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On Fasting from Technology
Apr. 27th, 2022 08:55 am
I Introduction
The traditional Christian fast involves abstention from meat and meat-products, and very often also alcohol, for an extended period of time. The traditional fasts have multiple purposes and consequences, some of which are publicly acknowledged, others esoteric, secret, or officially denied.
In the first case, the fast is a method of training the Will and restraining the appetites. Now, the word "appetite" needs a bit of unpacking. In traditional usage, it doesn't refer merely to the desire for food. Appetite is, rather, one of the three parts of the soul; its Greek name is Epithymia. (The other two are Thymos, the spirit or energy, and Nous, which includes the thinking mind and the parts of the mind that extend above thought, into the heavenly realm.) Appetite or Epithymia includes all of the desires that arise from our bodily nature, whether for food, water, sleep or sex, or for less tangible goods such as power or social inclusion. These latter appetites are often ignored but are extremely important; just as the desire for food arises from the body, so the desire for inclusion in a group arises from being in a body, specifically, of a social primate.
Epithymia is not wrong or evil in and of itself, but it has its proper role and its proper purpose. Moreover, its tendency is to overwhelm the higher parts of our soul, including the reason, to control our behavior and drive us to actions that we do not choose and which are often harmful to us. Mastering our appetites is, therefore, the key to spiritual development; to be ruled by Epithymia is to be a beast in the form of a man. This insight is at the foundation of Western philosophy in all of its classical forms, whether Christian, Jewish, or Pagan.
The traditional fast has other purposes as well. The human body is made of meat, and it is the case that abstinence from meat can aid the mind in withdrawing from the body. This is why veganism is so strictly prescribed in those spiritual traditions which are particularly concerned with leaving the physical world by the fastest possible means, such as Chan Buddhism. In Christian thought, the world is not inherently bad or evil, only Fallen. The Christian, therefore, abstains from meat during particular seasons, in order to withdraw his gaze for a time from the material world, toward the Divine.
Abstinence from alcohol has a similarly practical purpose. The higher part of the mind, as we have said, is called the Nous, and at its summit it extends beyond the ordinary human soul and into the divine realm. The nous is sometimes, by Orthodox Christians, called the "eye of the soul," because its role is to perceive spiritual realities. The more the nous is clear, the more the soul is able to perceive the presence of God, the angels and saints, and the spiritual world generally.
Now, alcohol taken in even small amounts has a clouding effect upon the nous. This was well understood in ancient times, when it was very common for diviners to interpret messages from the gods by looking to dreams. The interpreters of dreams knew that those that occur under the influence of alcohol are unreliable. As Apollonius of Tyana explained to the King of India,
as a faculty of divination by means of dreams, which is the divinest and most godlike of human faculties, the soul detects the truth all the more easily when it is not muddied by wine, but accepts the message unstained and scans it carefully. Anyhow, the explainers of dreams and visions, those whom the poets call interpreters of dreams, will never undertake to explain any vision to anyone without having first asked the time when it was seen. For if it was at dawn and in the sleep of morning tide, they calculate its meaning on the assumption that the soul is then in a condition to divine soundly and healthily, because by then it has cleansed itself of the stains of wine. But if the vision was seen in the first sleep or at midnight, when the soul is still immersed in the lees of wine and muddied thereby, they decline to make any suggestions, and they are wise.
And so we see that in the traditional fast, the Christian takes steps both to withdraw his mind from the physical world and open it to the Spiritual. It is critical to note that fasting never takes place all on its own, or for its own sake. An Orthodox friend of mind shared on social media a meme that went, "Remember that if your Fast doesn't include prayer and almsgiving, it's just a diet." As fasting is to Epithymia, so almsgiving is to Thymos and prayer to Nous. Almsgiving purifies the Thymos, and directs its energy toward healing, rather than conflict. In the traditional way of looking at things, the strength of the Thymos ought to assist the Nous in governing the appetites, as the knights assist the king in governing the kingdom. Almsgiving at once mollifies the Thymos and divinizes it, by imitating the work of God Himself, who gives freely of Himself to all. Prayer, of course, is direct contact with spiritual reality. And so we see that the traditional Fasts are deliberate, regular spiritual operations, carefully designed to bring about contact with God, His angels and saints, and the spiritual world generally.
II Fasting and Feasting
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction; this is as true in the life of the mind and in society as it is in physics. Traditionally, every fast, without exception, was followed (and usually preceded) by a Feast. Just as the fast lasted for many days, so did the Feast, and the joy of the Feast was enhanced by the rigors of the Fast.
From a spiritual perspective, we can see that the purpose of the fast was not simply to enhance the feast in the form of having an even more enjoyable party. No-- the Fast is a withdrawal from the world into Heaven, and the Feast is a re-descent into the world. But one doesn't simply give up the glories of Heaven. If so, the Feast is an occasion of sin, and that would be a rather terrible way to celebrate the holiest days of the year! It must be the case, rather, that the Feast represents a kind of divinization of the physical world. It's as though we gather the treasures of Heaven during the Fast, and bring them down to Earth during the Feast.
III A Second Fall and the Need for a New Fast
The traditional Fast is good, and it is a complete practice all by itself; if you find yourself willing and able to undertake it, you don't need anything else. Traditional Christian literature, particularly that of the Orthodox but also of the pre-Desecration Latin Church, is as much a guide as you need.
It is, however, my view that many of us today would benefit from a new and different form of fasting. This is-- rather emphatically-- not because of a preference for new things for their own sake or any belief in the superiority of contemporary over traditional thinking. Far from it! One only has to spend time reading books written before the Twentieth Century to see how utterly degraded the modern mind has become. That said, there are at least two good reasons for working with the new fast I'm describing, either instead of or in addition to the traditional.
The first reason is simply that many people are unable to fast in the traditional manner. This isn't a new or a modern notion, either-- in those traditions which still carry on the most rigorous forms of fasting, no one, even among clergy, is actually permitted to follow the full fast without the guidance and supervision of a competent spiritual director. On the one hand, the extreme form of fasting can be an occasion for spiritual Pride, which is always to be avoided; on the other, many people simply cannot handle the rigors of a vegan diet or restricted food portions for very long. Even in traditional Catholic societies in which the Lenten Fast consisted of one 8-ounce meal per day, men like coal miners, farmers and construction workers were given dispensation to eat more, lest they pass out and injure or kill themselves on the job!
The second reason is more complicated.
The following is a myth, and should not be taken as a description of real events.
When Adam and Eve ate from the apple, they knew that they were naked, and they therefore weaved clothing for themselves; for this, they were expelled from Eden.
Now, prior to this event, Adam and Eve, and humanity as a whole, for which they stand in-- were pure spirits. Now, the apple is contact with the material world; the clothing they made are bodies made of flesh; and the expulsion from Paradise is the descent of the soul into matter. The process of salvation is the re-ascent into heaven and the release from bondage to the material world.
Starting in the 18th Century with the rise of Industrialism, proceeding apace through the Nineteenth and the Twentieth Centuries with the advent of authoritarian high modernism, Corbusian urban planning and brutalist architecture, and finally culminating in the Twenty-First with the advent of entire virtual realities, humanity has undergone a Second Fall. In the old Occult writings, there is discussion of a sub-plane of being below the material plane, sometimes called the Sub-Natural; this plane is to nature as Hell is to the surface of the Earth; it is, thus, the natural habitation of demons. What has happened since the Industrial Revolution, and especially since the Digital Revolution, has been the descent of humanity from the Natural world down one plane further, into the Sub-Natural.
The Industrial Revolution began in Britain in the 18th century. Simultaneous with this event and in the same part of the world, the Druid Revival began. The Druid Revival was and remains a spiritual tradition focused on Nature, and it's critical to note how new this was at the time. Our older traditions do not deny the beauty of the natural world. In the Middle Ages, the world of Nature was believed to be the first of the two books authored by the Holy Spirit, the second being the Bible; in the thought of Plotinus, the beauty of the natural world is an image of the Perfect Beauty of the Eternal Realm. That said, a nature-oriented spirituality per se did not really exist in the Western world until the Industrial Revolution made it necessary. It is my view that it is, today, even more necessary, and this is the purpose of the new fast, which is a fast from digital technology. As the traditional fast aims to withdraw the consciousness from the Natural world to the Supernatural by abstinence from meat, so the new fast aims to withdraw the consciousness from the Subnatural to the Natural by abstinence from technology.
IV The New Fast: Preliminaries
The nature of the new fast will vary for every person, as everyone's engagement with technology differs, as does their ability to abstain from it. A computer programmer will both have more need and more difficulty in fasting from technology than a professional wilderness guide! And so I'm going to discuss my own experience here, being aware that it may not have universal applicability.
On Ash Wednesday this year, I began my technology fast. It included total abstinence from any form of social media or blogs, and absolutely any news or politics of any kind, excepting only weather reports.
I chose to emphasize news and politics for a very simple reason: I am addicted to them. There is no better way of saying it than that. Alcoholics Anonymous has a list of 12 questions they ask potential alcoholics to consider. They suggest that if you answer "Yes" to four or more questions, you may have a problem with drinking. If you swap out the words "drinking" or "alcohol" for "politics," "news," or "Twitter," and modify the questions just a bit, I could easily answer "Yes" to 10 of them!
Now, the literature on addiction and recovery from substances is very worth reading, even if you don't have a problem yourself. You very quickly learn that part of the definition of "addiction" is "an obsession of the mind." That word, "obsession," is a very interesting one. Today we think of it as simply being an inability to stop thinking about something. But in earlier times it was understood to be the inability to stop thinking about something, because of constant attacks upon the mind by demons! It is my experience, having worked with people in recovery from alcohol and drugs, that substance addiction is very, very often demonic in nature. One of the ways that you can tell that this is the case is that, very often, addiction has a spiritual cure. The planes are discrete, and not continuous; a spiritual cause has spiritual effects, and not material ones. It's my view that in those cases where an addict is unable to recover by sincerely working with AA or a similar program, such as the Buddhist-oriented Refuge Recovery, the addiction itself is rooted in a physical cause, such as a genetic abnormality. Such unfortunates are better off seeking medical intervention, or confinement, than a meeting.
In any case, my personal addiction was and is to news and politics. I can tell you when and where this started. It was 1999, and President Bill Clinton had just announced an American air war in Yugoslavia. I was 16 years old, a loyal Democrat of the old ethnic-white Catholic sort, devoted to President Clinton and naively patriotic. What is more, I had been raised by movies like Top Gun and Star Wars to believe that an air war was about the coolest thing that could ever happen. The news media were about as delighted as I was to have something interesting to talk about, after a decade of boring economic growth and relative peace, and so CNN and Fox News both filled their time with round-the-clock coverage of every NATO bombing run and sortie. When TV reports got old, one could supplement them with then still quite new news websites. And so I spent hours a day, every day, reading and watching everything related to the war that I could get my hands on.
It's probably worth noting that my views of the conflict itself changed over time, so that by the Serbs' surrender on Day 78 I was a newly-minted radical Leftist, opposed to the war, to Clinton, and to, well, whatever else I could find to oppose. But this hardly matters, because the point of all of this was never the content of the news, or the political ideas it was reading, or my supposed opinions about them. I do not live in Yugoslavia; I didn't then, and I don't now. I lived in a small town in Pennsylvania. While the events of the Kosovo War were technically "real," in the sense that they were happening, somewhere, to someone, they were not in any real sense happening to me, and so the "news" had nothing to do with my actual life. It functioned instead, to distract me from my life. The thoughts that it provided me, and that the thousands and thousands of pages of political books and websites and tweets and memes I have read since then provided me, were not and are not my thoughts, and have nothing to do with the actual world of my lived experience.
What were my actual thoughts, about my actual life? Since-- with some important exceptions, that I'll get to-- I spent hours a day, every day, reading politics and news, from 1999 until now, I really had no idea.
V The New Fast: A Report
I began the fast, as I said, on Ash Wednesday, which was March 2nd of this year.
The first thing I noticed was an immense sense of relief. Both the hysteria of the media and the intensity of their subject matter have massively increased since the late 90s, as you well know. To neither know nor to be able to find out what was happening in the Ukraine War, the economy, or any of the other ten thousand things that the media shriek about felt like setting down an enormous burden that I didn't know I was carrying. And so the first effect of the fast was to greatly decrease my stress level and increase my happiness. It would not surprise me to find out that my blood pressure decreased as well.
The second thing that happened were several rather enormous improvements in my material circumstances. On March 2nd I began the fast. On March 4th we completed the process of buying the house we've been renting. On March 27th I started a new job-- my first full-time job since the Pandemic began two years ago-- and doubled our household income. Of course, both of these were culminations of processes which had been underway for some time, but it's been my consistent experience that, when you clear the mind and raise the mental state, life in general becomes easier. That was certainly the case this time around. We managed to buy the house despite circumstances massively arrayed against us, and we pushed it through before the recent raising of interest rates. The job I took was one of four I was offered; I interviewed for them all and accepted the one I liked best. While I can't say for certain that the news fast contributed to any of this, it certainly didn't hurt things.
The third consequence was simply that I was able to get a lot more done, especially in the areas of reading and study, as you might expect. During Lent, I made my way through the first half of the Divine Comedy (reading a canto per day, starting at Septuagessima), Ficino's Book of the Sun and the third of his Three Books on Life, the whole of the Corpus Hermeticum, Porphyry's Cave of the Nymphs and Life of Pythagoras, and much of Cicero's De Natura Deorum. I brewed about 15 gallons of beer. I also completed certain spiritual workings I had undertaken years earlier, and had an unexpected, and rather massive, blessing come to me in this area-- the culmination of something I've been working toward for a decade, though I'm not able to talk about it in detail just yet. And, what is worth more than all of this, I had more time to focus on my family, though this, too, is a private matter.
Now, I want to note that I didn't spend all this time feeling good, or thinking happy thoughts. Sometimes I was angry, and in fact, on those occasions, I was actually very angry indeed. I don't regard this as a bad thing-- I believe that forcing myself to stay away from media-based distractions meant that I had to encounter my actual feelings in these circumstances. I'm far, far from sainthood, nor is my life perfect. There are things that apparently bother me a great deal, from which I was using the news to distract myself, without even realizing it. It's a lot easier to be angry at Joe Biden, who you'll never meet and can't affect in any way, than a neighbor or family member, who you see every day and have to learn to get along with!
On the other hand, I did have a few encounters with modern political ideas that I simply couldn't avoid, and these were far more upsetting than usual, I think precisely because the fact that I couldn't avoid them means that they are actually affecting my life. It's one thing to hear in the abstract about corporate virtue signaling. It's quite another when your 10 year old picks out Disney's latest for our Friday Night Movie, and it turns out to be an anti-white propaganda film.
VI Conclusion and Notes for Future Practice
Considered simply as an experiment, with myself as subject, the New Fast succeeded beyond all expectations. One of my chief concerns was that, following Easter, the rebound effect would propel me back into full-time news-addiction, but this has not happened-- not yet, at any rate. I have read a bit of news and listened to one political debate (between Patrick Deneen and Michael Anton, who are about as far apart as two different shades of chartreuse), and I can feel even this limited engagement lowering the quality of my thoughts. The full-scale addiction has not returned, but we will see if it does. In any case, I'm certainly going to follow either this or an even more rigorous fast during Saint Michael's Lent (Aug 15-Sept 29) and Advent.
Of course, I invite everyone reading this to participate in a Technology Fast of their own devising, though, again, it needs to be said that the nature of the fast will vary from person to person. Someone who rarely watches the news but spends 5 hours a day playing Minecraft will not not benefit from abstaining from CNN. If you're the sort of person who doesn't touch the computer (in which case, how are you reading this?) but can't function without a radio or TV blaring in the background, it's time to turn it off and learn to engage with silence.
The great, remaining question, to my mind, is how to feast. One of the discoveries I made while fasting is that not all of my internet use is toxic or destructive. There are certain spiritual groups on Facebook that I genuinely missed and which I'm glad to re-engage with now, and there are certain blogs which enhance my life by the reading. I am currently trying to let the recoil effect from fasting push me to engage with these groups in a healthier manner than before, but as these are early days yet, there is still much data to be gathered.
