Contemplation and Catastrophe.

On Clarifying the need for the Arsenios Option.

First I want to thank you all for the recent discussions regarding asceticism and the Arsenios Option. There were many insightful comments and a rich discussion that was far more than I could have hoped for. I found this conversation very helpful in clarifying what a contemplative life might look like in our technological age. I particularly want to thank the Flat Caps and Fatalism substack for his latest post, Is asceticism ascetic? which is a response to my previous essay, Into the Far Wilderness of Sanity. If you are interested and haven’t yet read either of these yet, please feel free to do so.

I think it is worth further clarifying the underlying assumptions of what is prompting my proposal of The Arsenios Option. Many of the negative comments seemed to me to miss the point. Certainly what I am saying is completely open to criticism, or even outright dismissal. I just want to make sure the criticism is directed toward what I am actually saying, rather than towards what someone might mistakenly think I am saying.

A good portion of the comments acknowledged the goodness of withdrawing, at least for a time, from distractions or even in undertaking a mild form of asceticism. This group saw doing so as, at best, only a temporary measure. One in which we hopefully find rest and renewed purpose. Ultimately, though, if it wasn’t directed back towards the world, broadly conceived, it was a kind of escape or indulgence. In other words, the default mode in our spirituality is that of the active life, which the contemplative should serve. If I have accurately captured these objections, I would like to respond a bit more fully to where I think we are missing each other.

Not everyone, in the normal course of events, is called to a more radical life of fleeing the world of distraction, being silent, and dwelling in stillness. Though I would argue that without a deep practice of the contemplative life, the active life tends to dry up and become a burden to us—in short, we burn out. This is the argument, for example, of the classic book, The Soul of the Apostolate, by Jean-Baptiste Chautard. If we neglect our contemplative life, we do so at our own peril. So far, I think we are all basically in agreement.

That said, I am making a very different point and on this hinges much of what I am saying. The underlying assumptions of my argument are expressed concisely and accurately in the Flat Caps and Fatalism post. His compression of my argument goes as follows:

1.      Our society operates in counter-productive ways that are so detrimental to us that they inhibit our ability to live fully human lives.

2.      The source of these counter-productive ways of being, or at least the reason they are omnipresent, is our own will-to-power.

3.      Therefore these counter-productive ways of being cannot be addressed by ambitious social programs or normal politics. Such approaches nurture will-to-power and ‘the more we try to extend our will-to-power into the world of ambition the less human we are, and the more we atrophy’.

4.      This atrophying of our humanity can only be addressed at the root, with an ascetic training regime that subdues the will-to-power itself. This is each individual’s first task, although ‘we can help each other’.

Let me first point out that if you find yourself disagreeing with one or all of the links in this argument, you won’t see the need for the Arsenios Option. This may lie at the root of those who see only a partial need for an ascetic and contemplative life. Or worse, see it as a form of self-hatred and denial of life.

That said, and to make the distinction clear, I will put an even stronger point on it. We are not merely facing a society that acts in “counter-productive ways” as I think civilizations have always so acted. Rather, we have entered an era that by its own political, economic, social, technological, and cultural logic is inducing a massive upheaval that is undermining our ability to continue to be human or let’s face it even to simply continue at all. There is, obviously, a deluge of reporting and analysis on this situation and I have nothing new to add to that. (Though, for the few who aren’t already aware of Paul Kingsnorth’s substack, The Abbey of Misrule, he has been digging into this question in highly illuminating ways. I cannot recommend his writing enough.)

I am asking a slightly different question. It is not the question of whether, all things being equal, one might happen to consider the ascetic life of of prayer and contemplation. My question is rather: given this convergence of catastrophes, how do we respond? The overwhelming size of our global system and the even more overwhelming upheaval it is causing is daunting, to say the least, and a sane response is far from clear. The institutions that we have relied on, for better or worse, to help us live a more or less good life are now increasingly incapable of doing so. To the contrary, our institutions are now enforcing the moral inversion of the good life. As I see it, the status quo as we have experienced over the last 80 years or so¹, is over. The normal options have likely run out.

The driver of this change is primarily, though not exclusively, technological. I make the claim that technology is the instantiation and extension of the human will-to-power. That technology is, by its nature, the extension of the human desire to control and dominate. In so extending our powers artificially, our inherent and natural capacities will necessarily atrophy. We may not even notice this or really much care. Or we will make the Faustian bargain knowingly, and consider it a fair trade.

Instead, I offer that the more technological we are, the less human we become. The Faustian bargain is a devil’s bargain. The technological imperitive is central to the Myth of Human Progress. Humans have, by this way of thinking, used our intelligence to control the world through science and technology to bring longevity, comfort, and greater meaning to our lives. Much of that is true. But there are costs to this. And the trajectory of these costs is not only becoming clearer by the day, the bill is starting to come due. This has been remarked upon by the more far-sighted for quite some time. It is, I think, becoming an unavoidable conclusion to even more of us with middle vision at best.

Not only is the scale of the catastrophe daunting but so is its scope. If we are facing the end of the Anthropocene, which I think we likely are, then it isn’t going to be a smooth transition, to say the least. We have created the first truly interdependent global civilization. When Rome collapsed, it was a relatively local phenomenon. What happens when and if the entire global system falls? I don’t think fleeing to the hills is a guarantee of survival and most of us can’t afford a luxury missile silo bunker. Though I will say again, for those who can afford to live on the margins, I would recommend it.

If our societies have become internally counterproductive and even inimical to a sane and simple life; if our global civilization is becoming unstable and the source of inevitable and dangerous geopolitical conflict; if our technological society is causing us to fragment, atomize and atrophy in psychological, cultural, political and economic spheres…again, how do we respond?

Even if this is all an exaggerated misreading of our current situation—and I admit it might very well be, we are still in a time of radical upheaval. In this, I do not think reform is possible. There is no way to ease off the throttle without causing a different kind of catastrophe. The nature of this system is such that it can only move faster and consume more and more and if it ever stops consuming it will die. For those of us who, whether we like it or not, depend on this system for our lives this is hardly good news. But it doesn’t end there, because to live in the current system is to be changed by it. With AI, genetic manipulation, and robotics we will be altered in increasingly radical ways, most of which we won’t really like—and that’s putting it mildly. At the very least, it is going to be a very bumpy ride.

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It won’t surprise you after all this, that one of my favorite novels is The Road, by Cormac Mccarthy. It is a beautiful novel and I can’t recommend it enough. Briefly, it is about a father and son surviving in a completely devastated, otherwise lifeless post-catastrophe world. It is, as I read it, about the choice between despair and hope. On how to find hope even in the obviously most hopeless situation imaginable. One of the main themes is the question of what it means to “carry the fire”. That is, how do we keep the fullness of our humanity intact in a world that is far more conducive to its deterioration and even destruction? This is a question for us, too, right now.

I am nobody special. I don’t have any great answers. But I continue to try to keep alive in myself this hope of carrying the fire. In whatever way I am able. I have tried many things in my life most of which did far more to extinguish hope than to stoke it. Most of which, to put it bluntly, has completely failed. In the Arsenios Option I offer, as best as I am able, and to anyone who is so inclined, a way to carry the fire in dark and unclear times. Take it for what it’s worth.

I will end with the final quote from “Is asceticism ascetic?” because I think it sums up well what I am attempting to say here. He is speaking to the social benefits of asceticism, to what I call the long path to the desert beneath our feet.

Even if the long path to the desert does not benefit the walker at all, their path still has purpose. It is the rest of us, sleepily staring at screens in fading luxury, they will benefit. The desert is slowly coming to us all, and we will need people who know how to live in its stark beauty

How indeed?

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I am currently working on a post to address the second part of the Arsenios Option, that of Silence. Hopefully, this is forthcoming. I look forward to continuing and deepening this conversation.

1. There are even larger historical cycles that seem to be completing themselves, to put it somewhat euphemistically. As one example, ours has been called, controversially, the Anthropocene—where human beings and our economic activity become the dominant source of ecological change, beginning with the industrial revolution. If so, we are already late in the Anthropocene. Something else is heading our way and is likely already here.