White Paper: Pattern-Recognition and Resolution | To thrive in the contemporary technological age, we need not only an improved habit of pattern recognition, but also one of resolution.

Building on Our Foundation The Lyceum Institute has raised $14,508 toward the $48,000 Beyond the University campaign goal. A generous supporter has now committed an additional $10,000, giving this next stretch of the campaign real momentum. This gift should not stand alone. The Lyceum is built by...

“Culture”. We hear the word all the time: the culture is in decline, we are losing our culture, we are fighting a culture war. But ask someone to define culture, and you will likely receive many different answers—answers which consist primarily in the enumeration of different and apparently disparate phenomena. Such nebulously-used terms often obscure deep conceptual confusions, leading to subsequent practical errors. When it comes to “culture”, these conceptual confusions and practical problems have compounded within our technologized way of life.

We commonly find reduction of the body to a possession, a something distinct from the self. This opposition of the self and the body may result in neglect or abuse of the latter. But it may also turn towards a kind of reductive optimization, a movement increasingly popular today. This optimization movement appears to place a high value on the body by tracking its operations, measuring and evaluating them over time, improving physical performance, and alleviating bodily ailments. But it often does so by treating the body as a system of inputs, outputs, efficiencies, and performance metrics rather than as the living expression of a unified human person.

Commonly, we presume an opposition between “natural” and “artificial”. The “natural” is usually assumed to be that which is untouched by human hands, whereas the “artificial” is that which we have originally brought about, somehow, in contradistinction to what happens by unmolested nature. But this presumes a false anthropological narrative. If we want to understand the real effects of artificial technologies on nature, we need first to understand what the “natural environment” really is.

Recent discussions of artificial intelligence have begun to turn from questions about what these systems can do toward a more difficult question: what does their use leave human beings able to do for themselves? How does their use deprive us of what is properly ours? As users increasingly employ generative systems for their writing, research, prudential evaluation, and refinement of communication, the problem of utility shrinks—in proportion to the problem of a reliance that atrophies the very soul of the human being.

That technology use has effects on our psychological well-being has become, by this point, well-known and widely recognized.  But the concern is ordinarily limited to the distraction, anxiety, addiction, overstimulation, or other faults in control that appear downstream of specific technological devices or frameworks, such as smartphones, social media, or LLMs.  These are real problems, to be sure; but they are merely symptoms of a deeper habituation suffered through unthinking ways of living in an environment thoroughly structured by technological modes of thinking.

Our most common mistake in thinking about the “problem” of technology is, in fact, that we treat it as a “problem” awaiting a solution. But technology is not merely a problem, nor merely a set of tools, nor an autonomous force outside human control. It is a difficulty intrinsic to human life: an expression of human intelligence and making that must be ordered by prudence rather than by technique itself.

Learn about Matthew Minerd, second plenary speaker for Human Formation in the Digital Age (16-17 Sep. 26): a conference asking how we must respond to our changed and rapidly changing technological environments in seeking to retrieve and foster a genuine formation of the human person.

Learn about Mariele Courtois, first plenary speaker for Human Formation in the Digital Age (16-17 Sep. 26): a conference asking how we must respond to our changed and rapidly changing technological environments in seeking to retrieve and foster a genuine formation of the human person.

Announcing the Keynote speaker for our Conference, Human Formation in the Digital Age – 16-17 September 2026 in St. Louis Missouri: Read Mercer Schuchardt.

Are we losing our humanity to technology? Do we understand how technology affects us? How we might integrate it into truly human living? Join us as we ask these important questions.