The Monthly Salon: March
Sit back and pour yourself an absinthe
As I wrestle with the next essay in my ongoing series here (I’m finding the essays about current events much harder to write than the historical essays I began this project with, which probably ought to tell me something or other) I’ve decided to introduce a new feature here at the Abbey.
Like all the best ideas, this one is pilfered (‘Talent borrows’, explained Oscar Wilde; ‘genius steals.’) Like some other Substack writers, I’m introducing a regular, reader-led open discussion for anyone who feels like diving in on a topic of their choice.
Beyond being broadly relevant to the topics I write about here, there’s no theme, mandate or expectation. You can talk about whatever you like. Imagine you have just wandered into some Parisian literary salon during your chosen favourite historical period and started up a conversation/provocation/argument. The only rule is the usual one: respect each other, even as you disagree. Beyond that, it’s a free for all.
To kick off this first salon, I’ll offer up a few things I’ve been thinking about myself as potential conversation starters - but you should feel entirely free to ignore them and talk about something else.
Russia & Ukraine
Along with most other people, I couldn’t find Ukraine on a map a few weeks ago. Now I have daily opinions about what is happening there, despite still basically knowing nothing about it - or I did, until I gave up reading the news for Lent, and for my own sanity. All of my opinions are worthless, because they are being conveyed to me by people who want me to think something, and I am being manipulated from a position of basic ignorance. This is the oldest story - war propaganda from all sides - but in the Internet age, there is such a tsunami of it that it has become essentially unreal, in a very post-modern way. After two years of agenda-led media manipulation around covid, it feels like the same patterns are being replicated on a different issue. Everybody wants something from me, as they do from you. I am being told what to think and who to hate and how to react, and as a result I find myself trusting nobody at all. I wonder what this means for my understanding of the world, or whether I could ever understand it at all. Is it ever possible to actually understand anything you don’t personally experience? At what point does propaganda become so pervasive that it is impossible to believe anything you hear?
Control & Money
The Canadian government recently used national emergency powers to freeze anti-government dissidents out of the financial system, thus essentally crushing protests against that system. The same mechanism is now being used on a geopolitical scale against Russia. Combined with the onward march of digital currencies, control of money looks like becoming the ultimate tool for corralling and crushing dissent in the age of the Machine. There will be much more of this. How should we respond to it?
Lent & Less
Orthodox Lent began this week, and I am beginning forty days of fasting, which is supposed to be combined with a greater emphasis on prayer and contemplation (the fasting is easy; the prayer is the hard work.) I’m interested in the meaning of self-denial (and indeed prayer) in an age of self-worship, and not just for Christians.
I’ll stop there. Please go ahead and introduce any topic you like, or respond to any of these. Enjoy!
I have, during Covid, stopped exposing myself to the news. A year and a half into this fast I find it harder and harder to justify going back to doing so. Apart from the usual arguments about being lied to without a way of knowing where the manipulation ends and a broader view emerges, there is for me a more important consideration.
What gives meaning to my life is love. That being so, the most important relational work of my life lies in my immediate circle: wife, children, friends and acquaintances - Christ's 'neighbours'. I have found that they require, if I am to live a loving, meaningful life, all my energy and thoughts. And they are the place - for me increasingly the only place - where I can make a real difference (apart from in my garden).
The News intrudes on these efforts in two ways. It distracts my attention from the love and thoughts required by my relations; and it plants a floating anxiety in my soul that disturbs the peace required for my best relational work. Thus because I am wondering how things are going in the Ukraine and continually checking to see the latest 'progress', I'm not open to noticing the real anxiety which my child's teenage conflicts are causing him, or to appropriately respond to it.
By following this line of reasoning, do I forego 'being up to date' or 'knowing what's going on in the world'? To a large extent I do, but I find that it impacts very little on my life in real terms. I know, for instance, that the Covid rules still apply in Cape Town because I still see people wearing masks. If I want to know what is going on in the Ukraine, I can just press a friend's button and their anxiety will cause them to gush out the latest.
We have been sold the lie that we 'can make a difference' by reposting video clips of people agreeing with us, writing comments on news sites and shouting down 'yes, but' in social contexts. But we make a significant difference only to the people with whom we are in relationships. These relationships constitute our most important task, and that should command our best attention, I think.
Hi Paul,
For me, your first and last topic weave together. Since 2017, I have been in the Lenten habit of fasting from all Internet activity beyond what I must do for work and email (which is how I read my substacks). This year I started early when I noticed that same pattern of manipulated hysteria begin beating away in my heart. I turned it all off two weeks ago, and I couldn't tell you a thing about the Ukraine, Canada, Covid. None of it is any worse for my ignorance, and I am certainly a lot better for it.
Why? Jaques Ellul wrote a book in the 60s called "The Humiliation of the Word". It's a classic, but it is especially pertinent during Lent. The Logos of the Universe simply cannot be heard amidst this inchoate flood of images that is late modern culture (and don't fool yourself. Even as we "read" on the Internet, we are inundated with images). The more time I spend on the internet, the less I can hear. Yes. And the more powerful the image--say tanks or horses bulldozing human beings--the worse it becomes. It seems clear to me that the reason the Ukraine or Canada or Covid unfold as they do is because of this phenomena. The world needs Lent, in other words. I do at least.
So I fast, and then I can pray. Which is what I will go do now I suppose. I can't look at Twitter; so, what else am I going to do with myself?