There’s an explosion of new movements and techniques to fight procrastination, from Pomodoro (which gives you timed breaks when your tomato-shaped kitchen timer runs out) to self-help books and subreddits...
The highlight of my early 20s was embracing the hedonism treadmill as a rejection of "imposed morals", only to spend countless hours trying tons of self help books and listening to podcasts about discipline and grit and motivation and positive thinking, etc.
At some point, no matter which path you take, you'll find good secular justification for limiting your exposure to toxic people in life and limiting your swearing to improve your vocabulary and avoiding processed food, short term hookups, sleeping well, helping others, meditating, saying affirmations, thinking positively(using faith to counteract "rational evidence" that something will fail or wont work) and so on.
You're following so many rules (self developed through experience and knowledge) that it gives you more appreciation for how the different religions were themselves using heuristics developed over thousands of years of trial and error to give you an optimal set of rules that would more than likely produce the best outcome for your life, given the environmental constraints and lack of scientific knowledge at the time. It was not simply "sky daddy made rulebook"
Your response reminds me of the quote:
“Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back. Sometimes the problem has mutated or disappeared. Often it is still there as strong as it ever was.”
― Donald Kingsbury
Watching our politics speed-run the 60s-80s again reminds me of this every day.
Hopefully we hit the 90s soon, those were pretty rad.
This draws on Chesterton's perspective on tradition. He's most famous around here for his Fence. Past the part that is commonly cited, he says this [0]:
> The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable.
> ...
> If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, or that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing
as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.
Reminds me of another quote: "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." -- Jaroslav Pelikan (per the web)
However, the environmental constraints change and the amount of scientific knowledge also changes(and hopefully improves) over time.
Therefore the heuristics turned into rule book will inevitably become harmful eventually.
Also keep in mind that the rulebooks did not produce anything close to any ideal personal outcome. They always produced the ideal societal outcome that would preserve the existing structure of society. If said structure meant you were inherently harmed, your personal ideal was subordinated to that.
Beautifully said. It strikes me as incredibly arrogant and condescending that so-called rational, educated people today will gleefully throw out centuries (if not millennia) of knowledge because they (justifiably) take issues with some of it. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater comes to mind. I'm not particularly religious, but there have always been aspects of religion that I've admired and aspects that I've disliked.
Your local Crossfit gym and book club, I promise you, are not adequate replacements for traditional recurring weekly gatherings, where it's normal (and expected!) to share what's on your mind, what's troubling you, what you are grieving over, what you are celebrating, etc. I've found that the quality of discourse here is much higher than the standard, "Did you watch Succession last week?", surface-level discourse at many of these alleged replacements.
And then, like you mentioned, they embark on a decades-long quest, only to end up at more or less the place they would've ended up otherwise. Or they find themselves completely lost and wayward.
I don't have a prescription here, but complete rejection of something seems almost as dull and narrow-minded as total dogmatic acceptance of it.
You're looking at weekly religious gatherings through rose-colored lenses. A crossfit gym membership and book club could very well produce a far healthier local community than a church. Religion does not have a monopoly on the variables that attract healthy, thoughtful, intelligent people (in fact, trends in the US suggest quite the opposite).
> heuristics developed over thousands of years of trial and error to give you an optimal set of rules that would more than likely produce the best outcome for your life
Unless you're cherry picking rules from the set, the outcome would be far from best.
My point is that thousands of years of trial and error may include some valuable insight but also some pretty outdated approaches.
The question isn't if we've reached a global maximum (we obviously haven't) it's if we can do better than thousands of years of trial and error?
I can see the rationale for taking tradition as a baseline and tweaking it to better fit modern times. That's what every generation has done. The direction many of us are heading, however, is to assume that tradition is all bogus and we can do better today with just the scientific method.
I hope if the replication crisis in psychology has taught us anything it's that science applied to people is still in its infancy and we are not yet at a place where we can entirely discard the wisdom of our ancestors.
People should not say “processed food” when they mean “a specific kind of bad for you processed foods”. Running society off “unprocessed food” would mean returning to the hunter-gatherer state where having twins means killing one of them so your family doesn’t starve. (Kind of like “plant-based diet”, which actually means “plants but not, like, unhealthy plants”)
Encouraging people to try meditation with no other qualifications is a bit dangerous too - the original purpose of meditation is to become a monk, which is the opposite of having a family.
The original purpose of meditation is to become a monk? That's a bizarre hot take; how did you come to that conclusion?
Monks become monks first and then they perfect their meditations. Monks become monks because the community recognizes someone who can be formed and taught, not because a man has perfected his meditative chops and now the monks all want him.
Meditation, for as long as I can trace back, is for everyone: who speaks in Psalms 63, a monk? Only King David? Every faithful and observant Jew ponders the works and laws of the LORD while he lies in bed, so thus do Christians.
The Church often encourages devotions for the laity which facilitate meditation. The Rosary and Eucharistic Adoration are 100% meditative, contemplative activities; no monks are required. In fact the Rosary is a "poor man's Breviary" where meditation upon a few fixed concepts replace active recitation of many, many words and disparate prayers.
The next time you see someone praying a Rosary with their family, are you going to tell them to stop, because they're not a monk? That's the height of weird - it's every Catholic father's duty to lead their family in a daily Rosary, and everybody meditates.
From what I’ve read, of all the post-Reformation Christian denominations in the West, the Puritans seemed the closest to Orthodox Christianity, not necessarily in every dogmatic theological detail but in their approach to repentance as self-knowledge and taking an active role in improving the state of their soul. The sola fide notion that came out of the Reformation has resulted in a “set it and forget it” set of beliefs where it is hard to see much in the way of self-control or self-knowledge.
I am Orthodox, but it isn't limited to Orthodox thought. A common way by which people come to Orthodoxy is through Buddhism or related easter mysticism, and then realize that Christian thinking combined with true mysticism is the way for them.
Self-knowledge is really the core of a good life, and I'll happily die on that hill.
Indeed, Fr. Seraphim Rose is a great modern example of this exact process. His essay on Nihilism is like reading the last few centuries in reverse order.
There were / are many theological concepts in the West that diverge from what the early Church taught due to the Schism of Rome, so I view some of that as symptoms of working within a broken chain of knowledge to begin with, but I do agree that the idea of Predestination as rigidly defined within Calvinist tradition undermines the notions of free will both of humans and of the Creator Himself.
That being said, of all the Western Churches, it was the Puritans (specifically John Winthrop) who had the intelligence and courage to secure the Massachusetts Charter from King Charles I, providing both the intellectual and legal basis for liberty from the Continental monarchies.
“make conscience of the idle rovings of our braines” and “enter… those darke closets of thy heart”
I've been battling a few addictions recently. None so severe that they impacted my health or relationships in any major way, and so I lived with these habits very functionally for most of my adult life.
It's incredible the kind of grip a habit can have on you. Despite how much I tried to change, that grip only grew tighter. It wasn't until I joined a 12 step program and met people who were like me that I started the process of unwinding. Making conscience every thought that led to my negative behaviors was the first step. The next giant hurdle was de-identifying with those thoughts and behaviors, which for me was probably the hardest part.
Probably the best tool for me right now is like the quote says, to just really examine your thoughts and honestly tell yourself why you're having the craving/urge. If you can really be honest about it and recognize your addiction is only going to make the situation worse, I find you can start to "dampen" the craving. It suddenly isn't as appealing.
It's not easy though, for every time I can successfully introspect and tell myself an honest, hard truth, there's 10 times I tell a self-lie and let myself believe it simply because to know otherwise would be too big a burden to bear in that moment
I didn't last long in the 12 step program, maybe it's not exactly for me. But a lot of what's talked about in this article is also part of 12 step: self-awareness, daily journaling and gratitude, spiritualizing others, having a community to go through the process with, etc. Even though I didn't continue with it, the few meetings I attended were honestly life changing and I highly recommend anyone who thinks they may have an addiction problem (pro tip: if you arent sure but a specific behavior came to mind, you probably do) to try one out. There's plenty for all kinds of addictions, turns out you're not alone
The author is drawing comparisons (playfully, I admit) with Buddhism, but the Puritans were following a tradition that goes back to late antiquity in the west. Books like the ones being described, in which the "psychology of sin" (so to speak) is dissected and various remedies put forth goes back at least to Evagrius (4th century), and likely far further than that.
The Reformers sought to change many aspects of the "old religion," but a basic asceticism was not among them.
I think drawing inspiration on temperance from "puritans" based on their own writings is possible only going to tell you how they wanted to be perceived.
Also, as the colonies that were founded on religion were based on social regulation, by people reporting, or falling out with others for not following convention.
in short, its more playground than useable self discipline example.
I’m starting to think the Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson may end up being prophetic. In a culture overloaded with things trying to addict you, Puritanism becomes in fact an act of protest and transgression.
I mean I grew up leftist, punk rocker, etc and all my formerly niche opinions are now in the mainstream. On the other hand, I also grew up Muslim and I can say that being a practicing Muslim right now can feel very counter- cultural. Dealing with constantly waves of anti- religious criticism from atheists(which for some reason liberals seem okay with, so I have to deal with this everywhere online), views that the government doesn't approve of in their current idea of what is acceptable, fighting to make me and my communities voice heard when neither party in power is really interested in listening to our complaints-- this all feels very rebellious to me as someone who grew up rebelling. I'm not even interested in rebelling anymore, but at this point the system does not even try to represent us.
Yes, we seem to have reached a point that being discriminatory against religion, a persons looks or being lower class are the few traits that are somehow still fashionable despite everything else being a cause for censorship, loss of employment, lawsuit or prosecution.
Note, to front-run the typical knee-jerk reaction: I do not believe the religious are in some way actually oppressed, but that those most on the left who scream of oppression everywhere are extremely comfortable with making snide remarks on religion (and class, provided its white people).
Ironically this runs up against the preferences of the people the left wishes to keep inside their political tent - they are almost universally more religious on average than white people.
The 17th century is what Dutch refer to as "the golden century".
It was an age in which modern capitalism and banking was invented, religious tolerance was practiced and everyone was spending money like "the great Gatsby" on paintings and exotic food.
It was a remarkably "un-Puritan" age. What was preached was rarely practiced. There's a reason why Puritans sought a new home.
Readit News
The highlight of my early 20s was embracing the hedonism treadmill as a rejection of "imposed morals", only to spend countless hours trying tons of self help books and listening to podcasts about discipline and grit and motivation and positive thinking, etc.
At some point, no matter which path you take, you'll find good secular justification for limiting your exposure to toxic people in life and limiting your swearing to improve your vocabulary and avoiding processed food, short term hookups, sleeping well, helping others, meditating, saying affirmations, thinking positively(using faith to counteract "rational evidence" that something will fail or wont work) and so on.
You're following so many rules (self developed through experience and knowledge) that it gives you more appreciation for how the different religions were themselves using heuristics developed over thousands of years of trial and error to give you an optimal set of rules that would more than likely produce the best outcome for your life, given the environmental constraints and lack of scientific knowledge at the time. It was not simply "sky daddy made rulebook"
Watching our politics speed-run the 60s-80s again reminds me of this every day. Hopefully we hit the 90s soon, those were pretty rad.
> The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable.
> ...
> If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, or that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.
[0] https://archive.org/stream/G.K.ChestertonTheThing/G.K.Cheste...
Some traditions are based on superstition, but certainly not all of them.
Therefore the heuristics turned into rule book will inevitably become harmful eventually.
Also keep in mind that the rulebooks did not produce anything close to any ideal personal outcome. They always produced the ideal societal outcome that would preserve the existing structure of society. If said structure meant you were inherently harmed, your personal ideal was subordinated to that.
Your local Crossfit gym and book club, I promise you, are not adequate replacements for traditional recurring weekly gatherings, where it's normal (and expected!) to share what's on your mind, what's troubling you, what you are grieving over, what you are celebrating, etc. I've found that the quality of discourse here is much higher than the standard, "Did you watch Succession last week?", surface-level discourse at many of these alleged replacements.
And then, like you mentioned, they embark on a decades-long quest, only to end up at more or less the place they would've ended up otherwise. Or they find themselves completely lost and wayward.
I don't have a prescription here, but complete rejection of something seems almost as dull and narrow-minded as total dogmatic acceptance of it.
Unless you're cherry picking rules from the set, the outcome would be far from best.
My point is that thousands of years of trial and error may include some valuable insight but also some pretty outdated approaches.
I can see the rationale for taking tradition as a baseline and tweaking it to better fit modern times. That's what every generation has done. The direction many of us are heading, however, is to assume that tradition is all bogus and we can do better today with just the scientific method.
I hope if the replication crisis in psychology has taught us anything it's that science applied to people is still in its infancy and we are not yet at a place where we can entirely discard the wisdom of our ancestors.
Encouraging people to try meditation with no other qualifications is a bit dangerous too - the original purpose of meditation is to become a monk, which is the opposite of having a family.
Monks become monks first and then they perfect their meditations. Monks become monks because the community recognizes someone who can be formed and taught, not because a man has perfected his meditative chops and now the monks all want him.
Meditation, for as long as I can trace back, is for everyone: who speaks in Psalms 63, a monk? Only King David? Every faithful and observant Jew ponders the works and laws of the LORD while he lies in bed, so thus do Christians.
The Church often encourages devotions for the laity which facilitate meditation. The Rosary and Eucharistic Adoration are 100% meditative, contemplative activities; no monks are required. In fact the Rosary is a "poor man's Breviary" where meditation upon a few fixed concepts replace active recitation of many, many words and disparate prayers.
The next time you see someone praying a Rosary with their family, are you going to tell them to stop, because they're not a monk? That's the height of weird - it's every Catholic father's duty to lead their family in a daily Rosary, and everybody meditates.
Deleted Comment
Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us."
- Ecclesiastes 1:9-10, KJV
It's just that godhood is not evenly distributed yet.
Self-knowledge is really the core of a good life, and I'll happily die on that hill.
I find this suggestion very hard to square with the prominence of Predestination in Puritan theology.
That being said, of all the Western Churches, it was the Puritans (specifically John Winthrop) who had the intelligence and courage to secure the Massachusetts Charter from King Charles I, providing both the intellectual and legal basis for liberty from the Continental monarchies.
I've been battling a few addictions recently. None so severe that they impacted my health or relationships in any major way, and so I lived with these habits very functionally for most of my adult life.
It's incredible the kind of grip a habit can have on you. Despite how much I tried to change, that grip only grew tighter. It wasn't until I joined a 12 step program and met people who were like me that I started the process of unwinding. Making conscience every thought that led to my negative behaviors was the first step. The next giant hurdle was de-identifying with those thoughts and behaviors, which for me was probably the hardest part.
Probably the best tool for me right now is like the quote says, to just really examine your thoughts and honestly tell yourself why you're having the craving/urge. If you can really be honest about it and recognize your addiction is only going to make the situation worse, I find you can start to "dampen" the craving. It suddenly isn't as appealing.
It's not easy though, for every time I can successfully introspect and tell myself an honest, hard truth, there's 10 times I tell a self-lie and let myself believe it simply because to know otherwise would be too big a burden to bear in that moment
I didn't last long in the 12 step program, maybe it's not exactly for me. But a lot of what's talked about in this article is also part of 12 step: self-awareness, daily journaling and gratitude, spiritualizing others, having a community to go through the process with, etc. Even though I didn't continue with it, the few meetings I attended were honestly life changing and I highly recommend anyone who thinks they may have an addiction problem (pro tip: if you arent sure but a specific behavior came to mind, you probably do) to try one out. There's plenty for all kinds of addictions, turns out you're not alone
The Reformers sought to change many aspects of the "old religion," but a basic asceticism was not among them.
"puritanism" and thats a wide term isn't overly specific. the mayflower lot were "the Leiden congregation" or something similar. You can see the range of opinion here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Dissenters#/media/File...
Also, as the colonies that were founded on religion were based on social regulation, by people reporting, or falling out with others for not following convention.
in short, its more playground than useable self discipline example.
Note, to front-run the typical knee-jerk reaction: I do not believe the religious are in some way actually oppressed, but that those most on the left who scream of oppression everywhere are extremely comfortable with making snide remarks on religion (and class, provided its white people).
Ironically this runs up against the preferences of the people the left wishes to keep inside their political tent - they are almost universally more religious on average than white people.
It was an age in which modern capitalism and banking was invented, religious tolerance was practiced and everyone was spending money like "the great Gatsby" on paintings and exotic food. It was a remarkably "un-Puritan" age. What was preached was rarely practiced. There's a reason why Puritans sought a new home.
Just like today, 99.99% did the latter. Trusting the narrative of the hour, conforming to the hivemind, etc. That's people for you.
And all this fine discipline and self-control was guided by this broken perspective.
Like a fine Lamborghini driven into a tree by a drunk. Don't blame the Lamborghini, blame the drunk.