Although some social media is so punishing that it's use might be a peculiar sort of asceticism. Rather than whip my back, I will read Twitter for three hours...
I learned this from an Orthodox Priest teaching about ‘the fast of demons’, which is fasting without prayer. ‘For demons never pray and they’re always hungry’. I simply realised that that was the Empty Heart, always hungry, never satiated. I’m always teaching my folk - it’s just a sip of wine and a scrap of bread, to teach us about ‘Enough’
I must upgrade to a cat-o'-nine-tails, no more tales, an iron maiden, not Iron Maiden. But, realistically, the best ascetics are silent and live on top of poles.
A favourite day out when we lived in Gods own county. Four of our kids are Tykes and I still mourn the departure of Marco B. (Used to teach five minutes walk from Leeds Markets)
Yes to the faux asceticism
It is an expression of the deep deceit within the machine
I’ll never see chocolate brownie the same again, although my sons baking skills mean I really know how good it is :)
I think there is a strong element of self-deceit to ersatz asceticism too: a kind of focusing on words and arranging the lives of others before fixing your own life that it is very easy to fall into. I'm certainly not immune!
‘The brothers said to the Abba, “speak to the Bishop that he might be edified” The Abba replied, “If he is not edified by my silence, he will not be edified by anything I have to say”’
There is the paradox though, when things become as slanted as they are. I was raised within the Catholic church and never heard of the Desert Fathers, or even Aquinas, until decades after I had fallen away from it.
Corporately, to have those sort of intellectual riches laying around the place but to refrain from using them even as the church in the West collapses feels more like self-sabotage than asceticism.
It's almost as though the Churches believe the New Atheist nonsense about religion lacking intellectual depths, and don't recognise that their literate, media-saturated flocks might need to know a bit about those depths too
I’m also heavily into Iain McGilchrist and his perception of all Life as Flow. This also resonates, you are as much the journey as on the journey (I like that :) )
Maybe part of it is underestimating kids, or a possibly healthy distrust for over-intellectualising things.
I wonder, though, if it it simply most of those that taught me, aside from presumably the priests, didn't know much themselves.
When I came to actually read some Aquinas (and I am a million miles from an expert), I was shocked at how much more lucid and subtle he is than his modern critics. I realised that many of them in disciplines other than theology haven't even read what they are critiquing and are working off second hand accounts.
I lost a lot of respect for academics through things like that, but with the church it seems less like duplicity and more like some sort of strange self-hatred.
The People of God want nothing more than not to be The People of God.
The Dis-ease [sic] of irrelevance - we can’t bear it. To paraphrase Lewis, ‘we think we’re going into the World, but the Worlds going into us’
My experience is that you can’t sit folk down and try to feed them, but you can begin to take people on a journey which might stimulate a hunger. But you can only take people on a journey you’re on yourself. As soon as we think we’ve got it, we’re stuck
Even Aquinas finally realised he hasn’t got ‘it’, ‘It’ has got him, “all I have written is straw”
It is a source of great comfort that the most terrifying visions of those who would build THE LINE and its ilk are doomed to failure precisely because they are so ridiculous.
I sometimes feel in the past few years that there is no vision that cannot be realized with enough brute force.
“If a mind takes no joy in a ’59 Chevy Apache sitting low on chromes…”
I find this to be one of the paradoxes we face. I sympathize with Jack’s Aresenios Option, and yet I know many who take joy in small-m machines like that Chevy and who love the hum of engines, and who will grow up to design new engines…and who will invariably build the companies that fuel our big-M Machine civilization. If there was some way to shape the love of those engines and of mechanical things so that the machines would remain mostly small-m, we might be able to create a different world.
I think there is a lot of tragedy to it. Those who love tinkering excel in a distinctively human way, yet their excellence is one of the elements that leads to collapse.
I had a baby-boomer coworker who is a natural tinkerer and all around mechanic. I would call him a child of the industrial revolution. He once excitedly told me about some kindred spirits who had made a chainsaw out of '57 chevy or some such (I don't think was actually a '57, but apparently it was huge). He was enamored with the technical aspects, even excited as he talked about it. At the same time realizing such a beast could decimate a forest in no time flat. As if we need more horsepower to do that.
The engineering mindset is the great success of the modern age, more so than theoretical science, I would wager. This mindset only knows problems to be solved, be it creating a flame-thrower, agent orange, or nuclear warheads. How do you solve the engineering mindset?
Are you thinking of the monk in the basement making a light bulb from Canticle?
I have these men in my family. They also like blacksmithing and natural woodworking. They can repair things that anyone else would throw away. I think there is plenty of scope for them without combustion engines. But will they always eventually create another bomb? I don't pretend to know.
Just awhile ago I passed the BT exchange box at the bottom of our road. It was blowing hot again and they will be back tomorrow to cure the hot spot. It's a regular sight to see the van parked up. And so after reading your piece a thought crossed my mind. How much energy will be required, (renewable or not) just to keep the NEOM Line servers cool in such a hostile environment? The joke is 'entropy' and it's a goodun.
We know a true ascetic because he, or she, is not on the Internet.
Although some social media is so punishing that it's use might be a peculiar sort of asceticism. Rather than whip my back, I will read Twitter for three hours...
You're confusing asceticism with masochism. Scrolling through Instagram does not lead to theosis. As far as I know.
I won't be testing that to find out!
Scrolling is demonic
Demons have no bodies
They’re always hungry as they have no physical bodies
So they feed on our attention
Endlessly
I think there's something to that that
This is quite a convincing notion.
It’s the Empty Heart of The Machine, Paul
Of course as an Anglican priest when I talk in this way people think I’ve lost it ;-)
We could do with more Anglican priests who talk like this!
I learned this from an Orthodox Priest teaching about ‘the fast of demons’, which is fasting without prayer. ‘For demons never pray and they’re always hungry’. I simply realised that that was the Empty Heart, always hungry, never satiated. I’m always teaching my folk - it’s just a sip of wine and a scrap of bread, to teach us about ‘Enough’
You can watch people feeding them
It’s no surprise when all hell breaks loose on Anti-‘social media’
De-theosis.
LOL 🤣🤣
Yes, Paul...but did you know the internet here is *very* slow? It is almost like going back to dial-up. Which is nigh like unto martyrdom!
Oh, the suffering! Oh, the humanity!
Sincerely,
Jack
We're modern people, Jack. We have to approach our askesis gradually. First back to dial-up. Then to the tape recorder. Then to the phone box ...
Then two tin cans on a piece of string
Finally face to face :)
Bring it on!
I must upgrade to a cat-o'-nine-tails, no more tales, an iron maiden, not Iron Maiden. But, realistically, the best ascetics are silent and live on top of poles.
Bradford Industrial Museum
A favourite day out when we lived in Gods own county. Four of our kids are Tykes and I still mourn the departure of Marco B. (Used to teach five minutes walk from Leeds Markets)
Yes to the faux asceticism
It is an expression of the deep deceit within the machine
I’ll never see chocolate brownie the same again, although my sons baking skills mean I really know how good it is :)
I think there is a strong element of self-deceit to ersatz asceticism too: a kind of focusing on words and arranging the lives of others before fixing your own life that it is very easy to fall into. I'm certainly not immune!
Indeed!
‘The brothers said to the Abba, “speak to the Bishop that he might be edified” The Abba replied, “If he is not edified by my silence, he will not be edified by anything I have to say”’
There is the paradox though, when things become as slanted as they are. I was raised within the Catholic church and never heard of the Desert Fathers, or even Aquinas, until decades after I had fallen away from it.
Corporately, to have those sort of intellectual riches laying around the place but to refrain from using them even as the church in the West collapses feels more like self-sabotage than asceticism.
I only met the DFs at the Vicar Factory
It's almost as though the Churches believe the New Atheist nonsense about religion lacking intellectual depths, and don't recognise that their literate, media-saturated flocks might need to know a bit about those depths too
I’m also heavily into Iain McGilchrist and his perception of all Life as Flow. This also resonates, you are as much the journey as on the journey (I like that :) )
Or ‘making it up as you go along’
Which is what I’m doing here :)
Yes. I taught in an RC High School in Leeds
I can understand someone raised RC without any contact with Aquinas
Maybe part of it is underestimating kids, or a possibly healthy distrust for over-intellectualising things.
I wonder, though, if it it simply most of those that taught me, aside from presumably the priests, didn't know much themselves.
When I came to actually read some Aquinas (and I am a million miles from an expert), I was shocked at how much more lucid and subtle he is than his modern critics. I realised that many of them in disciplines other than theology haven't even read what they are critiquing and are working off second hand accounts.
I lost a lot of respect for academics through things like that, but with the church it seems less like duplicity and more like some sort of strange self-hatred.
The People of God want nothing more than not to be The People of God.
The Dis-ease [sic] of irrelevance - we can’t bear it. To paraphrase Lewis, ‘we think we’re going into the World, but the Worlds going into us’
My experience is that you can’t sit folk down and try to feed them, but you can begin to take people on a journey which might stimulate a hunger. But you can only take people on a journey you’re on yourself. As soon as we think we’ve got it, we’re stuck
Even Aquinas finally realised he hasn’t got ‘it’, ‘It’ has got him, “all I have written is straw”
That sounds right to me. The comfort of (some of?) the churches in the West led to complacency and a fear of losing worldly influence.
You know, I don't think the idea of faith as a journey was ever presented to me: it was a thing you 'had'. You've hit the core issue there, I suspect.
Out loud ‘rambling’ - thanks for the hospitable space :)
It is a source of great comfort that the most terrifying visions of those who would build THE LINE and its ilk are doomed to failure precisely because they are so ridiculous.
I sometimes feel in the past few years that there is no vision that cannot be realized with enough brute force.
The Line, a Tower of Babel supine
I like that!
“If a mind takes no joy in a ’59 Chevy Apache sitting low on chromes…”
I find this to be one of the paradoxes we face. I sympathize with Jack’s Aresenios Option, and yet I know many who take joy in small-m machines like that Chevy and who love the hum of engines, and who will grow up to design new engines…and who will invariably build the companies that fuel our big-M Machine civilization. If there was some way to shape the love of those engines and of mechanical things so that the machines would remain mostly small-m, we might be able to create a different world.
I think there is a lot of tragedy to it. Those who love tinkering excel in a distinctively human way, yet their excellence is one of the elements that leads to collapse.
I had a baby-boomer coworker who is a natural tinkerer and all around mechanic. I would call him a child of the industrial revolution. He once excitedly told me about some kindred spirits who had made a chainsaw out of '57 chevy or some such (I don't think was actually a '57, but apparently it was huge). He was enamored with the technical aspects, even excited as he talked about it. At the same time realizing such a beast could decimate a forest in no time flat. As if we need more horsepower to do that.
The engineering mindset is the great success of the modern age, more so than theoretical science, I would wager. This mindset only knows problems to be solved, be it creating a flame-thrower, agent orange, or nuclear warheads. How do you solve the engineering mindset?
Are you thinking of the monk in the basement making a light bulb from Canticle?
I have these men in my family. They also like blacksmithing and natural woodworking. They can repair things that anyone else would throw away. I think there is plenty of scope for them without combustion engines. But will they always eventually create another bomb? I don't pretend to know.
It does always come back to A Canticle for Leibowitz with me!
I have been grappling with a response to this post even before I had read it. Thank you for this conversation.
And yes, for what it's worth I do agree with what you say here. -Jack
I think that the needle can be threaded, just not easily. Thanks for provoking the post.
Just awhile ago I passed the BT exchange box at the bottom of our road. It was blowing hot again and they will be back tomorrow to cure the hot spot. It's a regular sight to see the van parked up. And so after reading your piece a thought crossed my mind. How much energy will be required, (renewable or not) just to keep the NEOM Line servers cool in such a hostile environment? The joke is 'entropy' and it's a goodun.
I think you might have just engaged in more critical thought than is allowed in their offices. It would make a good setting for a sci-fi film though!