On Not Knowing.
A Few Updates from the Hermitage.
Say to them:
Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant to know how to realize his wishes. Now that he can realize them, he must either change them or perish.
--The Desert Music. William Carlos Williams.It has been more than a little while since my last post. As of late, I have been thinking about thinking. Most of us will acknowledge that there is an urgency to our situation coupled with a desire to gather sufficient information and formulate an effective response. This is understandable. It’s how we do things. It is also how we got ourselves into this mess in the first place. We thought we could use autonomous human reason to figure everything out. In many ways, this has been highly successful. This shouldn’t be passed over lightly. Yet, there is a growing sense that the system we have created is slipping out of our control. That is if we ever really had control of it in the first place.
Now that we are better able to realize our wishes, we are confronted with just how dangerous this ability is and how disordered our desires have turned out to be. This alone is troubling enough. But even more disturbing is the thought that more rational analysis and systemic thinking won’t get us out of this catastrophe, but only draw us further into it. It is time to admit that we are addicted to rational analysis and that our standard modes of thinking are insufficient for the crisis at hand. In short, as counter-intuitive as it will sound, we need to reduce the amount of information we take in and slow down. Either we become contemplatives or perish.
Contemplation and meditation are long-proven ways of deepening our response not only to ourselves, but to each other, to the world, and to the Divine. Through contemplation, we can be slowly united with a part of ourselves that we have largely lost touch with over the past five centuries or more. Instead, we have become increasingly technocratic, and obsessed with control. I don’t think we can alter our disastrous technocratic trajectory with more technocratic thinking, however well-intentioned and however urgent the need. Conversely, contemplation and meditation are slow, cannot be rushed, and most importantly they are not under our control. Which is exactly what we need.
This is what I have been attempting to do—as best as I am able—with this latest post. Which means it is taking me a bit longer to put this post together. I am letting myself think it through as slowly as needed and take, as it were, a contemplative pace. This turns out to be surprisingly, and at times achingly slow. It is all too easy to become impatient and tell myself to be out with it already, man! But know that I am working on it—however glacial the pace—and it is starting to form itself out of the haze of confusion and uncertainty. But I don’t really know exactly when it will be ready to publish. Soon, I hope.
All in good time.
After much deliberation, I have decided to turn on the subscription option for the Stillness in the West substack. My intention moving forward is to continue to make every post available to all subscribers. I am fully committed to this conversation and I don’t see any need to exclude anyone. That said, we shall see how it goes.
As for life in the Hermitage, I intend to remain here as long as they allow me to stay; and for as long as it feels right and makes sense. Thankfully there aren’t a whole lot of expenses here but, alas, it isn’t free. If you would like to support what I am doing both as a semi-hermit and as the writer of this substack then it would be greatly appreciated. Honestly, I really don’t need much. Either way, I will do my best to continue to offer whatever insights I am afforded here to anyone who is interested.
Thank you for reading and I hope you are all well.
-Jack Leahy
The Heart-and-Mind, free from desire, turns inward, to true knowledge, to the knowledge, that knows without knowing. Then action is eschewed, and all is accomplished, through non-action, Through the pure Breath-Energy, of the Tao. --Magister Liu.
P.S. I am still working on putting together a short podcast. Hopefully, this will be ready to go before too long.
Thank you Jack, much appreciated again.
A couple years ago I was introduced to Bayo Akomolafe who, among other things discusses post-activism. “What if the way we respond to crisis is part of the crisis?” is one of his questions for contemplation. This, after considering Charles Eisensteins’ invitation to move away from solutionism was/is seductive. It feels ‘right’.
However, it is only recently that I have actually begun to take up that invitation and disengage from the endless commentary and analysis towards contemplation and prayer. Towards engaging with ancestors. Towards responding to requests for prayers on behalf of those in need. Towards finding the joy in the life I have right now - even in the things that have not turned out the way I would have hoped.
As I mentioned in another substack comment to you Jack, there is something emerging from this, though I know not what it is, and I dare not attempt to presupposes what it is, lest I distort its creation and shape and miss its true power in my life. My feeling is that it won’t emerge from devouring more information but during my immersion in the here and now of life.
Be well,
Micah
“Instead, we have become increasingly technocratic, and obsessed with control.”
Technology aside, even in our personal lives we need to be careful with control. There’s a clenching, grasping element within, partly instinctive, partly interwoven with how we talk to ourselves and others, that seems to struggle for control, and gets frustrated when we don’t have it. Living with less control over things, even no control, is an act of faith and deep trust. When I’ve been able to do this, which is not nearly as much as I’d like, I feel a unique sort of peace; nothing mystical, but definitely peaceful and more open.