Anonymous Spiritual Hitchhiking: Emotional Health in the Digital Age / Anonymous
About this episode
The episode explores the potential for emotional and spiritual growth through anonymous interactions in the digital age.
We’re used to hostile online encounters with total strangers. It fuels the digital economy. But what if there were a way to experiment with radical emotional honesty with an anonymous other—much the same as you’d experience at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting? The anonymous founder of This Life, an audio-only app built on anonymity, joins For the Life of the World to argue that emotional and spiritual progress is still possible at scale. "What's really kind is to care about somebody else. And then even more kind than that is to allow somebody else to care about you." In this episode with Evan Rosa, Justin Smith (a pseudonym) reflects on what he learned in Alcoholics Anonymous, the genius of Bill Wilson, and why our voices carry so much emotional weight, and how sharing them—even (and perhaps especially) anonymously—can be a transformative experience of growth. Together they discuss anonymity as a path to honesty, the "spiritual hitchhiker," negative emotion as a force that wants to win, design as destiny, and becoming a neighbor. They also weigh technology's limits and whether spiritual and emotional progress can scale. Episode Highlights "What's really kind is to care about…
More episodes of For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & Culture
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