The Life We're Looking For
Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World
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- USD 10.99
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- USD 10.99
Publisher Description
A deeply reflective primer on creating meaningful connections, rebuilding abundant communities, and living in a way that engages our full humanity in an age of unprecedented anxiety and loneliness—from the author of The Tech-Wise Family
“A unique exploration of tech’s effect on relationships. Andy is one of my favorite living writers, and I would consider this his best book.”—John Mark Comer, New York Times bestselling author of Practicing the Way and The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry
Our greatest need is to be recognized—to be seen, loved, and embedded in rich relationships with those around us. But for the last century, we’ve displaced that need with the ease of technology. We’ve dreamed of mastery without relationship (what the premodern world called magic) and abundance without dependence (what Jesus called Mammon). Yet even before a pandemic disrupted that quest, we felt threatened and strangely out of place: lonely, anxious, bored amid endless options, oddly disconnected amid infinite connections.
In The Life We’re Looking For, bestselling author Andy Crouch shows how we have been seduced by a false vision of human flourishing—and how each of us can fight back. From the social innovations of the early Christian movement to the efforts of entrepreneurs working to create more humane technology, Crouch shows how we can restore true community and put people first in a world dominated by money, power, and devices.
There is a way out of our impersonal world, into a world where knowing and being known are the heartbeat of our days, our households, and our economies. Where our vulnerabilities are seen not as something to be escaped but as the key to our becoming who we were made to be together. Where technology serves us rather than masters us—and helps us become more human, not less.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Crouch (The Tech-Wise Family), an entrepreneur and former executive editor at Christianity Today, reconsiders human dependence on technology in this impassioned critique. Crouch laments that "we have become embedded in a world of money, machines, and devices," and recommends that readers push back against the inherently alienating nature of technology. The author argues that modern technology gives users impressive abilities with little effort, but he suggests this effortlessness "diminishes us as much as it delights us." He also decries "Mammon" (the drive to worship money as if it were God) as the engine behind society's ills, writing that money enables people to buy services or goods without forming the relationships that would be otherwise required to receive them. By way of remedy, Crouch urges his readers to live in "households that extend beyond family," which generate bonds of interdependence; cultivate "canopies of trust," which foster solidarity; and create communities of the "unuseful," which reject the transactional nature of the modern world by valuing those with little to trade. Crouch's cross-disciplinary approach impresses, jumping from scripture to Roman history to psychology with aplomb, but his focus on the individual does little to address the systemic roots of the problems he identifies. This provocative if imperfect treatise makes some original contributions to an oft-discussed topic.
