ultimately how we understand ourselves and others.
I wonder whether we are gradually losing something of our ability to recognize what is happening within us and around us.
Technology can enrich our lives and make meaningful connections possible. Yet I worry that when so much of life is mediated through screens and digital encounters, we may begin to lose touch with the experiences through which we come to know ourselves, one another, and God.
And this raises a question that I cannot easily dismiss.
If our spiritual lives are rooted in human experience, what happens when our capacity to recognize and interpret that experience begins to change? Can we continue to live meaningful spiritual lives without learning again how to be present to the life we are actually living?
Perhaps the challenge is not simply to recover experiences we may be losing, but to recover our capacity to recognize their meaning.
That seems to me