Thanks very much for sharing this. It sounds profoundly true to me. I agree about 'solutions.' Your experiences are very valuable in acknowledging where we are and might soon be.
Hi Paul, I wanted to ask about the importance of Lent in the modern machine world and any thoughts you have on it's use/misuse etc in the situation we find ourselves in. Despite not belonging to any Church I find the season useful and always try and observe Lent. This year I have given up coffee, news media, and ordering from Amazon. These are all things I enjoy but equally are all destructive habits health and sanity wise. I do wonder though if I should give up something that hasn't got any fringe benefits to giving up or am I getting Lent 'wrong'? I'm already on a pretty restrictive diet so fasting is not really an option. Also my catholic relatives insist you can 'break the fast' each Sunday so the total time adds up to 40 days. Is this generally true?
Olly, I’m not Paul, but I am Catholic! My priest said, in a homily about preparation for Lent, that one should give up habits and practices for Lent with the idea of foregoing those habits even after Lent: habits and practices that distract him from God and being the person God created him to be. Partly his point is that if something is worth giving up as penance during Lent it’s probably worth giving up altogether. Adding something is the same, he said in his homily. If fasting helps one with penance and prayer during Lent, he should continue it after Lent. So the Lenten season then becomes a source of permanent change and movement toward God. I think you can apply my priest’s point to your particular situation in some way. As for Sundays in Lent being free days from Lenten fasting etc, that’s right. Sundays are not counted among the 40 days of Lent, but personally I find Lenten fasting etc easier to do if I just treat Sundays as the other days.
Hello Olly, and TD. Thanks for the question. The notion of sacrifice is interesting to me. Long before I was Christian I would give things up for long periods, because I thought it would be 'good for me', which it usually was. I became vegetarian for years on that basis, even though I wasn't sure quite why. I think it's an instinct that is more and more appealing in the contmeporary world, with the insanity, noise and endless agendas.
Lent of course is a specifically Christian festival, which paves the way for the crucifixion and resurrection. It's a strange time of both mourning and celebration. The 'giving up' aspect, as TD suggests here, helps to remove from the horizon some of the things which tie us down to our petty desires, and helps focus the mind on God. In the Orthodox church we have strict fasting rules: we're vegan and alcohol-free for the Lenten period, and there are other rules here and there too. They apply for the whole period apart from on some specific feast days. It really only makes sense as part of the whole Orthodox liturgical cycle, and people tend to do what they can (not everyone can fast this strictly) in consultation with their priest. The strictness of it, I find, is part of what makes it so effective.
I'm really very new myself so I can't really give any advice, other than to say that the notion of 'purification' (what could be less fashionable?) seems more and more useful to me. This is all part of the wider project of 'askesis', which is central to Orthodoxy - mental self-discipline in the service of spiritual growth. As much as anything, it's about training the mind to resist the snares of the world. I am not going to pretend I'm very good at this ...
Hello Paul, I have great respect for the Orthodox tradition and the practice of lent. It is so deep and rich. I was particularly inspired by the writings of Timothy Ware. My first wife was Albanian and we were married in a Greek Orthodox Church wearing the traditional strung together crowns. Regarding the topics of fasting and sacrifice I offer a few eclectic perspectives that come to mind. " Stop doing harm, begin doing good, purify the mind", these are the teachings of all the Buddhas. The ability to say no and stop anything is perhaps one of the few pure expressions of free will and conscious unconditioned choice we humans have. Every no, strengthens our will forces and grows our ability to step aside and not be swept away by our programed existences. The unexamined life is not worth living, because it is really not living, it is sleep walking. In order to examine our lives we must stop what we are habitually doing, step to the side and observe it. Lent the way I think of it combines both a stopping and an exercise of no. In cultures like Tibetan , Hindu and Celtic etc. restrictive lifetime vows were sometimes taken by heroic types that served to awaken, spiritualize and empower them for whatever task they were called to accomplish. I would bet that those practicing Lent and "austerities" like them similarily are better able to act in ways that fulfill the " mandate of heaven " for them. Lastly there is a saying that comfort kills honor. Perhaps it could be extended to include virtue.
Rarer and harder as we are absorbed into the comfort and easily accessible compulsions of the machine ... irresistibly swept into the mindless Meta-verse of our favorite indulgences:)
Correction: Buddha is reported to have said "First, stop doing harm" So this simple statement is given as a stepwise prescription and a condensation of all the teachings of the Buddhas past, present and future.
Well I'd never get past that part. Even throwing a plastic package in the trash does harm, even growing cotton for t shirts... can anyone stop doing harm?
Stop doing harm is probably meant to be an ongoing process not necessarily an absolute that can achieved. Moving in that direction without perfectionism is no doubt a saner approach. Historically the Jains are the one’s who took doing no harm to its most extreme expression and greatest renunciation. Buddhism is counterbalanced by the principles of natural perfection and boundlessness ( emptiness ) that create a softer view that ultimately everything is unfolding exactly the way it supposed too for the development and liberation of all beings. For Christian’s forgiveness through redemption and for Buddhists faith in “ other power” come to the rescue because we are not able to get there through our own efforts and for this reason great beings bridge the gap for us.
A philosopher friend of mine got me thinking about a Positive Ethic vs. a Negative Ethic. The negative is "Do no harm," but as you say, it is impossible to do no harm, and just by living an average life, driving a car, not thinking before we talk, etc., we *risk* doing great harm every day.
The positive ethic is to "Do Good." Natural law might help us know what that is, but in any case, people and cultures disagree at least to some degree on what GOOD is. I still have been greatly helped by remembering that this ethic is more what Christ taught, and what my Christian impulse is. During Lent we Orthodox Christians try to fast, pray, and give alms more than usual.
This positive ethic conflicted with the dictates of my California community that convinced us that during covid we could be righteous by just wearing masks and isolating ourselves.
I hear you about negative versus positive ethic. Negative ethics can, like the singular no harm fixation of masks and isolation be stultifying , priggishly righteous and an obstacle to the good of positive acts of Lent, as in your experience. Maybe I am over simplifying to propose we need both, just like we need the brakes and accelerator in our automobiles. We apply them skillfully to fit the terrain ( road) to reach our destination. Now I sit here wondering what the ethical equivalent is of our emergency brake, steering wheel and our windshields ? :)
Yes, I find the best way for me to approach this is awareness of the "footprint" I make in the world...how is my energy, how are my actions affecting the world? Leave no trace, walk in beauty <3
"perhaps one of the few pure expressions of free will and conscious unconditioned choice we humans have. Every no, strengthens our will forces"
Nicely said. Would you like to say more about free will in an age of both The Machine and humankind as machine. Clearly our bodies and the physical world condition (ie limit) us; yet we continue to speak of free will, thus implying a spiritual component of our makeup that is not so conditioned. Even the law implicitly acknowledges this by assigning responsibility to us regardless of the materialistic/mechanistic received (un)wisdom.
Great question! Of course I can only speculate and by speculating I will be mostly wrong … but it’s fun anyway if none take it too seriously. What I notice is the materialistically educated , elite , narrative shaping rulers most likely don’t believe in free will and are probably more dedicated to maintaining the illusion of it. Regarding free will I enjoy the nuances of Rudolf Steiner’s description of it. His vision of our particular era is fascinating and has given me some peace. Particularly his thoughts that we would experience a necessary breakdown in the authoritarian influences of institutions like church, state, media , universities like we are seeing today. He predicted that it would cause chaos and identify crises but that it was necessary that humanity learn to choose the good through freedom not coercion.
I agree completely about Rudolf Steiner's thoughts on individual free will. His book "The Philosophy of Freedom"** has been my guide for many years. Despite being firmly grounded in late 19th century European philosophy, it's a very modern book on the phenomenology of thinking because, as well as taking us through the act of knowing in exquisite detail, it also acts as a kind of initiation into perceiving spiritual reality. This means that summaries and reviews are no substitute for experiencing the book itself.
I'm writing this, not because I doubt that you, KG, know all this, of course you do. Rather because having read PK's writings and seen some of his video conversations this past year, I have often asked myself, I wonder if PK, in his search for spiritual truths, has ever touched upon Rudolf Steiner?
** It's translated with a variety of titles. My favorite is "Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path".
Totally agree with you as well especially in wondering if PK has run across Steiner. I think PK might find interesting Steiner’s idea that we live in an era whose theme is confronting the mystery of evil . Which I think of as both an internal and external re-evaluation. Steiner held Goethe’s view that even evil ends up doing good. That the human being is matured and strengthened by having to find a balance between materialism and grandiosity , while reaping the benefits of each without their harms. This is accomplished by Christ in Steiner’s sculpture of man.
And yes I think our true wills are spiritual in nature, they are inherent inner guidance systems . It makes sense that much of education by empires involves short circuiting and or clouding over this innate wisdom in order to control, subjugate the masses to better organize itself.
I think fasting is an important thing for us either for religious or health reasons. In fact I think both go hand in hand. From a scientific perspective removing animal products and alcohol lowers our risk of inflammation and ensures pH homeostasis isn't compromised. Both are triggers for pathogenesis. Plus toxins are also reduced and our livers can take it a bit easier. Hippocrates used fasting as part of his healing protocols as do many natural healers today; perhaps we can view lent as a time for healing and cleansing too? My belief is that the mind and the body are not separate (non-dualistic), I'm not sure what the Christian view is but I believe by healing and purifying the body we also do the same for our mind. May be it isn't just the self-denial that is of benefit to us but it also works alongside the healing benefits of fasting? Ensuring that we attain clarity and strength of mind and body ready for a rebirth?
I too became vegetarian for a while without knowing why Paul. Looking back, I think my body was telling me what I needed and for that no 'external' logical reason is required!
Olly, I have found the following, readily digestible book very helpful for Lenten focus (quasi-devotional?). As TD relayed, in Lent, we are laying and reinforcing the groundwork for daily living in and beyond the season. Practices of prayer and fasting are indeed necessary toward a deeper understanding of this thing called "sin", the forgiveness we all desperately need and truly and mercifully receive from the Lord.
"How To Be A Sinner" by Peter Bouteneff (a prof at St. Vladimir's Seminary). I love the provoking title.
I have given up alcohol for Lent this year, for the first time. I find several reasons why this might be a worthy idea, and I am still working out I my heart how to order them:
1. Celebrations are more meaningful when there has been a period of deprivation prior to them. The fasting in Lent gives a joy to the celebration of Easter that it would not have otherwise. In a world where I have daily access to so many creature comforts, the act of denying myself allows me to look forward to something special, and reminds me of the specialness of the celebration of Easter.
2. It is an offering I can give to God. It is a small offering, and it is not something He needs me to do, but it is something I will actually miss and so I think it may please Him for me to offer it.
3. I want to share, in some tiny way, in Christ's suffering.
4. It allows me to focus more on Christ and removes a distraction.
I am trying hard not to focus on the fact that it is also good for me physically to do this, because I am longing so much for the spiritual benefits.
I agree that of course we all have many things that we could give up on a continual basis that would be good for us, but I think the fasting of Lent is more than just adding up one more ongoing self-denial every year. The temporary nature of it has value as we look forward to Easter and to the final banquet when Christ returns.
These are just my thoughts, don't know if it makes sense to anyone else.
Deb, these are all excellent points. God has given us many wonderful gifts, including good food and drink and other pleasures. Most of us are not called to give these up permanently for spiritual reasons. Yes, some people shouldn't drink, etc for other reasons, but that is different. What we give up isn't really the point, it is why we are giving it up. Obedience is a good place to start. Love for God is the goal.
Lent is part of the "fast then feast" cycle of the liturgical calendar. As you said, after a period of fasting, we take greater joy in the gifts of God and, hopefully, give greater thanks to God for those gifts. To just add another self-denial notch onto your belt, as TD's priest suggests, seems to me to miss the point. There are certain things we should give up permanently, like gossip or gluttony, but a good steak or a glass of wine or ordering from Amazon, well, that depends.
I think it is very easy for us to give lots of things up only to fall into the sin of pride because we were able to give those things up. Whatever we are doing for Lent (or any other season or reason) should be to bring us closer to God and neighbor, the increase our capacity to love.
I agree, and what you say about celebrations being more meaningful when there has been a period of deprivation resonates with me and reminds me that there is no singing the "Alleluia" during Lent so that on Easter we can really mindfully belt it out (at least once a year before eventually returning back to mumbling absentmindedly through the liturgy)
A few years ago during Lent, I felt Christ ask me to consider suffering *well.* Though Lent can be an inroad for experiencing the many facets of suffering, how we go about that suffering may be key.
A helpful example for me was meditating on the ways in which Christ interacts with the two thieves - while they all hang on crosses. How should our hearts be postured while dying (to self)?
Orthodox catechumen here. I love what you said, Paul, about the fasting being easy, but the prayer that's hard. As a previously quite prayerful non-denominational evangelical, I'm frankly shocked by the internal and external resistance I have encountered to prayer, especially during these first few days of Lent. Anyway, I also wanted to mention just how profound my first Forgiveness Vespers was--what a way to start the Lenten season. I continue to be in awe of how healing this whole experience has been for me.
Look up "Orthodox Christian fasting" and you will get more information than you can digest! Orthodox calculate the 40 days of Lent differently than Catholics which is why they start on the Monday before Ash Wednesday (assuming Easter is on the same day, which it usually isn't!). And if you follow the rules, it's much stricter than the Catholics who are all slackers nowadays. ;) And I think I'll stop there.
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?
I've had an identical experience. I followed covid very closely, because it affected my church, and so my gravity. But other than church feeling broken for so long, covid was, in my experience, a media event. As soon as the channel changed a few weeks ago, I knew it was time to get off - no more news media, no participation in media events, and therefore no participation in Our Current Crisis. Thanks to many painful games of Risk as a child, I have always known where Ukraine is on the map, but the utter futility and pointlessness of trying to participate in the Ukraine conversation was starkly apparent. I'm off the bandwagon, and hope to remain off permanently.
I have gotten caught up in more absurd media events and faux moral panics than I care to admit.
It was disturbing to see how quickly we all became experts on this situation in the Ukraine. We are caught up in a world wide delusion. I am not sure that the puppet masters--if such there be--are immune to the delusion. It does not bode well.
Yet as my father used to say to me, "God's help is no further than the door." Exit, stage left!
> 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).
Well said and thank you for the link to "Humiliation of the Word". I've read "Propaganda" by the same author. That was an eye opening experience.
So much here - thanks for this rich response, William. our minds are saturated with anything but the Logos. We are full, but perpetually hungry with 'bread that does not satisfy'. I couldn't help but note your final comment. 'What am I going to do with myself?' Seems so important also. Christ goes into the wilderness where is is stripped of illusions of agency, although the tempter suggests things he could do to 'change the world'. Everything that surrounds us screams at us about how powerful we are, and yet stripped to our 5 or 6 foot, 100-200lb frame . . . Fasting from our agency except that which the Logos requires: do justly - treat others as you would have them treat you, others whom you encounter in the real world; Love mercy - life is so very hard, no other path makes sense, we all need mercy, so give it (it is a quality all but lost in the craziness) - and walk in humility (appropriate to your scale) with the Lord your God. And I might go re-read Ellul :-)
I find that if I ingest the mainstream news and seek to stay ‘current’ on world wide issues, without equal or great time in prayer about the same issues, I move towards despair or indifference. “You are what you eat.” I find that I see more clearly the Kingdom of God when I ingest the Word of God, pray and care for others in my community. It keeps my focus on Christ Jesus and His glorious victory and helps me to walk with obedient faith.
Thank you for the book recommendation. I have it on order now. It dove tails well with a book called Our Twelve Senses, How healthy senses refresh the soul by Albert Soesman based on the insights of Rudolf Steiner. He discusses how our eyes are the brain extruding outward to meet the world., and how through the eyes sense of color, the inner essence of the world appears to us. Also, that we think with our eyes, with our thinking we add what we expect to see to what we actually see and as a result we have optical illusions. While sound is a reality it's not a semblance , not an image as in sight but reality itself. The invisible made substantial. I'm not sure how or why but I find it poetic that Steiner insists we do not hear by our own power but only with the assistance of angelic beings of the spiritual hierarchies. Hearing is the chief of our spiritual senses. Here are a couple Jesus quotes that seem to relate to the contrast between sight and hearing.
The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. Matthew 6:22
" 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." yes yes and yes. The salon is a great idea.
I watched this video today: https://youtu.be/fx3JV-5myK4 Patriot Nurse. Don't believe anything, war is not a new thing, and nothing you're seeing on the internet is true. It's a good reminder. Heck, when she talks about self-defence and making sure your rifle is clean locked and loaded, it made me wish for a moment that we had gun rights in Ireland. What a disaster that could be!
Ultimately, there are some people out there who still believe that a saviour will come and save the world. They are going to be way disappointed. We have to save ourselves, it starts very much with us, and with the quality of our lives. I drove to my little office this morning behind a 4 wheel drive SUV (much needed in the burbs of Dublin I may add) and it had a bumper sticker saying "Work sucks, go surfing instead" Well I love my work, and I believe that's the issue here. Surfing on a wave that may or may not come isn't something that I particularly love, but I'm getting better at it over the last 2 years. Loving what I do is important to me. I changed my whole life around it, its not the easy choice and for that reason, most people don't do it. I know it sounds like I'm rambling but I do believe all of these things are connected. I wrote this on Facebook/Instagram last night:
I have to speak my truth. Truth can hurt. But life isn’t about protecting your feelings over truth. Or protecting mine. And guess what - the truth is probably going to hurt your feelings - but it’s better to hear it, then you can process it and get over it and grow. That’s why we are here - to grow. To understand each other, to respect the other, that’s just part of it.
Choosing truth and what is right over fear and what is easy is hard. Especially when corporations are trying their damnedest to censure and hide it.
Hi Paul, and thanks for your newsletter, which is both a guide and a support.
This morning I wrote the following note to myself. It was intended to be only a self-provocation, which I could return to later. But in the spirit of this Salon (which is a great idea), I'll post it here and see what it provokes in others. As it sounds, I wrote it in an attempt to understand what I think. I am not deeply attached to the claims I make in it.
*
For the last 30 years we in the west have enacted a collective hallucination. We have lived a kind of hallucinatory realism. Not Nietzsche's Last Men, but the dream of the Last Man, reproduced a billion times.
We have lived in a dreamland without edges, without time. That is not to say that the historical real did not happen, but that it was processed as dream. This process has its roots in our obsession with the reproduction, the copy. Which in turn has its roots in a certain orientation to the world; the subject/object orientation at the heart of our metaphysics. We exported our obsession with reproduction to the rest of the world; Russia and China. But they were ruled by a political class grounded in history and existential struggle. They used our copy-making machines as systems of control. Meanwhile, we lost ourselves in hyperreality.
Immensely powerful rival systems gathered their strength; the elites that constituted them could hardly believe their luck. Now history is wrapping its long fingers around us again. What will follow is a battle for the future. The war in Ukraine is just a shock wave (and not even the first), a signal of the massive detonation that is to come. On the one side stand people, wherever they are, who believe in recognisably human forms of life. On the other are those who want to facilitate the domination of a technics megastructure. Putin believes in nothing but a hollowed-out Russian nationalism that has become a cipher for global capital. China is building a form of techno-authoritarianism the like of which the world has never seen.
On the surface, the project that awaits us is to conserve recognisably human forms of life. We might say that the answer is to be properly conservative, if that word had not been assaulted by the idiocies of the modern conservative parties, which have inverted conservatism and liquidate every recognisable human relationship and value.
The deeper answer can only be spiritual revolution. It must come.
I'm curious to hear what you know and think about China. Most of what i know is from some exchange students and a missionary couple. I confess I know very little but the news during covid was always of extreme technological control. of course, we are learning to doubt the news now.
Same here, I talked with Chinese expats (workers) and exchange students years ago. On average they saw the Chinese government as a powerful but sleepy institution that was mostly on their side. They said Chinese people are chaotic, don't respect rules, and don't expect punishment for not following rules. None of them seemed to think of their homeland as authoritarian.
When I think in numbers, I know China has a growing economy. Yet centralizing power comes at a cost to efficiency. Innovation happens in small companies and it happens when people have spare time and energy.
So I wonder how other people think about China, and where their information comes from.
One Chinese student told me about a small farm her father owned outside the city. The pollinating insects of all sorts have died away and so they employ men on ladders to hand pollinate the apple blossoms. Incredible!
Speaking about control & money, if you live in a latin american country (such as my homeland Brazil), you are already very familiar with government messing up with your money. Brazil in the 90s and Argentina in 2001 were both situations where government froze the savings accounts of the whole population, effectively leading lots of people to not be able to access their savings for almost 2 years.
That's why I think this whole idea of having your whole assets financialized is so dangerous. People should have land, vehicles and other physical assets, so the government can't have this imense financial power over its own citzens.
I hadn't made that connection. I remember that happening in Argentina and thinking 'it could never happen here.' That may turn out to be a bit of typical Western smugness.
You're right about physicality. There's a reason why the Machine works so hard at enclosure. Land is freedom.
"Can't happen here" is such a strange yet pervasive bit of denial / wishful thinking.
I try to counteract it by repeating the line about eternal vigilance being the price of freedom (and other things, too.) But that in turn exposes one of the eternal human dilemmas: for all the talk here about turning off the news, what if it really is the Goths or the Normans over the next hill marching your direction? You would have at least closed the gates if you had known.
I will be the first to admit that I don't balance these aspects of life very well.
Yes, I think I stopped believing that 'couldn't happen here' was a thing about the time of the first lockdown. Now I blieve that anything can happen anywhere. Which of course was always true.
I do think that if the barbarians really do come, we'll get the news in the old fashioned way, via panicking neighbours!
I hope this is true, about the news of "the invasion," because if I can trust that, I might be able to pry myself away from reading the news, which feels like watching a giant car crash in the last few seconds before the actual impact. It's mesmerizing and addictive. The "cars" are swerving all over the place at 100 mph and it's impossible to know which ones will collide with which. If it were an actual car crash, I would look the other way and pray!
Which is why colonising another country always begins with taking the land from the original owners. And in terms of colonising one's own people and country, it means privatizing the land. Dispossess and impoverish. The weapons of Empire.
"Whole assets financialized" sounds like having all your eggs in one basket. Oops!
I was too young to be aware of the financial crises of Latin America except for the very vaguest notion that something was happening down south. How very awful to have your hard-earned money locked away like that. Was it eaten away by inflation as well?
With regards to having physical assets, your comment brings to mind a book about the transition to agriculture and civilization, Against the Grain, by James Scott. Of course, there are many theories of how we came to be agriculturalists and beyond, all of them very interesting. If I recall correctly, one point in the book was that it was societies whose agriculture produced crops that ripened in a specific window and were easily trackable and able to be stored long-term that also developed centralized control systems, aka, civilization.
Wheat would be an example of a crop whose harvest is trackable by the accountant and collectable by the tax collector and storable by the steward. Sweet potatoes, on the other hand, ripen below ground, making them much more difficult to keep account of. If you're like me, you're never totally sure you got them all. Plus, sweet potatoes must be kept from bruising in transit, and they only store for a certain amount of time. Not well suited for the needs of a centralized system. So, like you said, physical assets are critical to maintaining your own footing in life, and if their value is difficult for others to extract from you, all the better. And if other people consider it worthless junk, you've probably hit the gold mine!
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.
Daily News consumption is nothing but poisoning ones soul... I am not suggesting being ignorant to the world, we have to understand the mechanics of The Machine - in order to develop real other alternatives of organizing our lives and particularly important, post- capitalist modes of working together; that means nothing else but breaking up the dominance and accumulation of money and power at the top of a hierarchy.
We need material, books, talks, blogs etc. to educate ourselves and to get a better understanding of The Machine in order to nurture our imagination of how to overcome it. BUT, you will not gain any of this by watching or reading the news, nothing! The news (completely independent from which ideological side) is just noisy propaganda that is emptying your soul.
I agree. I've been thinking recently, as we're offered our never-ending feast of daily news, that it is a kind of emotional pornography for those of us who sit comfortably in our homes and apartments and can have a never-ending supply of everything we need delivered overnight to our doorsteps. Our media overlords have just about squeezed COVID dry, and now they're focusing their Sauron-like attention (and ours) on the Ukraine/Russia war, teasing and titillating us to watch with images of violence and horror.
So, we watch.
I'm actually trying to avoid news, particularly now that it's Lent. Hard to do when it is aimed at us all like a firehose. Even when I try to avoid it, I feel like I'm getting wet. Fasting from booze for Lent, as well. Avoiding news is making avoiding booze a bit easier. There's a lesson for me there, I think.
The practice of reading the news is best when it begins with the question of message rather than information. What is this trying to convince me of? What is the motivation behind the story? How does it fit into a larger pattern? I mostly read state sanctioned propaganda (VOA, XINHUANET, RT) and watch how those narratives continue in other sources.
Information and emotion are both contagions. I’m beginning to believe cynicism is as effective a contagion as fear.
I like that approach. I trying to ask who benefits from the messaging. For example, news about some bad practice from a tech company might catch my attention and perhaps, as a result, politicians begin hurrumping for more regulations and law and the like. But maybe all that news is being pushed by "other" tech companies who want to see the company that's being picked on brought down a peg or two. Everything always seems to boil down to money, power, and control.
Well said. As I currently find myself writing a piece about ‘The News’ and why it’s avoidance is necessary I found myself nodding along with this great comment. The Ukraine situation is the first event (barring the tail end of Covid) that I am genuinely completely out of the loop on, barring snatches of conversation heard and headlines in my peripheral vision while in a local shop and so forth.
And yes, The News is central to The Machine/globalism/whatever you want to call it. It blurs your ‘circle of competence’ such that you worry about things outside of your control and immediate surroundings to the detriment of your actual real life locally situated existence. It’s a cunning trick- we drown in irrelevance, speculation and fear with the upshot being that (as with advertising) we become ever more atomised and disempowered consumers.
I know this is all preaching to the choir given that we are all subscribers to Mr Kingsnorth’s excellent newsletter but I felt compelled to rant on it for a minute nonetheless.
Amen! Yes! As a clinical psychologist (shameless plug for my bonfides in an ateempt to overcome insecurity with engaging with "smart people") I see and hear all about the free floating anxiety caused by immersion in the news (as well as a strange pride at being so well informed, especially in young adolescents/children who have no business being so well informed - cue rant on adolescents determinedly trying to put on the costume of adulthood and adults willfully and obstinately entrenched in remaining adolescents) at work, and that is what brings them to me, but then they are surprised and appalled that I dare suggest a kind of psychological/emotional subsidiarity - look to your own relationships/back garden first or clean your room/take care of those before you before thinking you can take care of/change the world, (do what you can with what you have with where you are) or something. I think so many folks are defensive and resistant about what you so beautifully outline and suggest is the result of an allergy to personal responsibility (see previous reference to a desire to remain an adolescent - although the fact that Christianity has been exhorting us to do so for 2,000 years probably suggests it's a feature and not a bug of humanity, modern or otherwise) as well as some kind of desire to live and participate in this dream like copy of Important History (hence all the cries of Nazi?) and thus experience some feeling of importance and meaning in their own lives? By doing something real and concrete, but typically, culturally not just undervalued (love thy neighbor), but actively de-valued does it highlight their own sense of being unimportant/nothing/meaningless (there's probably a German compound word that perfectly describes what I'm struggling to articulate and smarter folks than I are losing their minds yelling it at the screen) despite it being EXACTLY the most meaningful and important work. Loss of real relationship seems to be at the heart of so much just now, so as you point out building, growing, and maintaining relationships is the exact antidote (dare I say even the ones with "toxic" people Buzzfeed implores us to ruthlessly cut out).
As a mandated care home worker turned minimum wage earning substacker I can tell you that I for one am duly impressed with your Clinical Psychologist status!
And you point is an excellent one- being well informed is indeed the means by which many a perpetual adolescent poses as a grown up. A mimetic signal that many people either picked up through their own well informed parents reading the newspaper and becoming enraged at its contents (as they are supposed to) or, if that is not your socio-economic background, through tv depictions of smart people in smart houses on smart dramas.
Either way it is a learned behaviour rather than something that has actual intrinsic merit. News makes us angry and or sad which in turn makes us spend. News is the primer for the advertising that accompanies it, in whatever medium you consume it.
And as you say, it is distraction from the real work of being a real adult. Which is to say a good neighbour and a useful friend and a loving spouse/sibling/friend and so forth. Christianity is a good guide on how to do this but then succeeding in this and having the community and relationships this leads to makes you a poor consumer. Which again is why a good life and continuous news inhalation seem to be opposed to each other.
Amen, amen I say to you watch some Russell Brand youtubes. He's shockingly on point with your excellent points about being trained up as consumers. And I for one am duly impressed with your use of "mimetic".
My only paid writing gig to date (other than my substack) was a book review of Luke Burgis’ ‘Wanting’ which is all about Rene Girard so if I can’t use the word mimetic correctly after that then something would be very much amiss!
I only knew it bc just earlier this week I had to look it up while reading a Mary Eberstadt book who writes with more damn SAT words than...uh...well, the SAT. Not familiar with Rene Girard at all but will now quickly Google in order to appear that much cooler and smarter on the next go round, which only proves what I've suspected since grad school - they will give a PhD to just about anybody these days. It (always needing to look up words despite way too many years in school and what I thought was a pretty decent SAT Verbal score) keeps me humble.
Thank you for the reminder about "free floating anxiety." Exactly! And I only recently have watched a few Russell Brand videos. He doesn't engender that response. :-)
Thank you for this beautiful comment…it encompasses so much of what I think, especially about the last two lines. And your phrase “a floating anxiety in my soul” perfectly describes how I have been feeling these past few days!
Thank you for this Emilia. I have struggled with letting go of the news. I've slowly let go of social media over the last couple of years, and ramped it up recently with the hibernation of my LinkedIn account just last week, but I am drawn to the news like a moth to a flame. With headlines screaming at me from newsstands and the supermarket shelf it is hard to avoid, but I'd like to just nod and move on, rather than go to the next level, which always leaves me feeling frustrated and overcome with a sense of despair. I like how you describe your priorities, and aspire to move in that same direction.
I am not sure if this topic fits with the idea you are going after Paul...perhaps practical ideas for self sufficiency. Given the different living situations that we all have (some have land, some don't, some have much experience, some don't), what are the practical steps that a person/family can take to be more self sufficient and not a slave to the machine?
Yes, please! This is so important. I have a feeling that Lent and the sacrifices made during Lent can help to make us stronger and, thus, take that first step towards distancing ourselves from the Machine...learning that we don't need much of what it offers.
I think the survival/self-sufficiently goal has to be tempered with a dose of fatalism and a focus on the Good, and on Community which is even more important than survival. You can't really escape the machine. Or very few people can, in any case. We depend for almost everything on huge supply lines at this point. I helped put on a Benedict Option conference in South Texas last year, and what came out of that experience for me is that keeping out the bad, the depraved, the machine, what have you, is insufficient and often winds up in a destructive purity spiral. The focus has to be on recovering and embodying the Good, but somehow we have to do that while accepting that in our time and place every manifestation of this is going to fall so painfully short.
a great point. We can't just be against something, we must also be for something. And what we are for is crucial...I do think, though, that we can all rely on the Machine less than we realize. Even small things like keeping the heat lower or growing a few simple food items on our own, not buying books from Amazon...
Daniel, I fully agree. We, on this side of eternity, and with out the Grace of God, can not be perfect. However, ask God for the Grace to cooperate with His Grace. To that end; Lent, and other such practices can help empty our selves, or ourselves.
Also, while we can not fully exorcise ourselves from the machine, we can take steps now, that can be built upon by our children and their children's children, that will begin to free us.
What today is a simple small kitchen compost pile, can teach us lessons that have the ability to take root in our families and communities; and by the Grace of God will flower into the weapons to fight the machine.
I've struggled with this, Mark, and finally came to the conclusion that there is no right starting point. As you point out, everyone's living situations are different. So, that's your starting point, and I'd suggest start with something small. The Machine seduces us with convenience and habit, so maybe someone starts by putting up with an inconvenience. Instead of ordering take out, make your own dinner. Start a small herb garden on your porch. Instead of hopping in your car or taking mass transit, walk more. Shop second hand stores instead of the overpriced crap made in sweatshops. I'm wearing a polo shirt my wife picked up for a few bucks at Goodwill right now. Try to cut distractions - like social media, for example. (Side note: I recommend Matthew Crawford's book, "The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction.")
My wife and I are lucky to live on some acreage. I grow veges in the summer, and feel like I'm thumbing my nose and agri-business every time I plant a seed. Plus, it's fun. I make our own sauerkraut, also fun and easy. Heck, if you play a musical instrument, or sing in a choir, I think that cuts at a few of the threads the Machine has around you. That's fun, too and it makes you a music maker instead of a passive consumer of it. That's a good thing, I think. We heat our house with wood, and we have plenty of alder, so I am fairly regularly dropping trees, cutting rounds and splitting them into firewood, and then stacking everything up to dry for when I need it. I'm not just selectively taking trees, but I'm also replanting along the way. I just planted 10 shore pines over the weekend, along with a dozen native rhodies and 10 vine maples. We're certainly not completely off grid and self-sufficient, but I think anyone can start and even a little bit can help change one's mind set. More importantly, I think, there's something really soul nurturing when you get dirt under your fingernails or take a wrench and try to fix something yourself or get out of your car and walk . . . in other words, interacting with the real world, as opposed to the mediated version being pushed by The Machine and its minions and followers. Just a few thoughts. Best wishes everyone.
What I find so disturbing is the acceleration of ‘othering’ people. First people losing their jobs for posting something on social media that pushed back at the Woke Doctrines, then the people who donated to the vaccine mandate protests were doxxed, had their names posted around town and were chased down by the media, now people are vandalising Russian owned stores. The trajectory is frightening.
I want to understand what is happening and what I can personally do - which is why I love this substack.
I think maybe moving out of the medium sized city I live in and out to the country might be an answer.
I am also looking at religion - although my own church talks about nothing but social justice politics - I am reading books on Christianity and signed up for a course on paganism. I think the answer lies in embracing spirituality, tradition, self-sufficiency - just trying to figure out how to best do that.
It's the big one, isn't it? The two minutes hate in real time. As somebody who wasn't vaccinated against covid, I experienced some of the media-led howling-down of the 'unvaxxed', and I am now seeing exactly the same mentality and energy applied to 'the Russians', or anyone associating with them. In both cases, the desire for mob law amongst many people is pretty clearly divorced from the issue in question, and seems to me to make the whole situation worse (demonising individual Russians is likely to make things worse for Ukrainians, I'd have thought, just as demonising the 'unvaxxed' for their choices or concerns created a huge pool of resentment which is still here and could go anywhere.)
I think social media is largely responsible for this. Here's quite a good essay on that issue:
I think your instinct about what to do is right. Find a strong faith that doesn't bend with the world, and switch off as much as you can (more than me, for instance ...)
I remember thinking at the time that we didn't need Russian misinformation peddlars; our garbage vax monitoring system and response was doing quite enough on its own to undermine (what turns out to have indeed been *misplaced*) confidence in mRNA vaccines. Always 'the Russians,' though, regardless of what the problem is.
I am so shocked at the black and white attitude to this war in Ukraine. I have never experienced anything like this in my life of 70yrs before. Now everyone has found their hate figure in Putin. Yet, 20yrs ago, when Bush/Blair smashed into Iraq destroying all before them: men, women and children, without any basis for doing so, no one called them Hitler or evil tyrants. In fact, they both got re-elected a few years after, and one of them, has since been given an knighthood. Go figure that one!!!
Oh I don't know about that. I remember Dubya being decried as a 'fascist' on a regular basis, and at least in Britain there was a big outcry against the war. A million of us marched against it - not that it made any difference. But yes, they were both re-elected anyway. It's different when we do it, you see.
I have a warm fantasy about Putin, Bush and Sir Tony all standing side to side in the dock at the International Criminal Court. A man can dream.
There is so much darkness in many spirituality courses, people pretending to be something that they are not. The fear is in doing the deep inner work, most people have not gone there. Keep your eyes open, that's all I'm saying.
Spiritual delusion is a danger for all of us, almost no matter what we do. Hardly a day goes by I don't catch myself in some such grand self-delusion. Maybe a couple times an hour is more like it! Humility and watchfulness. And confession for those who can do so.
Inner work, I have found, is extremely difficult. It is painful, and I would rather avoid it.
I have meditating on a passage from one of my favorite books, Christ the Eternal Tao. I think it lays out our choices well:
Therefore the sages called Him also by His other name: The Way (Tao),The Course that all things are to follow. 10 The trees, the birds, the rivers and winds: These had no choice but to follow the Way. Man alone is given choice; Man alone can follow or go his own way. If he follows the Way, he will suffer with the pain of the world, 15 But He will find the Original Harmony. If he follows his own way, he will suffer only with himself, And within him will be chaos.
"What I find so disturbing is the acceleration of ‘othering’ people."
Otherling people has been going on in Western culture for centuries. In the United States, for example, we have the history of chattel slavery; putting Japanese citizens in internment camps; the Chinese Exclusion Act; denial of queer equality, etc. The tendency never changes--just who has the power to other at any given time.
The question is whether othering is a bug or feature of Western culture.
It could also just be a general tendency among humans. One that deep spiritual practice should help us see through and let go of. I emphasize *should*.
Deep spiritual practice does help one see through the delusions of othering. The problem is that a) many practices said to be spiritual do nothing of the sort; and b) many practitioners are sloppy in their practice, and make the claim that their failure is the result of something inherent in them which prevents proper practice. Everyone can be a bodhisattva or saint.
This is all very true. I recall someone saying that she didn't meditate because it made all her thoughts become chaotic. I shuffled my feet and coughed gently.
Talk about getting the causation backwards.
Deep spiritual practice--when it can be found--can often be excruciating (literally from the cross!). Which is why we probably often prefer to downgrade to *looking like* we are engaged in deep spiritual practice. Much easier!
"I recall someone saying that she didn't meditate because it made all her thoughts become chaotic."
I wish someone had told her that that is what meditation is supposed to do--mess up the neat narratives we apply to our thoughts, and then, resisting their imposition, we sit with the chaos, unattaching, not judging, and, thereby, taking a step forward.
"Deep spiritual practice--when it can be found--can often be excruciating"
I guess I am just weird. My happiest spaces/places are where/when deep spiritual practice occurs. Two of my best instances are subway-related: once on a D train crossing the Manhattan Bridge on the way to work, and the second while waiting for an F train home to Brooklyn at the Broadway/Lafayette Station (pre-renovation).
I experience recurring flare-ups of self, but they have become increasingly unsettling, so I try to unattach as quickly as I can. My most frequent recourse is to ask myself: is this action coming from your conventional self or your Buddha-nature.
Excruciating in the sense of sitting with the chaos, with all the wounds of one's life, often with the physical pain in our bodies we usually try to numb.
But it isn't just that, as you say. There are moments of pure gift, seemingly unbidden, when there is a kind of luminous clarity and the response is, "yes, of course, this is how it is" though not necessarily articulated in words. The Original Harmony.
After the cross, resurrection. I know you wouldn't put it that way, but...
True enough, but this is not a 'Western' tendency, as anyone from any other culture could tell you. It's a human thing. We form tribes and we stand against outgroups. Perhaps what is novel is the speed and reach at which this can now be done. Global mobs can be formed in an eye blink online, and we don't even have to know each others' names.
It may be human, but it is neither inherent nor unchangeable. Once a person understands the interdependent nature of existence, it becomes impossible to other.
I am sure there is a concept in Christian anthropology that, once understood, would have the same effect on a practitioner. In my ignorance of the subject, I just do not know what it is.
That's quite true; in my small understanding it's the hard work at the heart of any spiritual path. The Sermon on the Mount pretty much sums up the Christian approach to it, I think. The Orthodox concept would probably be 'theosis' - union with God, and the ultimate aim of the path. It's only achieved through humility, putting others before self, loving everyone and forgoing pride, possessions and the passions. The process is sometimes known as 'dying to the world.' This leads to sainthood. In theory, this path is open to all. In practice, not many of us will get there ...
"It's only achieved through humility, putting others before self, loving everyone and forgoing pride, possessions and the passions."
Exactly. But so much of our society/culture is devoted to valorizing possessions, passions, and self, and worse, people are reluctant to speak out against this value system. They know it is wrong (or at least claim that they do), but are deathly afraid of losing out.
"The process is sometimes known as 'dying to the world.'"
I have also heard it as "dying to the self."
"In theory, this path is open to all. In practice, not many of us will get there ..."
I think more would, if it weren't drummed into their heads that the path was so difficult, that people are fallen, and must depend on a creator deity's grace to get there. It is such an infantilizing approach, but an understandable one, since it ensures the perpetuation and thriving of institutions claiming to be able to lend a helping hand. I keep thinking about what you said in the other thread to me about how early Christians believed in being ordinary saints (at least that is how I understood it).
Look up a list of of the seven deadly sins, and you'll find that every one of them is profitable today, and mostly valorised for that reason.
I don't agree with your final para. There's nothing infantile about explaining the 'straight and narrow' nature of the path, and I don't agree that it's easy either. we're not taught to other, etc etc - it's what comes naturally to us. That's where the nature of the 'fall' is to be found. Rising again is hard work. It's why there have never been many Buddhas or saints around.
I don’t think “othering” is a Western thing. I think the idea of “self” vs “other” conceptually is different in east vs west; however, “othering” (or “us-and-theming”) seems a universal tendency, and a common excuse throughout history for empires, kingdoms, and even little tribes to attack each other...both east and west.
I would amend what you wrote to: othering is a tendency a broad array of humans have been/are taught to practice. It is not inherent/inevitable to other. If it was, Buddhism would not have arisen.
Buddhism arose in response to a world of suffering, which included not only sickness and death, but many other miseries, like “othering”.
It’s worth remembering that Siddhartha lived in a palace, in a royal family, before he became the Buddha. In other words, his whole existence until then had been in a world where othering was very natural: one group of people (princes, lords, etc) was the in-group and everyone else was the out-group. Many societies are structured in this way; it happens in empires and it happens in schoolyards.
We can be taught to other, but it pre-exists our teaching. Our tendency to other reflects our innate selfishness, an instinctive tendency toward defensiveness by trying to see ourselves as better or superior. It’s part of the folly and suffering that’s baked into the human heart. Buddhism offers a solution to this, and so does Christianity (as do other religions/faiths). But I do not think “othering” is a privileged weapon of the West.
"Buddhism arose in response to a world of suffering, which included not only sickness and death, but many other miseries, like 'othering'."
Agreed, but these behaviors were not inherent human behaviors. They were taught and learned behaviors.
"We can be taught to other, but it pre-exists our teaching."
Where does it pre-exist?
"Our tendency to other reflects our innate selfishness"
As the Buddha proved, existence does not have an inherent nature.
"It’s part of the folly and suffering that’s baked into the human heart."
Again, nothing is intrinsic (unless Buddhism is wrong). so there is nothing baked into human hearts.
"Buddhism offers a solution to this, and so does Christianity"
Agreed, but the solutions are different. Buddhism teaches how to see through the delusion of intrinsic existence--to unattach--and says any human being can accomplish this task.
From what I understand (and I may be completely wrong), Christianity advises a person to fight against these tendencies (a fight that Christians can never win since they are fallen), and hope for the bestowal of the creator deity's grace (which can be withheld or given without explanation or reason).
As I understand it, the individual, despite recognizing the harm of othering, and possessing the desire not to do so, may not be able to stop the (postulated intrinsic) behavior, if they are not the recipient of grace. In other words, doing it on one's own is not possible, i.e., human agency is never enough. Again, this is my understanding.
Probably we have a different understanding of the source of suffering. Even in the case of Buddhism, my understanding has been that the very reason we need to transcend the self is because the self is prone to attachment/craving (which causes all our problems, and which is fundamentally rooted in our self-centeredness).
However, I could be mistaken.
As per your comment: “As I understand it, the individual [Christian], despite recognizing the harm of othering, and possessing the desire not to do so, may not be able to stop the (postulated intrinsic) behavior, if they are not the recipient of grace.”
I’m no theologian, but I think this is mistaken. Even those who have received grace still sin, including othering. Grace brings salvation, and perhaps heightened self-awareness, and perhaps even wonderful/miraculous experiences, but it does not bring perfection (not in this world anyway).
For what it’s worth, I have found minimising/ eliminating news and it’s evil spawn social media to be a good first step. This leads to a more localist existence even if the locality in question is pretty urban. Such living in the real world seems to lead to some sort of spiritual orientation or pursuit such that in more downbeat moments I don’t wonder if everything media based isn’t at heart some confederacy against the religious worldview, whether overtly or merely tacitly.
But yes, the answer to virtually everything- as far as I can tell- is localism, community fostering, tech skepticism and all of the things that Mr Kingsnorth writes about here.
Two years ago I discovered The Book of Common Prayer, which offers a whole lifetime of worship. The Anglican Church of Canada is mostly going woke, though there are some pockets of resistance such as the Dioceses of the Arctic and Fredericton. A lot of good priests are getting chased out of Toronto. It's sad.
I'm, in general, pretty down on social media. I think it does allow/encourage us to be the worst version of ourselves too much of the time. But it can be helpful in situations like the Russia/Ukraine war (recognizing its limits, of course). On one hand you have Russia which says it is conducting a "special military operation" targeting only the "Nazis" in power. On the other hand, you have loads of videos and pictures taken by everyday Ukrainians demonstrating that their homes are being destroyed, their infrastructure is being decimated, and, most grievously, civilians (including children) are being targeted and killed. Could some of the videos and pictures be manipulated or photoshopped? Sure. Does every person in Ukraine documenting this war have the appropriate software and equipment and the ability to do such a convincing job under great duress? Certainly not. The documentation of the destruction of their country and their lives happens to correspond with the narrative that the western media is promoting about the war (and conflicts with the Russian narrative). And I will admit here that I have been following this conflict way more closely than I probably should, and more so than could be considered healthy for me (though, like you, I have tried to limit myself for Lent).
I agree that a certain amount of suspicion and cynicism about "what we can really know" is warranted in light of the fact that people do, everywhere and in all places, have agendas, even journalists, even Ukrainian farmers. However, I don't believe complete cynicism is helpful in the face of obviously evil acts (recognizing, of course, that "the west" can do evil and the USA, where I live, is certainly guilty of much evil in its brief history). In my mind, it doesn't matter that Russia may have been provoked, or not welcomed into the European fold in the 90s when there was a chance, or whatever. The killing of civilians (including children), as documented on the vast and dense social media network, is wrong. It's ok to say so. It's imperative, as Christians, that we say so, because these evil acts are, in part, the work of dark, evil powers. Just as we participate with God in theosis, we can participate with the demons in the opposite process. Evil is widespread and it's hard to keep track of it all, including the evil within ourselves. And sometimes there truly are grey areas in which it's difficult for us to know for sure, and therefore wise for us to be quiet. But sometimes it really is just black and white. You can admit the west could have handled its relations with Russia better in the past and that it did make mistakes and the politics of the situation are truly complicated AND still condemn this war of aggression as evil.
Perhaps it's better to think of this as a manifestation of a dire spiritual war, in which the forces of evil have a hold on/are influencing certain powerful world actors (even those that call themselves Christians and declare that they stand for "Christian values"), instead of seeing one side as evil, immoral, and degenerate and the other as perfect and justified. And in that case, it's appropriate to call upon the Lord, the saints, the angels to help those being influenced by evil to resist and to soften the heart of those who may be willingly cooperating with evil, starting with ourselves.
Hi Paul, I love this platform, but absinthe isn’t my thing, a good Cabernet might work, ha!
Anyway, to those who are struggling for “faith” or a church, I can relate. However, one year ago I was Chrismated in the OCA (Orthodox Church in America). Although to be truly Orthodox would take a lifetime of practice and even then would not be totally comprehensive, I have found true peace and joy. This past Sunday was Forgiveness Sunday and it is one of the most spiritually beautiful experiences and of course extremely humbling and cathartic. To ask forgiveness of fellow worshippers, individually, is soul shaking! In the midst of all the horrible news about Ukraine and Russia there was peace for that hour. Our priest urges us to turn down the noise and focus on what really is important in our lives and in Christianity that is focusing on the love that Christ gives to us and share it with whom we come in contact.
For those who are reading this I humbly ask you to pray, pray, pray. Also, fasting does help keep one focused on your prayer goal.
The whole fiasco with Russia/Ukraine has ultimately driven me towards Lent, or the Orthodox articulation of it, in two different ways.
The first is related to an essay by Wes Jackson titled 'Towards an Ignorance Based Worldview'. I highly recommend it. The premise is that for all the knowledge than humans have on any subject, do they have enough knowledge in the grand scheme of life to make decisions? Do we know enough about, say, the world's ecosystem, that we can say that throwing buckets of metallic glitter in the air to combat global warming won't have any negative unforeseen effects? This relates to the Russia/Ukraine conflict in the story that is told of St. Sophrony of Essex. When WW2 broke out, news eventually traveled to his hermitage on Mt Athos. It is said of him that he stayed in his hut, and prayed for the least evil side to prevail. May we all strive towards that, to pray with open hands, with no solution in mind, acknowledging our own ignorance of everything. And this is ultimately our prayer and practice during Lent. We pray that we will be purified and draw closer to God, yet hold nothing in our hands. We don't know what we need, except to be closer to God.
The second is related. My wife and I have been off social media for quite a while, and I struggle against my passions to check the news. I am, in fact, Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter series who must listen to the radio constantly, just to make sure that the chaos of this world hasn't gotten too personal. We both do believe that as humankind, we were not created with the mental capacity to fully understand the world. I don't think anyone can truly understand geopolitics, although many pretend they do. There is no amount of research or tweeting that will make me understand on a deep level what the lived experience is of someone in Russia or Ukraine. And, my heart is small. I think I was created to empathize and hold the hurts of my local immediate community. When I hear of the tragedies of war in another country, I don't know what to do with that, and I don't think anyone does. If I keep them as 'just numbers', there is no humanity to it. And if I dive into the humanity, read the stories of all that died, my heart is overwhelmed and I lose sight of everything, including God. So the question is, during this Lent, can I learn to love and feel without rational knowledge? Can I know that terrible things are happening, and while drawing closer to God, learn to love in Him and pray in Him for those around the world? Can I trust, without knowledge of the details or solutions in mind, that my proper response can find its place in God, and that He will reveal anything I need for my prayer life? If action is required of me, won't God let me know, or align circumstances in such a way that is obviously? Wouldn't it be better to love and support Russians and Ukrainians in my local community that are torn up with this situation?
I'm not advocating for putting one's head in the sand, I guess for me I feel like live-streamed 24/7 destruction and death delivered to my pocket computer isn't actually helping me process the situation and pray about it appropriately. Maybe God intended us to be in our local community, and then pray for the world in Him. I don't know, but these are the questions I wrestle with.
Jack, thanks for linking up that essay - and Raphael for mentioning it. I went and read it and almost fell off my chair because of the Wendell Berry letter excerpt and the mention of Mystery.
I had just yesterday been thinking that we have lost an appreciation for Mystery. We. Must. Know. Even the mantra "follow the science" .... as if it is in a human's power to really know. Why do we keep wanting to believe we can know everything??
Maybe community needs Mystery at its center. A posture of leaning in to the truth of not knowing and then the habit of turning to each other with a spirit of trust and hope.
This idea of the loss of Mystery came to me after hearing a radio clip of someone saying she was interested in "the science of grief". Why do we have to decode everything? Why can't we just feel it? Be the flesh and blood humans we are... in the middle of a Mystery we will never penetrate. Why can't that be enough?
I think that the madness of our civilization probably can get traced back to our loss of mystery. Maybe not "loss" so much, but the deliberate monomaniacal eradication of mystery and unknowing. I agree that community needs mystery at its center.
Then there is this from the conclusion of the essay:
"We would be fundamentally respectful of our original relationship with the universe. There might even be a more joyful participation in our engagement with the world."
I think often of the zen saying: Not-knowing is most intimate.
There is also this prayer from the BCP for loved ones that makes a similar point to yours:
For those we Love
Almighty God, we entrust all who are dear to us to thy never-failing care and love, for this life and the life to come, knowing that thou art doing for them better things than we can desire or pray for; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
This is very helpful. I'm also trying not to think in terms of "Russia" and "Ukraine," but to remember the millions of individual souls who are involved to one degree or another. All the way from Putin to the child in its mother's arms. God deals on this personal, individual level, and each one is made in His image and a recipient of His grace.
I find this relevant to both Lent and the current world situation:
8 Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9 And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.”
10 Then Jesus said to him, [b]“Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’ ”
This does seem to be the choice we are given. To whom do we give worship?
Just a cup of tea this time. I have got work outside I need to get back to. Which is also nice.
The age of information is difficult and kind of addictive. I need to go back to the books, but essays are worth reading, thank you. (Read your 2021 account of conversion this morning.) Am more wary than ever of the rumour machine running on the dense wires of social networks. We might need to extend Lent a bit.
I like the painting but I'm feeling flippant for no reason: salon, bon mot, dilettante, ancien regime? I'm trying to recall the painting of the philosophes; Raphael, The School of Athens. (Looked it up. That was a touch earnest, perhaps.) Ah, would that Diogenes was with us now!
"At what point does propaganda become so pervasive that it is impossible to believe anything you hear?"
Propaganda can never become so pervasive that it obscures the Dharma.
"Aaapo deepo bhava"--be a lamp unto oneself with Buddha-nature as the flame.
"How should we respond to it?"
Dissent should not be penalized unless/until it has been weaponized and used to cause harm. To deny access to the financial system causes harm, and harm needs to be avoided.
"I’m interested in the meaning of self-denial (and indeed prayer) in an age of self-worship, and not just for Christians."
Saicho, the founder of my lineage, believed in putting others first, before the (no-)self. The West has promoted the self for centuries at an accelerating rate. The best way I have found is to go cold turkey on the self, embrace no-self, and then every action/interaction becomes an instance of prayer and compassion. Self-worship only becomes a problem when a person takes the first step and believes in a self. To adapt an old motto: Just say no-self!
This is very profound. I once wrote a short story along these lines.
https://emergencemagazine.org/fiction/the-basilisk/
Since then, the possibility that 'demonic energy' is a profound reality on the Internet has become mroe and more real to me.
Thank you for sharing that. Sounds like some real life wisdom.
Thanks very much for sharing this. It sounds profoundly true to me. I agree about 'solutions.' Your experiences are very valuable in acknowledging where we are and might soon be.
Hi Paul, I wanted to ask about the importance of Lent in the modern machine world and any thoughts you have on it's use/misuse etc in the situation we find ourselves in. Despite not belonging to any Church I find the season useful and always try and observe Lent. This year I have given up coffee, news media, and ordering from Amazon. These are all things I enjoy but equally are all destructive habits health and sanity wise. I do wonder though if I should give up something that hasn't got any fringe benefits to giving up or am I getting Lent 'wrong'? I'm already on a pretty restrictive diet so fasting is not really an option. Also my catholic relatives insist you can 'break the fast' each Sunday so the total time adds up to 40 days. Is this generally true?
Olly, I’m not Paul, but I am Catholic! My priest said, in a homily about preparation for Lent, that one should give up habits and practices for Lent with the idea of foregoing those habits even after Lent: habits and practices that distract him from God and being the person God created him to be. Partly his point is that if something is worth giving up as penance during Lent it’s probably worth giving up altogether. Adding something is the same, he said in his homily. If fasting helps one with penance and prayer during Lent, he should continue it after Lent. So the Lenten season then becomes a source of permanent change and movement toward God. I think you can apply my priest’s point to your particular situation in some way. As for Sundays in Lent being free days from Lenten fasting etc, that’s right. Sundays are not counted among the 40 days of Lent, but personally I find Lenten fasting etc easier to do if I just treat Sundays as the other days.
Hello Olly, and TD. Thanks for the question. The notion of sacrifice is interesting to me. Long before I was Christian I would give things up for long periods, because I thought it would be 'good for me', which it usually was. I became vegetarian for years on that basis, even though I wasn't sure quite why. I think it's an instinct that is more and more appealing in the contmeporary world, with the insanity, noise and endless agendas.
Lent of course is a specifically Christian festival, which paves the way for the crucifixion and resurrection. It's a strange time of both mourning and celebration. The 'giving up' aspect, as TD suggests here, helps to remove from the horizon some of the things which tie us down to our petty desires, and helps focus the mind on God. In the Orthodox church we have strict fasting rules: we're vegan and alcohol-free for the Lenten period, and there are other rules here and there too. They apply for the whole period apart from on some specific feast days. It really only makes sense as part of the whole Orthodox liturgical cycle, and people tend to do what they can (not everyone can fast this strictly) in consultation with their priest. The strictness of it, I find, is part of what makes it so effective.
I'm really very new myself so I can't really give any advice, other than to say that the notion of 'purification' (what could be less fashionable?) seems more and more useful to me. This is all part of the wider project of 'askesis', which is central to Orthodoxy - mental self-discipline in the service of spiritual growth. As much as anything, it's about training the mind to resist the snares of the world. I am not going to pretend I'm very good at this ...
Hello Paul, I have great respect for the Orthodox tradition and the practice of lent. It is so deep and rich. I was particularly inspired by the writings of Timothy Ware. My first wife was Albanian and we were married in a Greek Orthodox Church wearing the traditional strung together crowns. Regarding the topics of fasting and sacrifice I offer a few eclectic perspectives that come to mind. " Stop doing harm, begin doing good, purify the mind", these are the teachings of all the Buddhas. The ability to say no and stop anything is perhaps one of the few pure expressions of free will and conscious unconditioned choice we humans have. Every no, strengthens our will forces and grows our ability to step aside and not be swept away by our programed existences. The unexamined life is not worth living, because it is really not living, it is sleep walking. In order to examine our lives we must stop what we are habitually doing, step to the side and observe it. Lent the way I think of it combines both a stopping and an exercise of no. In cultures like Tibetan , Hindu and Celtic etc. restrictive lifetime vows were sometimes taken by heroic types that served to awaken, spiritualize and empower them for whatever task they were called to accomplish. I would bet that those practicing Lent and "austerities" like them similarily are better able to act in ways that fulfill the " mandate of heaven " for them. Lastly there is a saying that comfort kills honor. Perhaps it could be extended to include virtue.
Thanks KG. The 'exercise of no' is an excellent phrase. Rare and hard.
Rarer and harder as we are absorbed into the comfort and easily accessible compulsions of the machine ... irresistibly swept into the mindless Meta-verse of our favorite indulgences:)
Correction: Buddha is reported to have said "First, stop doing harm" So this simple statement is given as a stepwise prescription and a condensation of all the teachings of the Buddhas past, present and future.
Well I'd never get past that part. Even throwing a plastic package in the trash does harm, even growing cotton for t shirts... can anyone stop doing harm?
Stop doing harm is probably meant to be an ongoing process not necessarily an absolute that can achieved. Moving in that direction without perfectionism is no doubt a saner approach. Historically the Jains are the one’s who took doing no harm to its most extreme expression and greatest renunciation. Buddhism is counterbalanced by the principles of natural perfection and boundlessness ( emptiness ) that create a softer view that ultimately everything is unfolding exactly the way it supposed too for the development and liberation of all beings. For Christian’s forgiveness through redemption and for Buddhists faith in “ other power” come to the rescue because we are not able to get there through our own efforts and for this reason great beings bridge the gap for us.
A philosopher friend of mine got me thinking about a Positive Ethic vs. a Negative Ethic. The negative is "Do no harm," but as you say, it is impossible to do no harm, and just by living an average life, driving a car, not thinking before we talk, etc., we *risk* doing great harm every day.
The positive ethic is to "Do Good." Natural law might help us know what that is, but in any case, people and cultures disagree at least to some degree on what GOOD is. I still have been greatly helped by remembering that this ethic is more what Christ taught, and what my Christian impulse is. During Lent we Orthodox Christians try to fast, pray, and give alms more than usual.
This positive ethic conflicted with the dictates of my California community that convinced us that during covid we could be righteous by just wearing masks and isolating ourselves.
KGjust now
I hear you about negative versus positive ethic. Negative ethics can, like the singular no harm fixation of masks and isolation be stultifying , priggishly righteous and an obstacle to the good of positive acts of Lent, as in your experience. Maybe I am over simplifying to propose we need both, just like we need the brakes and accelerator in our automobiles. We apply them skillfully to fit the terrain ( road) to reach our destination. Now I sit here wondering what the ethical equivalent is of our emergency brake, steering wheel and our windshields ? :)
Yes, I find the best way for me to approach this is awareness of the "footprint" I make in the world...how is my energy, how are my actions affecting the world? Leave no trace, walk in beauty <3
In Buddhism this is a vow not a command or a set goal. We will never fully achieve this but the vow is to keep trying
"perhaps one of the few pure expressions of free will and conscious unconditioned choice we humans have. Every no, strengthens our will forces"
Nicely said. Would you like to say more about free will in an age of both The Machine and humankind as machine. Clearly our bodies and the physical world condition (ie limit) us; yet we continue to speak of free will, thus implying a spiritual component of our makeup that is not so conditioned. Even the law implicitly acknowledges this by assigning responsibility to us regardless of the materialistic/mechanistic received (un)wisdom.
Great question! Of course I can only speculate and by speculating I will be mostly wrong … but it’s fun anyway if none take it too seriously. What I notice is the materialistically educated , elite , narrative shaping rulers most likely don’t believe in free will and are probably more dedicated to maintaining the illusion of it. Regarding free will I enjoy the nuances of Rudolf Steiner’s description of it. His vision of our particular era is fascinating and has given me some peace. Particularly his thoughts that we would experience a necessary breakdown in the authoritarian influences of institutions like church, state, media , universities like we are seeing today. He predicted that it would cause chaos and identify crises but that it was necessary that humanity learn to choose the good through freedom not coercion.
I agree completely about Rudolf Steiner's thoughts on individual free will. His book "The Philosophy of Freedom"** has been my guide for many years. Despite being firmly grounded in late 19th century European philosophy, it's a very modern book on the phenomenology of thinking because, as well as taking us through the act of knowing in exquisite detail, it also acts as a kind of initiation into perceiving spiritual reality. This means that summaries and reviews are no substitute for experiencing the book itself.
I'm writing this, not because I doubt that you, KG, know all this, of course you do. Rather because having read PK's writings and seen some of his video conversations this past year, I have often asked myself, I wonder if PK, in his search for spiritual truths, has ever touched upon Rudolf Steiner?
** It's translated with a variety of titles. My favorite is "Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path".
Totally agree with you as well especially in wondering if PK has run across Steiner. I think PK might find interesting Steiner’s idea that we live in an era whose theme is confronting the mystery of evil . Which I think of as both an internal and external re-evaluation. Steiner held Goethe’s view that even evil ends up doing good. That the human being is matured and strengthened by having to find a balance between materialism and grandiosity , while reaping the benefits of each without their harms. This is accomplished by Christ in Steiner’s sculpture of man.
Funny you should ask, because quite a few people have mentioned Steiner to me recently. I should probably read some of his work.
And yes I think our true wills are spiritual in nature, they are inherent inner guidance systems . It makes sense that much of education by empires involves short circuiting and or clouding over this innate wisdom in order to control, subjugate the masses to better organize itself.
I think fasting is an important thing for us either for religious or health reasons. In fact I think both go hand in hand. From a scientific perspective removing animal products and alcohol lowers our risk of inflammation and ensures pH homeostasis isn't compromised. Both are triggers for pathogenesis. Plus toxins are also reduced and our livers can take it a bit easier. Hippocrates used fasting as part of his healing protocols as do many natural healers today; perhaps we can view lent as a time for healing and cleansing too? My belief is that the mind and the body are not separate (non-dualistic), I'm not sure what the Christian view is but I believe by healing and purifying the body we also do the same for our mind. May be it isn't just the self-denial that is of benefit to us but it also works alongside the healing benefits of fasting? Ensuring that we attain clarity and strength of mind and body ready for a rebirth?
I too became vegetarian for a while without knowing why Paul. Looking back, I think my body was telling me what I needed and for that no 'external' logical reason is required!
Olly, I have found the following, readily digestible book very helpful for Lenten focus (quasi-devotional?). As TD relayed, in Lent, we are laying and reinforcing the groundwork for daily living in and beyond the season. Practices of prayer and fasting are indeed necessary toward a deeper understanding of this thing called "sin", the forgiveness we all desperately need and truly and mercifully receive from the Lord.
"How To Be A Sinner" by Peter Bouteneff (a prof at St. Vladimir's Seminary). I love the provoking title.
https://svspress.com/how-to-be-a-sinner/
I have given up alcohol for Lent this year, for the first time. I find several reasons why this might be a worthy idea, and I am still working out I my heart how to order them:
1. Celebrations are more meaningful when there has been a period of deprivation prior to them. The fasting in Lent gives a joy to the celebration of Easter that it would not have otherwise. In a world where I have daily access to so many creature comforts, the act of denying myself allows me to look forward to something special, and reminds me of the specialness of the celebration of Easter.
2. It is an offering I can give to God. It is a small offering, and it is not something He needs me to do, but it is something I will actually miss and so I think it may please Him for me to offer it.
3. I want to share, in some tiny way, in Christ's suffering.
4. It allows me to focus more on Christ and removes a distraction.
I am trying hard not to focus on the fact that it is also good for me physically to do this, because I am longing so much for the spiritual benefits.
I agree that of course we all have many things that we could give up on a continual basis that would be good for us, but I think the fasting of Lent is more than just adding up one more ongoing self-denial every year. The temporary nature of it has value as we look forward to Easter and to the final banquet when Christ returns.
These are just my thoughts, don't know if it makes sense to anyone else.
It does make sense. Thank you.
Deb, these are all excellent points. God has given us many wonderful gifts, including good food and drink and other pleasures. Most of us are not called to give these up permanently for spiritual reasons. Yes, some people shouldn't drink, etc for other reasons, but that is different. What we give up isn't really the point, it is why we are giving it up. Obedience is a good place to start. Love for God is the goal.
Lent is part of the "fast then feast" cycle of the liturgical calendar. As you said, after a period of fasting, we take greater joy in the gifts of God and, hopefully, give greater thanks to God for those gifts. To just add another self-denial notch onto your belt, as TD's priest suggests, seems to me to miss the point. There are certain things we should give up permanently, like gossip or gluttony, but a good steak or a glass of wine or ordering from Amazon, well, that depends.
I think it is very easy for us to give lots of things up only to fall into the sin of pride because we were able to give those things up. Whatever we are doing for Lent (or any other season or reason) should be to bring us closer to God and neighbor, the increase our capacity to love.
I agree, and what you say about celebrations being more meaningful when there has been a period of deprivation resonates with me and reminds me that there is no singing the "Alleluia" during Lent so that on Easter we can really mindfully belt it out (at least once a year before eventually returning back to mumbling absentmindedly through the liturgy)
A few years ago during Lent, I felt Christ ask me to consider suffering *well.* Though Lent can be an inroad for experiencing the many facets of suffering, how we go about that suffering may be key.
A helpful example for me was meditating on the ways in which Christ interacts with the two thieves - while they all hang on crosses. How should our hearts be postured while dying (to self)?
Orthodox catechumen here. I love what you said, Paul, about the fasting being easy, but the prayer that's hard. As a previously quite prayerful non-denominational evangelical, I'm frankly shocked by the internal and external resistance I have encountered to prayer, especially during these first few days of Lent. Anyway, I also wanted to mention just how profound my first Forgiveness Vespers was--what a way to start the Lenten season. I continue to be in awe of how healing this whole experience has been for me.
Forgiveness Vespers is such a great experience--especially that first one!
Look up "Orthodox Christian fasting" and you will get more information than you can digest! Orthodox calculate the 40 days of Lent differently than Catholics which is why they start on the Monday before Ash Wednesday (assuming Easter is on the same day, which it usually isn't!). And if you follow the rules, it's much stricter than the Catholics who are all slackers nowadays. ;) And I think I'll stop there.
As a Catholic, I confirm that you are right about the slackers part.
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?
I've had an identical experience. I followed covid very closely, because it affected my church, and so my gravity. But other than church feeling broken for so long, covid was, in my experience, a media event. As soon as the channel changed a few weeks ago, I knew it was time to get off - no more news media, no participation in media events, and therefore no participation in Our Current Crisis. Thanks to many painful games of Risk as a child, I have always known where Ukraine is on the map, but the utter futility and pointlessness of trying to participate in the Ukraine conversation was starkly apparent. I'm off the bandwagon, and hope to remain off permanently.
I have gotten caught up in more absurd media events and faux moral panics than I care to admit.
It was disturbing to see how quickly we all became experts on this situation in the Ukraine. We are caught up in a world wide delusion. I am not sure that the puppet masters--if such there be--are immune to the delusion. It does not bode well.
Yet as my father used to say to me, "God's help is no further than the door." Exit, stage left!
The puppet masters may be the most deluded among us. Which, if true, would be saying a lot!
My grandfather used to say: Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear!
> 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).
Well said and thank you for the link to "Humiliation of the Word". I've read "Propaganda" by the same author. That was an eye opening experience.
So much here - thanks for this rich response, William. our minds are saturated with anything but the Logos. We are full, but perpetually hungry with 'bread that does not satisfy'. I couldn't help but note your final comment. 'What am I going to do with myself?' Seems so important also. Christ goes into the wilderness where is is stripped of illusions of agency, although the tempter suggests things he could do to 'change the world'. Everything that surrounds us screams at us about how powerful we are, and yet stripped to our 5 or 6 foot, 100-200lb frame . . . Fasting from our agency except that which the Logos requires: do justly - treat others as you would have them treat you, others whom you encounter in the real world; Love mercy - life is so very hard, no other path makes sense, we all need mercy, so give it (it is a quality all but lost in the craziness) - and walk in humility (appropriate to your scale) with the Lord your God. And I might go re-read Ellul :-)
Thank you
I find that if I ingest the mainstream news and seek to stay ‘current’ on world wide issues, without equal or great time in prayer about the same issues, I move towards despair or indifference. “You are what you eat.” I find that I see more clearly the Kingdom of God when I ingest the Word of God, pray and care for others in my community. It keeps my focus on Christ Jesus and His glorious victory and helps me to walk with obedient faith.
Well in the book of Revelation it’s the Word of God versus the Image of the Beast!
Thank you for the book recommendation. I have it on order now. It dove tails well with a book called Our Twelve Senses, How healthy senses refresh the soul by Albert Soesman based on the insights of Rudolf Steiner. He discusses how our eyes are the brain extruding outward to meet the world., and how through the eyes sense of color, the inner essence of the world appears to us. Also, that we think with our eyes, with our thinking we add what we expect to see to what we actually see and as a result we have optical illusions. While sound is a reality it's not a semblance , not an image as in sight but reality itself. The invisible made substantial. I'm not sure how or why but I find it poetic that Steiner insists we do not hear by our own power but only with the assistance of angelic beings of the spiritual hierarchies. Hearing is the chief of our spiritual senses. Here are a couple Jesus quotes that seem to relate to the contrast between sight and hearing.
The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. Matthew 6:22
He who has ears let him hear. Matthew 11:15
" 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." yes yes and yes. The salon is a great idea.
I watched this video today: https://youtu.be/fx3JV-5myK4 Patriot Nurse. Don't believe anything, war is not a new thing, and nothing you're seeing on the internet is true. It's a good reminder. Heck, when she talks about self-defence and making sure your rifle is clean locked and loaded, it made me wish for a moment that we had gun rights in Ireland. What a disaster that could be!
Ultimately, there are some people out there who still believe that a saviour will come and save the world. They are going to be way disappointed. We have to save ourselves, it starts very much with us, and with the quality of our lives. I drove to my little office this morning behind a 4 wheel drive SUV (much needed in the burbs of Dublin I may add) and it had a bumper sticker saying "Work sucks, go surfing instead" Well I love my work, and I believe that's the issue here. Surfing on a wave that may or may not come isn't something that I particularly love, but I'm getting better at it over the last 2 years. Loving what I do is important to me. I changed my whole life around it, its not the easy choice and for that reason, most people don't do it. I know it sounds like I'm rambling but I do believe all of these things are connected. I wrote this on Facebook/Instagram last night:
I have to speak my truth. Truth can hurt. But life isn’t about protecting your feelings over truth. Or protecting mine. And guess what - the truth is probably going to hurt your feelings - but it’s better to hear it, then you can process it and get over it and grow. That’s why we are here - to grow. To understand each other, to respect the other, that’s just part of it.
Choosing truth and what is right over fear and what is easy is hard. Especially when corporations are trying their damnedest to censure and hide it.
I'll stop now. Love what you're doing here xxAbby
Hi Paul, and thanks for your newsletter, which is both a guide and a support.
This morning I wrote the following note to myself. It was intended to be only a self-provocation, which I could return to later. But in the spirit of this Salon (which is a great idea), I'll post it here and see what it provokes in others. As it sounds, I wrote it in an attempt to understand what I think. I am not deeply attached to the claims I make in it.
*
For the last 30 years we in the west have enacted a collective hallucination. We have lived a kind of hallucinatory realism. Not Nietzsche's Last Men, but the dream of the Last Man, reproduced a billion times.
We have lived in a dreamland without edges, without time. That is not to say that the historical real did not happen, but that it was processed as dream. This process has its roots in our obsession with the reproduction, the copy. Which in turn has its roots in a certain orientation to the world; the subject/object orientation at the heart of our metaphysics. We exported our obsession with reproduction to the rest of the world; Russia and China. But they were ruled by a political class grounded in history and existential struggle. They used our copy-making machines as systems of control. Meanwhile, we lost ourselves in hyperreality.
Immensely powerful rival systems gathered their strength; the elites that constituted them could hardly believe their luck. Now history is wrapping its long fingers around us again. What will follow is a battle for the future. The war in Ukraine is just a shock wave (and not even the first), a signal of the massive detonation that is to come. On the one side stand people, wherever they are, who believe in recognisably human forms of life. On the other are those who want to facilitate the domination of a technics megastructure. Putin believes in nothing but a hollowed-out Russian nationalism that has become a cipher for global capital. China is building a form of techno-authoritarianism the like of which the world has never seen.
On the surface, the project that awaits us is to conserve recognisably human forms of life. We might say that the answer is to be properly conservative, if that word had not been assaulted by the idiocies of the modern conservative parties, which have inverted conservatism and liquidate every recognisable human relationship and value.
The deeper answer can only be spiritual revolution. It must come.
What is the image of China as "techno-authoritarianism" based on?
I'm curious to hear what you know and think about China. Most of what i know is from some exchange students and a missionary couple. I confess I know very little but the news during covid was always of extreme technological control. of course, we are learning to doubt the news now.
Same here, I talked with Chinese expats (workers) and exchange students years ago. On average they saw the Chinese government as a powerful but sleepy institution that was mostly on their side. They said Chinese people are chaotic, don't respect rules, and don't expect punishment for not following rules. None of them seemed to think of their homeland as authoritarian.
When I think in numbers, I know China has a growing economy. Yet centralizing power comes at a cost to efficiency. Innovation happens in small companies and it happens when people have spare time and energy.
So I wonder how other people think about China, and where their information comes from.
One Chinese student told me about a small farm her father owned outside the city. The pollinating insects of all sorts have died away and so they employ men on ladders to hand pollinate the apple blossoms. Incredible!
Speaking about control & money, if you live in a latin american country (such as my homeland Brazil), you are already very familiar with government messing up with your money. Brazil in the 90s and Argentina in 2001 were both situations where government froze the savings accounts of the whole population, effectively leading lots of people to not be able to access their savings for almost 2 years.
That's why I think this whole idea of having your whole assets financialized is so dangerous. People should have land, vehicles and other physical assets, so the government can't have this imense financial power over its own citzens.
I hadn't made that connection. I remember that happening in Argentina and thinking 'it could never happen here.' That may turn out to be a bit of typical Western smugness.
You're right about physicality. There's a reason why the Machine works so hard at enclosure. Land is freedom.
"Can't happen here" is such a strange yet pervasive bit of denial / wishful thinking.
I try to counteract it by repeating the line about eternal vigilance being the price of freedom (and other things, too.) But that in turn exposes one of the eternal human dilemmas: for all the talk here about turning off the news, what if it really is the Goths or the Normans over the next hill marching your direction? You would have at least closed the gates if you had known.
I will be the first to admit that I don't balance these aspects of life very well.
Yes, I think I stopped believing that 'couldn't happen here' was a thing about the time of the first lockdown. Now I blieve that anything can happen anywhere. Which of course was always true.
I do think that if the barbarians really do come, we'll get the news in the old fashioned way, via panicking neighbours!
I hope this is true, about the news of "the invasion," because if I can trust that, I might be able to pry myself away from reading the news, which feels like watching a giant car crash in the last few seconds before the actual impact. It's mesmerizing and addictive. The "cars" are swerving all over the place at 100 mph and it's impossible to know which ones will collide with which. If it were an actual car crash, I would look the other way and pray!
By news, I don't mean the MSM -- but much of it is still addictive.
Which is why colonising another country always begins with taking the land from the original owners. And in terms of colonising one's own people and country, it means privatizing the land. Dispossess and impoverish. The weapons of Empire.
"Whole assets financialized" sounds like having all your eggs in one basket. Oops!
I was too young to be aware of the financial crises of Latin America except for the very vaguest notion that something was happening down south. How very awful to have your hard-earned money locked away like that. Was it eaten away by inflation as well?
With regards to having physical assets, your comment brings to mind a book about the transition to agriculture and civilization, Against the Grain, by James Scott. Of course, there are many theories of how we came to be agriculturalists and beyond, all of them very interesting. If I recall correctly, one point in the book was that it was societies whose agriculture produced crops that ripened in a specific window and were easily trackable and able to be stored long-term that also developed centralized control systems, aka, civilization.
Wheat would be an example of a crop whose harvest is trackable by the accountant and collectable by the tax collector and storable by the steward. Sweet potatoes, on the other hand, ripen below ground, making them much more difficult to keep account of. If you're like me, you're never totally sure you got them all. Plus, sweet potatoes must be kept from bruising in transit, and they only store for a certain amount of time. Not well suited for the needs of a centralized system. So, like you said, physical assets are critical to maintaining your own footing in life, and if their value is difficult for others to extract from you, all the better. And if other people consider it worthless junk, you've probably hit the gold mine!
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.
Daily News consumption is nothing but poisoning ones soul... I am not suggesting being ignorant to the world, we have to understand the mechanics of The Machine - in order to develop real other alternatives of organizing our lives and particularly important, post- capitalist modes of working together; that means nothing else but breaking up the dominance and accumulation of money and power at the top of a hierarchy.
We need material, books, talks, blogs etc. to educate ourselves and to get a better understanding of The Machine in order to nurture our imagination of how to overcome it. BUT, you will not gain any of this by watching or reading the news, nothing! The news (completely independent from which ideological side) is just noisy propaganda that is emptying your soul.
I agree. I've been thinking recently, as we're offered our never-ending feast of daily news, that it is a kind of emotional pornography for those of us who sit comfortably in our homes and apartments and can have a never-ending supply of everything we need delivered overnight to our doorsteps. Our media overlords have just about squeezed COVID dry, and now they're focusing their Sauron-like attention (and ours) on the Ukraine/Russia war, teasing and titillating us to watch with images of violence and horror.
So, we watch.
I'm actually trying to avoid news, particularly now that it's Lent. Hard to do when it is aimed at us all like a firehose. Even when I try to avoid it, I feel like I'm getting wet. Fasting from booze for Lent, as well. Avoiding news is making avoiding booze a bit easier. There's a lesson for me there, I think.
The practice of reading the news is best when it begins with the question of message rather than information. What is this trying to convince me of? What is the motivation behind the story? How does it fit into a larger pattern? I mostly read state sanctioned propaganda (VOA, XINHUANET, RT) and watch how those narratives continue in other sources.
Information and emotion are both contagions. I’m beginning to believe cynicism is as effective a contagion as fear.
I like that approach. I trying to ask who benefits from the messaging. For example, news about some bad practice from a tech company might catch my attention and perhaps, as a result, politicians begin hurrumping for more regulations and law and the like. But maybe all that news is being pushed by "other" tech companies who want to see the company that's being picked on brought down a peg or two. Everything always seems to boil down to money, power, and control.
Well said. As I currently find myself writing a piece about ‘The News’ and why it’s avoidance is necessary I found myself nodding along with this great comment. The Ukraine situation is the first event (barring the tail end of Covid) that I am genuinely completely out of the loop on, barring snatches of conversation heard and headlines in my peripheral vision while in a local shop and so forth.
And yes, The News is central to The Machine/globalism/whatever you want to call it. It blurs your ‘circle of competence’ such that you worry about things outside of your control and immediate surroundings to the detriment of your actual real life locally situated existence. It’s a cunning trick- we drown in irrelevance, speculation and fear with the upshot being that (as with advertising) we become ever more atomised and disempowered consumers.
I know this is all preaching to the choir given that we are all subscribers to Mr Kingsnorth’s excellent newsletter but I felt compelled to rant on it for a minute nonetheless.
Thank you for "drown in irrelevance." Perfect.
My pleasure, Karis.
Amen! Yes! As a clinical psychologist (shameless plug for my bonfides in an ateempt to overcome insecurity with engaging with "smart people") I see and hear all about the free floating anxiety caused by immersion in the news (as well as a strange pride at being so well informed, especially in young adolescents/children who have no business being so well informed - cue rant on adolescents determinedly trying to put on the costume of adulthood and adults willfully and obstinately entrenched in remaining adolescents) at work, and that is what brings them to me, but then they are surprised and appalled that I dare suggest a kind of psychological/emotional subsidiarity - look to your own relationships/back garden first or clean your room/take care of those before you before thinking you can take care of/change the world, (do what you can with what you have with where you are) or something. I think so many folks are defensive and resistant about what you so beautifully outline and suggest is the result of an allergy to personal responsibility (see previous reference to a desire to remain an adolescent - although the fact that Christianity has been exhorting us to do so for 2,000 years probably suggests it's a feature and not a bug of humanity, modern or otherwise) as well as some kind of desire to live and participate in this dream like copy of Important History (hence all the cries of Nazi?) and thus experience some feeling of importance and meaning in their own lives? By doing something real and concrete, but typically, culturally not just undervalued (love thy neighbor), but actively de-valued does it highlight their own sense of being unimportant/nothing/meaningless (there's probably a German compound word that perfectly describes what I'm struggling to articulate and smarter folks than I are losing their minds yelling it at the screen) despite it being EXACTLY the most meaningful and important work. Loss of real relationship seems to be at the heart of so much just now, so as you point out building, growing, and maintaining relationships is the exact antidote (dare I say even the ones with "toxic" people Buzzfeed implores us to ruthlessly cut out).
As a mandated care home worker turned minimum wage earning substacker I can tell you that I for one am duly impressed with your Clinical Psychologist status!
And you point is an excellent one- being well informed is indeed the means by which many a perpetual adolescent poses as a grown up. A mimetic signal that many people either picked up through their own well informed parents reading the newspaper and becoming enraged at its contents (as they are supposed to) or, if that is not your socio-economic background, through tv depictions of smart people in smart houses on smart dramas.
Either way it is a learned behaviour rather than something that has actual intrinsic merit. News makes us angry and or sad which in turn makes us spend. News is the primer for the advertising that accompanies it, in whatever medium you consume it.
And as you say, it is distraction from the real work of being a real adult. Which is to say a good neighbour and a useful friend and a loving spouse/sibling/friend and so forth. Christianity is a good guide on how to do this but then succeeding in this and having the community and relationships this leads to makes you a poor consumer. Which again is why a good life and continuous news inhalation seem to be opposed to each other.
Or at least that’s how it seems to me.
Amen, amen I say to you watch some Russell Brand youtubes. He's shockingly on point with your excellent points about being trained up as consumers. And I for one am duly impressed with your use of "mimetic".
My only paid writing gig to date (other than my substack) was a book review of Luke Burgis’ ‘Wanting’ which is all about Rene Girard so if I can’t use the word mimetic correctly after that then something would be very much amiss!
I only knew it bc just earlier this week I had to look it up while reading a Mary Eberstadt book who writes with more damn SAT words than...uh...well, the SAT. Not familiar with Rene Girard at all but will now quickly Google in order to appear that much cooler and smarter on the next go round, which only proves what I've suspected since grad school - they will give a PhD to just about anybody these days. It (always needing to look up words despite way too many years in school and what I thought was a pretty decent SAT Verbal score) keeps me humble.
Catherine, your contribution here is a pleasure. Please don't keep making us all feel that we have to be so academically impressive to participate! :)
Thank you for the reminder about "free floating anxiety." Exactly! And I only recently have watched a few Russell Brand videos. He doesn't engender that response. :-)
Thank you for this beautiful comment…it encompasses so much of what I think, especially about the last two lines. And your phrase “a floating anxiety in my soul” perfectly describes how I have been feeling these past few days!
Thank you for this Emilia. I have struggled with letting go of the news. I've slowly let go of social media over the last couple of years, and ramped it up recently with the hibernation of my LinkedIn account just last week, but I am drawn to the news like a moth to a flame. With headlines screaming at me from newsstands and the supermarket shelf it is hard to avoid, but I'd like to just nod and move on, rather than go to the next level, which always leaves me feeling frustrated and overcome with a sense of despair. I like how you describe your priorities, and aspire to move in that same direction.
I am not sure if this topic fits with the idea you are going after Paul...perhaps practical ideas for self sufficiency. Given the different living situations that we all have (some have land, some don't, some have much experience, some don't), what are the practical steps that a person/family can take to be more self sufficient and not a slave to the machine?
Yes, please! This is so important. I have a feeling that Lent and the sacrifices made during Lent can help to make us stronger and, thus, take that first step towards distancing ourselves from the Machine...learning that we don't need much of what it offers.
I think the survival/self-sufficiently goal has to be tempered with a dose of fatalism and a focus on the Good, and on Community which is even more important than survival. You can't really escape the machine. Or very few people can, in any case. We depend for almost everything on huge supply lines at this point. I helped put on a Benedict Option conference in South Texas last year, and what came out of that experience for me is that keeping out the bad, the depraved, the machine, what have you, is insufficient and often winds up in a destructive purity spiral. The focus has to be on recovering and embodying the Good, but somehow we have to do that while accepting that in our time and place every manifestation of this is going to fall so painfully short.
a great point. We can't just be against something, we must also be for something. And what we are for is crucial...I do think, though, that we can all rely on the Machine less than we realize. Even small things like keeping the heat lower or growing a few simple food items on our own, not buying books from Amazon...
Daniel, I fully agree. We, on this side of eternity, and with out the Grace of God, can not be perfect. However, ask God for the Grace to cooperate with His Grace. To that end; Lent, and other such practices can help empty our selves, or ourselves.
Also, while we can not fully exorcise ourselves from the machine, we can take steps now, that can be built upon by our children and their children's children, that will begin to free us.
What today is a simple small kitchen compost pile, can teach us lessons that have the ability to take root in our families and communities; and by the Grace of God will flower into the weapons to fight the machine.
I've struggled with this, Mark, and finally came to the conclusion that there is no right starting point. As you point out, everyone's living situations are different. So, that's your starting point, and I'd suggest start with something small. The Machine seduces us with convenience and habit, so maybe someone starts by putting up with an inconvenience. Instead of ordering take out, make your own dinner. Start a small herb garden on your porch. Instead of hopping in your car or taking mass transit, walk more. Shop second hand stores instead of the overpriced crap made in sweatshops. I'm wearing a polo shirt my wife picked up for a few bucks at Goodwill right now. Try to cut distractions - like social media, for example. (Side note: I recommend Matthew Crawford's book, "The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction.")
My wife and I are lucky to live on some acreage. I grow veges in the summer, and feel like I'm thumbing my nose and agri-business every time I plant a seed. Plus, it's fun. I make our own sauerkraut, also fun and easy. Heck, if you play a musical instrument, or sing in a choir, I think that cuts at a few of the threads the Machine has around you. That's fun, too and it makes you a music maker instead of a passive consumer of it. That's a good thing, I think. We heat our house with wood, and we have plenty of alder, so I am fairly regularly dropping trees, cutting rounds and splitting them into firewood, and then stacking everything up to dry for when I need it. I'm not just selectively taking trees, but I'm also replanting along the way. I just planted 10 shore pines over the weekend, along with a dozen native rhodies and 10 vine maples. We're certainly not completely off grid and self-sufficient, but I think anyone can start and even a little bit can help change one's mind set. More importantly, I think, there's something really soul nurturing when you get dirt under your fingernails or take a wrench and try to fix something yourself or get out of your car and walk . . . in other words, interacting with the real world, as opposed to the mediated version being pushed by The Machine and its minions and followers. Just a few thoughts. Best wishes everyone.
What I find so disturbing is the acceleration of ‘othering’ people. First people losing their jobs for posting something on social media that pushed back at the Woke Doctrines, then the people who donated to the vaccine mandate protests were doxxed, had their names posted around town and were chased down by the media, now people are vandalising Russian owned stores. The trajectory is frightening.
I want to understand what is happening and what I can personally do - which is why I love this substack.
I think maybe moving out of the medium sized city I live in and out to the country might be an answer.
I am also looking at religion - although my own church talks about nothing but social justice politics - I am reading books on Christianity and signed up for a course on paganism. I think the answer lies in embracing spirituality, tradition, self-sufficiency - just trying to figure out how to best do that.
It's the big one, isn't it? The two minutes hate in real time. As somebody who wasn't vaccinated against covid, I experienced some of the media-led howling-down of the 'unvaxxed', and I am now seeing exactly the same mentality and energy applied to 'the Russians', or anyone associating with them. In both cases, the desire for mob law amongst many people is pretty clearly divorced from the issue in question, and seems to me to make the whole situation worse (demonising individual Russians is likely to make things worse for Ukrainians, I'd have thought, just as demonising the 'unvaxxed' for their choices or concerns created a huge pool of resentment which is still here and could go anywhere.)
I think social media is largely responsible for this. Here's quite a good essay on that issue:
https://arctotherium.substack.com/p/memetic-evolution-and-progressivism?s=r
I think your instinct about what to do is right. Find a strong faith that doesn't bend with the world, and switch off as much as you can (more than me, for instance ...)
With regard to those pesky Russians, I was amused by this WaPo article last summer about how The Russians were spreading misinformation about the efficacy of non-Sputnik vaccines: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/05/26/influencers-offered-money-pfizer-discredit-russia/
I remember thinking at the time that we didn't need Russian misinformation peddlars; our garbage vax monitoring system and response was doing quite enough on its own to undermine (what turns out to have indeed been *misplaced*) confidence in mRNA vaccines. Always 'the Russians,' though, regardless of what the problem is.
I am so shocked at the black and white attitude to this war in Ukraine. I have never experienced anything like this in my life of 70yrs before. Now everyone has found their hate figure in Putin. Yet, 20yrs ago, when Bush/Blair smashed into Iraq destroying all before them: men, women and children, without any basis for doing so, no one called them Hitler or evil tyrants. In fact, they both got re-elected a few years after, and one of them, has since been given an knighthood. Go figure that one!!!
Oh I don't know about that. I remember Dubya being decried as a 'fascist' on a regular basis, and at least in Britain there was a big outcry against the war. A million of us marched against it - not that it made any difference. But yes, they were both re-elected anyway. It's different when we do it, you see.
I have a warm fantasy about Putin, Bush and Sir Tony all standing side to side in the dock at the International Criminal Court. A man can dream.
There is so much darkness in many spirituality courses, people pretending to be something that they are not. The fear is in doing the deep inner work, most people have not gone there. Keep your eyes open, that's all I'm saying.
Spiritual delusion is a danger for all of us, almost no matter what we do. Hardly a day goes by I don't catch myself in some such grand self-delusion. Maybe a couple times an hour is more like it! Humility and watchfulness. And confession for those who can do so.
Inner work, I have found, is extremely difficult. It is painful, and I would rather avoid it.
I have meditating on a passage from one of my favorite books, Christ the Eternal Tao. I think it lays out our choices well:
Therefore the sages called Him also by His other name: The Way (Tao),The Course that all things are to follow. 10 The trees, the birds, the rivers and winds: These had no choice but to follow the Way. Man alone is given choice; Man alone can follow or go his own way. If he follows the Way, he will suffer with the pain of the world, 15 But He will find the Original Harmony. If he follows his own way, he will suffer only with himself, And within him will be chaos.
"What I find so disturbing is the acceleration of ‘othering’ people."
Otherling people has been going on in Western culture for centuries. In the United States, for example, we have the history of chattel slavery; putting Japanese citizens in internment camps; the Chinese Exclusion Act; denial of queer equality, etc. The tendency never changes--just who has the power to other at any given time.
The question is whether othering is a bug or feature of Western culture.
It could also just be a general tendency among humans. One that deep spiritual practice should help us see through and let go of. I emphasize *should*.
Deep spiritual practice does help one see through the delusions of othering. The problem is that a) many practices said to be spiritual do nothing of the sort; and b) many practitioners are sloppy in their practice, and make the claim that their failure is the result of something inherent in them which prevents proper practice. Everyone can be a bodhisattva or saint.
This is all very true. I recall someone saying that she didn't meditate because it made all her thoughts become chaotic. I shuffled my feet and coughed gently.
Talk about getting the causation backwards.
Deep spiritual practice--when it can be found--can often be excruciating (literally from the cross!). Which is why we probably often prefer to downgrade to *looking like* we are engaged in deep spiritual practice. Much easier!
"I recall someone saying that she didn't meditate because it made all her thoughts become chaotic."
I wish someone had told her that that is what meditation is supposed to do--mess up the neat narratives we apply to our thoughts, and then, resisting their imposition, we sit with the chaos, unattaching, not judging, and, thereby, taking a step forward.
"Deep spiritual practice--when it can be found--can often be excruciating"
I guess I am just weird. My happiest spaces/places are where/when deep spiritual practice occurs. Two of my best instances are subway-related: once on a D train crossing the Manhattan Bridge on the way to work, and the second while waiting for an F train home to Brooklyn at the Broadway/Lafayette Station (pre-renovation).
I experience recurring flare-ups of self, but they have become increasingly unsettling, so I try to unattach as quickly as I can. My most frequent recourse is to ask myself: is this action coming from your conventional self or your Buddha-nature.
Excruciating in the sense of sitting with the chaos, with all the wounds of one's life, often with the physical pain in our bodies we usually try to numb.
But it isn't just that, as you say. There are moments of pure gift, seemingly unbidden, when there is a kind of luminous clarity and the response is, "yes, of course, this is how it is" though not necessarily articulated in words. The Original Harmony.
After the cross, resurrection. I know you wouldn't put it that way, but...
True enough, but this is not a 'Western' tendency, as anyone from any other culture could tell you. It's a human thing. We form tribes and we stand against outgroups. Perhaps what is novel is the speed and reach at which this can now be done. Global mobs can be formed in an eye blink online, and we don't even have to know each others' names.
"It's a human thing."
It may be human, but it is neither inherent nor unchangeable. Once a person understands the interdependent nature of existence, it becomes impossible to other.
I am sure there is a concept in Christian anthropology that, once understood, would have the same effect on a practitioner. In my ignorance of the subject, I just do not know what it is.
That's quite true; in my small understanding it's the hard work at the heart of any spiritual path. The Sermon on the Mount pretty much sums up the Christian approach to it, I think. The Orthodox concept would probably be 'theosis' - union with God, and the ultimate aim of the path. It's only achieved through humility, putting others before self, loving everyone and forgoing pride, possessions and the passions. The process is sometimes known as 'dying to the world.' This leads to sainthood. In theory, this path is open to all. In practice, not many of us will get there ...
"It's only achieved through humility, putting others before self, loving everyone and forgoing pride, possessions and the passions."
Exactly. But so much of our society/culture is devoted to valorizing possessions, passions, and self, and worse, people are reluctant to speak out against this value system. They know it is wrong (or at least claim that they do), but are deathly afraid of losing out.
"The process is sometimes known as 'dying to the world.'"
I have also heard it as "dying to the self."
"In theory, this path is open to all. In practice, not many of us will get there ..."
I think more would, if it weren't drummed into their heads that the path was so difficult, that people are fallen, and must depend on a creator deity's grace to get there. It is such an infantilizing approach, but an understandable one, since it ensures the perpetuation and thriving of institutions claiming to be able to lend a helping hand. I keep thinking about what you said in the other thread to me about how early Christians believed in being ordinary saints (at least that is how I understood it).
Look up a list of of the seven deadly sins, and you'll find that every one of them is profitable today, and mostly valorised for that reason.
I don't agree with your final para. There's nothing infantile about explaining the 'straight and narrow' nature of the path, and I don't agree that it's easy either. we're not taught to other, etc etc - it's what comes naturally to us. That's where the nature of the 'fall' is to be found. Rising again is hard work. It's why there have never been many Buddhas or saints around.
I don’t think “othering” is a Western thing. I think the idea of “self” vs “other” conceptually is different in east vs west; however, “othering” (or “us-and-theming”) seems a universal tendency, and a common excuse throughout history for empires, kingdoms, and even little tribes to attack each other...both east and west.
I would amend what you wrote to: othering is a tendency a broad array of humans have been/are taught to practice. It is not inherent/inevitable to other. If it was, Buddhism would not have arisen.
Buddhism arose in response to a world of suffering, which included not only sickness and death, but many other miseries, like “othering”.
It’s worth remembering that Siddhartha lived in a palace, in a royal family, before he became the Buddha. In other words, his whole existence until then had been in a world where othering was very natural: one group of people (princes, lords, etc) was the in-group and everyone else was the out-group. Many societies are structured in this way; it happens in empires and it happens in schoolyards.
We can be taught to other, but it pre-exists our teaching. Our tendency to other reflects our innate selfishness, an instinctive tendency toward defensiveness by trying to see ourselves as better or superior. It’s part of the folly and suffering that’s baked into the human heart. Buddhism offers a solution to this, and so does Christianity (as do other religions/faiths). But I do not think “othering” is a privileged weapon of the West.
"Buddhism arose in response to a world of suffering, which included not only sickness and death, but many other miseries, like 'othering'."
Agreed, but these behaviors were not inherent human behaviors. They were taught and learned behaviors.
"We can be taught to other, but it pre-exists our teaching."
Where does it pre-exist?
"Our tendency to other reflects our innate selfishness"
As the Buddha proved, existence does not have an inherent nature.
"It’s part of the folly and suffering that’s baked into the human heart."
Again, nothing is intrinsic (unless Buddhism is wrong). so there is nothing baked into human hearts.
"Buddhism offers a solution to this, and so does Christianity"
Agreed, but the solutions are different. Buddhism teaches how to see through the delusion of intrinsic existence--to unattach--and says any human being can accomplish this task.
From what I understand (and I may be completely wrong), Christianity advises a person to fight against these tendencies (a fight that Christians can never win since they are fallen), and hope for the bestowal of the creator deity's grace (which can be withheld or given without explanation or reason).
As I understand it, the individual, despite recognizing the harm of othering, and possessing the desire not to do so, may not be able to stop the (postulated intrinsic) behavior, if they are not the recipient of grace. In other words, doing it on one's own is not possible, i.e., human agency is never enough. Again, this is my understanding.
Probably we have a different understanding of the source of suffering. Even in the case of Buddhism, my understanding has been that the very reason we need to transcend the self is because the self is prone to attachment/craving (which causes all our problems, and which is fundamentally rooted in our self-centeredness).
However, I could be mistaken.
As per your comment: “As I understand it, the individual [Christian], despite recognizing the harm of othering, and possessing the desire not to do so, may not be able to stop the (postulated intrinsic) behavior, if they are not the recipient of grace.”
I’m no theologian, but I think this is mistaken. Even those who have received grace still sin, including othering. Grace brings salvation, and perhaps heightened self-awareness, and perhaps even wonderful/miraculous experiences, but it does not bring perfection (not in this world anyway).
For what it’s worth, I have found minimising/ eliminating news and it’s evil spawn social media to be a good first step. This leads to a more localist existence even if the locality in question is pretty urban. Such living in the real world seems to lead to some sort of spiritual orientation or pursuit such that in more downbeat moments I don’t wonder if everything media based isn’t at heart some confederacy against the religious worldview, whether overtly or merely tacitly.
But yes, the answer to virtually everything- as far as I can tell- is localism, community fostering, tech skepticism and all of the things that Mr Kingsnorth writes about here.
Two years ago I discovered The Book of Common Prayer, which offers a whole lifetime of worship. The Anglican Church of Canada is mostly going woke, though there are some pockets of resistance such as the Dioceses of the Arctic and Fredericton. A lot of good priests are getting chased out of Toronto. It's sad.
Best of luck on your journey, Stephanie.
I'm, in general, pretty down on social media. I think it does allow/encourage us to be the worst version of ourselves too much of the time. But it can be helpful in situations like the Russia/Ukraine war (recognizing its limits, of course). On one hand you have Russia which says it is conducting a "special military operation" targeting only the "Nazis" in power. On the other hand, you have loads of videos and pictures taken by everyday Ukrainians demonstrating that their homes are being destroyed, their infrastructure is being decimated, and, most grievously, civilians (including children) are being targeted and killed. Could some of the videos and pictures be manipulated or photoshopped? Sure. Does every person in Ukraine documenting this war have the appropriate software and equipment and the ability to do such a convincing job under great duress? Certainly not. The documentation of the destruction of their country and their lives happens to correspond with the narrative that the western media is promoting about the war (and conflicts with the Russian narrative). And I will admit here that I have been following this conflict way more closely than I probably should, and more so than could be considered healthy for me (though, like you, I have tried to limit myself for Lent).
I agree that a certain amount of suspicion and cynicism about "what we can really know" is warranted in light of the fact that people do, everywhere and in all places, have agendas, even journalists, even Ukrainian farmers. However, I don't believe complete cynicism is helpful in the face of obviously evil acts (recognizing, of course, that "the west" can do evil and the USA, where I live, is certainly guilty of much evil in its brief history). In my mind, it doesn't matter that Russia may have been provoked, or not welcomed into the European fold in the 90s when there was a chance, or whatever. The killing of civilians (including children), as documented on the vast and dense social media network, is wrong. It's ok to say so. It's imperative, as Christians, that we say so, because these evil acts are, in part, the work of dark, evil powers. Just as we participate with God in theosis, we can participate with the demons in the opposite process. Evil is widespread and it's hard to keep track of it all, including the evil within ourselves. And sometimes there truly are grey areas in which it's difficult for us to know for sure, and therefore wise for us to be quiet. But sometimes it really is just black and white. You can admit the west could have handled its relations with Russia better in the past and that it did make mistakes and the politics of the situation are truly complicated AND still condemn this war of aggression as evil.
Perhaps it's better to think of this as a manifestation of a dire spiritual war, in which the forces of evil have a hold on/are influencing certain powerful world actors (even those that call themselves Christians and declare that they stand for "Christian values"), instead of seeing one side as evil, immoral, and degenerate and the other as perfect and justified. And in that case, it's appropriate to call upon the Lord, the saints, the angels to help those being influenced by evil to resist and to soften the heart of those who may be willingly cooperating with evil, starting with ourselves.
That's what I think, anyway.
I very much like your last paragraph, Ruth. It seems to be universally applicable.
Hi Paul, I love this platform, but absinthe isn’t my thing, a good Cabernet might work, ha!
Anyway, to those who are struggling for “faith” or a church, I can relate. However, one year ago I was Chrismated in the OCA (Orthodox Church in America). Although to be truly Orthodox would take a lifetime of practice and even then would not be totally comprehensive, I have found true peace and joy. This past Sunday was Forgiveness Sunday and it is one of the most spiritually beautiful experiences and of course extremely humbling and cathartic. To ask forgiveness of fellow worshippers, individually, is soul shaking! In the midst of all the horrible news about Ukraine and Russia there was peace for that hour. Our priest urges us to turn down the noise and focus on what really is important in our lives and in Christianity that is focusing on the love that Christ gives to us and share it with whom we come in contact.
For those who are reading this I humbly ask you to pray, pray, pray. Also, fasting does help keep one focused on your prayer goal.
The whole fiasco with Russia/Ukraine has ultimately driven me towards Lent, or the Orthodox articulation of it, in two different ways.
The first is related to an essay by Wes Jackson titled 'Towards an Ignorance Based Worldview'. I highly recommend it. The premise is that for all the knowledge than humans have on any subject, do they have enough knowledge in the grand scheme of life to make decisions? Do we know enough about, say, the world's ecosystem, that we can say that throwing buckets of metallic glitter in the air to combat global warming won't have any negative unforeseen effects? This relates to the Russia/Ukraine conflict in the story that is told of St. Sophrony of Essex. When WW2 broke out, news eventually traveled to his hermitage on Mt Athos. It is said of him that he stayed in his hut, and prayed for the least evil side to prevail. May we all strive towards that, to pray with open hands, with no solution in mind, acknowledging our own ignorance of everything. And this is ultimately our prayer and practice during Lent. We pray that we will be purified and draw closer to God, yet hold nothing in our hands. We don't know what we need, except to be closer to God.
The second is related. My wife and I have been off social media for quite a while, and I struggle against my passions to check the news. I am, in fact, Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter series who must listen to the radio constantly, just to make sure that the chaos of this world hasn't gotten too personal. We both do believe that as humankind, we were not created with the mental capacity to fully understand the world. I don't think anyone can truly understand geopolitics, although many pretend they do. There is no amount of research or tweeting that will make me understand on a deep level what the lived experience is of someone in Russia or Ukraine. And, my heart is small. I think I was created to empathize and hold the hurts of my local immediate community. When I hear of the tragedies of war in another country, I don't know what to do with that, and I don't think anyone does. If I keep them as 'just numbers', there is no humanity to it. And if I dive into the humanity, read the stories of all that died, my heart is overwhelmed and I lose sight of everything, including God. So the question is, during this Lent, can I learn to love and feel without rational knowledge? Can I know that terrible things are happening, and while drawing closer to God, learn to love in Him and pray in Him for those around the world? Can I trust, without knowledge of the details or solutions in mind, that my proper response can find its place in God, and that He will reveal anything I need for my prayer life? If action is required of me, won't God let me know, or align circumstances in such a way that is obviously? Wouldn't it be better to love and support Russians and Ukrainians in my local community that are torn up with this situation?
I'm not advocating for putting one's head in the sand, I guess for me I feel like live-streamed 24/7 destruction and death delivered to my pocket computer isn't actually helping me process the situation and pray about it appropriately. Maybe God intended us to be in our local community, and then pray for the world in Him. I don't know, but these are the questions I wrestle with.
The Wes Jackson essay, with a title too good to ignore, can be found here:
https://landinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/101992-LR-81.pdf
Jack, thanks for linking up that essay - and Raphael for mentioning it. I went and read it and almost fell off my chair because of the Wendell Berry letter excerpt and the mention of Mystery.
I had just yesterday been thinking that we have lost an appreciation for Mystery. We. Must. Know. Even the mantra "follow the science" .... as if it is in a human's power to really know. Why do we keep wanting to believe we can know everything??
Maybe community needs Mystery at its center. A posture of leaning in to the truth of not knowing and then the habit of turning to each other with a spirit of trust and hope.
This idea of the loss of Mystery came to me after hearing a radio clip of someone saying she was interested in "the science of grief". Why do we have to decode everything? Why can't we just feel it? Be the flesh and blood humans we are... in the middle of a Mystery we will never penetrate. Why can't that be enough?
I think that the madness of our civilization probably can get traced back to our loss of mystery. Maybe not "loss" so much, but the deliberate monomaniacal eradication of mystery and unknowing. I agree that community needs mystery at its center.
Then there is this from the conclusion of the essay:
"We would be fundamentally respectful of our original relationship with the universe. There might even be a more joyful participation in our engagement with the world."
May it be so!
I think often of the zen saying: Not-knowing is most intimate.
There is also this prayer from the BCP for loved ones that makes a similar point to yours:
For those we Love
Almighty God, we entrust all who are dear to us to thy never-failing care and love, for this life and the life to come, knowing that thou art doing for them better things than we can desire or pray for; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
This is very helpful. I'm also trying not to think in terms of "Russia" and "Ukraine," but to remember the millions of individual souls who are involved to one degree or another. All the way from Putin to the child in its mother's arms. God deals on this personal, individual level, and each one is made in His image and a recipient of His grace.
I find this relevant to both Lent and the current world situation:
8 Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9 And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.”
10 Then Jesus said to him, [b]“Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’ ”
This does seem to be the choice we are given. To whom do we give worship?
Just a cup of tea this time. I have got work outside I need to get back to. Which is also nice.
The age of information is difficult and kind of addictive. I need to go back to the books, but essays are worth reading, thank you. (Read your 2021 account of conversion this morning.) Am more wary than ever of the rumour machine running on the dense wires of social networks. We might need to extend Lent a bit.
I like the painting but I'm feeling flippant for no reason: salon, bon mot, dilettante, ancien regime? I'm trying to recall the painting of the philosophes; Raphael, The School of Athens. (Looked it up. That was a touch earnest, perhaps.) Ah, would that Diogenes was with us now!
"At what point does propaganda become so pervasive that it is impossible to believe anything you hear?"
Propaganda can never become so pervasive that it obscures the Dharma.
"Aaapo deepo bhava"--be a lamp unto oneself with Buddha-nature as the flame.
"How should we respond to it?"
Dissent should not be penalized unless/until it has been weaponized and used to cause harm. To deny access to the financial system causes harm, and harm needs to be avoided.
"I’m interested in the meaning of self-denial (and indeed prayer) in an age of self-worship, and not just for Christians."
Saicho, the founder of my lineage, believed in putting others first, before the (no-)self. The West has promoted the self for centuries at an accelerating rate. The best way I have found is to go cold turkey on the self, embrace no-self, and then every action/interaction becomes an instance of prayer and compassion. Self-worship only becomes a problem when a person takes the first step and believes in a self. To adapt an old motto: Just say no-self!