Notes from the Journal
Letter writing, inspiration, and rest
Rather than one piece, here are some thoughts that I haven’t quite filled out into full essays. Hope you enjoy the randomness.
Another day, another headline about technology’s effect on our brain. This time, how Chat GPT reduces brain engagement. These technologies are changing the way we write, speak, and think. In doing so, they will change our fundamental relationship with ourselves: our identities. This isn’t new. The printing press helped create a more individualistic society. We could read novels. People could read the Bible for themselves, without it mediated. Paper and writing instruments became cheaper, and common people wrote letters—reflecting on events and sharing them with others. All of these things helped create the modern individual. The self.
And changes in the last 30 years have meant a lack of letter writing, a drop in reading long-form books, a society of reactions and hot takes. What is the way forward? We cannot return to the past—to writing letters and refusing technology. But the future seems a dystopian nightmare. At the end of After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre writes: “What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us.”
The shocking thing here isn’t the remedy, but the fact that he believed we were in a new dark ages when the book was published in 1981. The alarms have been sounding for some time.
Who is studying how philosophical movements move alongside technological movements? What good books are out there? (Drop me a line with your favorites if you have any!)
“When the self collapses into content, it shrinks to fit the medium that carries it.” Nicholas Carr, Superbloom
We need a revival of the arts. Of creativity. Of community. Of our embodied existence. The corporeal. And, a revival of our own contingency: that we are dependent, limited creatures. Creativity, community, corporeality, contingency.
Contingency insists that we are dependent. This means we are limited. I am limited. I need a regular reminder of this. The story I hear more often is that I am limitless—or I ought to be. Our jobs inadvertently tell us this when they place more demands in front of us than a human can reasonably do. Our social feeds tell us this in terms of consumption: we ought to experience more, take more trips and adventures. I live my life by a to-do list far too often, seeking after ever-increasing efficiency and production.
Limits help me choose. I must acknowledge my limits. To refuse to do so is to refuse the gifts of being dependent, being embodied. And without limits, we easily take the step to believing that our purposes—what we put our hands to—form our identities. We reverse them. I reverse them, believing the latter flows from the former. Naturally, this is somewhat of a false distinction: the two play off each other. But this is the great conundrum for the modern self. We are not given an identity, so we must form it by our insatiable need to fill and prove ourselves. And if we are limited in our purposes, we are limited in who we are: we cannot grab or become whatever we want. We are limited.
Until I learn to receive, I will not be satisfied. This is a spiritual problem.
Do not be deceived: science did not kill god in modern society. We did, because we sought life without limits. Science just became an excuse. And it became all the more of an excuse when believers insisted the Bible offered a scientific account of things—creation, flood, whatever—rather than an account that sought to make meaning and reveal what God was like.
I seek inspiration in every way. I seek it in the tasks before me, that they become purposeful and significant. I seek it in new ideas. I seek it in my need for spirit, for animating life, to come and fill me. And, of course, I seek it in breath: the physical manifestation of this idea, as I take in air, or take in spirit. Inspiration is a way of filling ourselves. A givenness. I need it to remember who I am (and that work re-member: to be made whole, put back together).
Perhaps this is where to start. Breathe. I did not make this air but was given it, and I only must expand my lungs to take it in. Create room. Invite breath. Invite spirit. I have been given these things, often despite my efforts to squander them. Breathing, spirit, inspiration (inspiration pointing to both breathing and spirit in its root words): these are given to us. To hunt for them, I exhaust myself.
What are the conflicts I’m meant to hold? “It is through conflict and sometimes only through conflict that we learn what our ends and purposes are.” Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue
We are cross-pressured, holding conflicts around belief and meaning. What makes a good life? This is a conflicted point for us today. Everyone is an expert. And thus, when everyone is an expert, there is no authority. We all are our own authorities. What makes a good life? is a question about authorities and values.
The question we’ll ask in 25 years: what makes a life? Is anything distinct about the human experience? In this sense, we are all playing the fiddle while Rome is burning. The new dark ages are already upon us.
The way forward? Put your hand out the plow. Sit with your neighbor over wine and bread. Seek the good. Pray for peace. Walk on ancient paths. But know that you stand at a crossroads. Always at a crossroads.
Go to the desert. Remake yourself, young man. Or rather, be remade.
Am I not young anymore?
Christians ought to be protectors: embattled communities of people who are trying to live out another way, who are seeking to image God. To fill the earth with God’s life. Protecting others, creation, themselves. Always pressured by their surroundings. Always pressured by their own selfishness. And yet gathered around the body of Christ to become the body: striving and failing and striving again.
To live a life of rest does not mean stopping. We can observe sabbath without participating in sabbath. That is, we can stop without finding rest. Rest means receiving what is given to us. It is open-handed, like a child. This seems to be what Jesus ties it to in Matthew 11, when he proclaims that the Father has revealed “these things” to children rather than the learned and wise (surely referencing Psalm 8 in the process). And he ties this to his famous saying about rest: Come to me all who are weary and heavy burdened…
Come and receive. Open your hands. See what you’ve been given already. He doesn’t say this, but I might add: breathe. Inspirate.
And what’s next? Naturally, Jesus healing on the sabbath at the beginning of Matthew 12. Of course. Sabbath is a posture of receptivity, of what God is doing, of trusting God’s rule and reign. Watching God put things right. Perhaps this is why so many healings happen on the sabbath—it is a proclamation of God’s rule and reign more than any other day.
Start here: I am contingent. Dependent. Limited. In need of real rest.
I like the journal posts too, Gabe. BTW, have you read any of Lesslie Newbigin? He has a lot to say about culture and community.
I enjoy these journal notes posts. :)