John's Micro.Blog

We sometimes hear or read that the usual Orthodox liturgical cycle is culturally foreign even to some Orthodox believers – this despite its successful use on every continent in the world – and that perhaps modern-day westerners need a “Western Rite” that somehow embodies a “western ethos.”

As someone who disagrees fiercely with this view, I was grateful to read this passage by Archimandrite Placide Deseille, a former French Roman Catholic monk and priest, who converted to Orthodoxy and entered monastic life on Mount Athos:

What therefore prompted me to turn towards the Byzantine tradition had nothing to do with its “oriental” character. I have never felt myself to be an “oriental,” nor wanted to become so. But, given the state of things, the practice of the Byzantine liturgy seemed to me to be the most suitable means for entering into the fullness of the patristic tradition in a way that would be neither scholarly nor intellectual, but living and concrete. The Byzantine liturgy has always appeared to me much less as an “eastern” liturgy than as the sole existing liturgical tradition concerning which one could say: “It has done nothing more nor less than incorporate into liturgical life all the great theology elaborated by the Fathers and Councils before the ninth century. In it the Church, triumphant over heresies, sings her thanksgiving, the great doxology of the Trinitarian and Christological theology of Saint Athanasius, the Cappadocians, Saint John Chrysostom, Saint Cyril of Alexandra, and Saint Maximus the Confessor. Through it shines the spirituality of the great monastic movements, from the Desert Fathers, from Evagrius, Cassian, and the monks of Sinai, to those of Studion and, later, of Mount Athos… In it, in a word, the whole world, transfigured by the presence of divine glory, reveals itself in a truly eschatological dimension.”

(emphasis added. The passage is from a chapter in Archimandrite Alexander’s The Living Witness of the Holy Mountain.)

In a recent post, I mentioned Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Media Accounts Right Now. His focus is on the ways that social media like Facebook and Twitter use algorithms that monitor our online behavior in order to generate self-reinforcing, socially isolating content and create “engagement” (i.e. addiction). His critique is enlightening and powerful.

In some ways I think he’s too lenient toward the internet as a whole and its effects. The online world has given us countless ways for like-minded people around the world to find and support one another. Who can fault sites like Reddit and countless others when they allow communication between sufferers of rare diseases, or lovers of Belgian horses, or those grieving miscarriages?

But the same technologies greatly amplify some of the vilest trends in the world today: all manner of racists, Jew-haters or Caliphate-dreamers can find one another, connect, and encourage or even organize monstrous crimes. This isn’t all promoted by manipulative algorithms; it happens through the hyper-connectivity that’s basic to the internet itself.

Today I de-activated my Facebook account. This turned out to be emotionally more difficult than detaching from Google, which I discussed in a previous post.

Over the years, I’ve tailored my Facebook life to the point that it’s pretty pleasant, even edifying. But I’ve been moved by Jaron Lanier’s recent book Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Media Accounts Right Now. Lanier is a former Silicon Valley presence who has had serious second thoughts about the social media world and what it is doing to our society. It wouldn’t be too strong to say that he thinks social media, as they exist now, are destroying our civilization. The book is quirky, disorganized, and poorly edited, but still powerful.

Ten Arguments made me think more seriously about whether I can detach the influence of social media for me (largely positive, even though they clearly make me spend too much time staring at the computer screen) from their influence on our society as a whole.

So, I’m out. Facebook tells me that I still have access to Messenger, which I think I’ll keep for a while, in case any Facebook friends want to ask how to stay in touch.

I want to mention that my decision was based partly on an encounter with the world of white nationalism through a Facebook friend. It was disturbing and, I could even say, frightening, and it made me consider the ways in which some pernicious movements in our modern world have been made possible by social media. Perhaps I’ll devote another post to this experience.

My beginning to use Micro.blog has of course been part of this detachment process. I’m not likely to pick up much in the way of “likes,” “followers,” etc, but it does give me a way to put down my observations, and, if I want, share them with others.

On Holy Saturday we were blessed to witness the reception of five catechumens into Holy Orthodoxy. Something like these words went through my mind.

Elder Sophrony of thrice-blessed memory once said “It takes twenty years to become Orthodox.” When my wife and I reached the twentieth anniversary of our reception into the Church, we told each other, tongue-in-cheek, “We’ve made it!”

We were joking.

First, if you have been Orthodox for only a few minutes, and the Holy Chrism is still fragrant on your body, you are fully Orthodox right now, as fully Orthodox as the Elder himself, entitled beyond any merits of your own to partake of Christ’s very Body and Blood.

Second, Orthodoxy is bottomless. After twenty years and more, we are only beginning to know the inexhaustible riches of Christ’s Holy Church. But from the very beginning, the Church has been there, feeding us, guiding us, forgiving us our countless sins, and leading us onward toward the union with God that will be our salvation.

It’s a journey, one that fulfills us from the very beginning, one that never grows old.

Amen.

I’m a fan of Wanda Gag’s classic children’s book Millions of Cats (which, among its many virtues, apparently pioneered the double-page spread in book illustration). The entire book is hand-lettered in a stylish, very uniform hand. I’ve wondered whether the lettering has a source, and confirmed today that it’s Disjoined Library Hand, a style that was once taught in library schools for use in card catalogues. Library Hand fell out of use as typewriters became common. There’s a cursive “Joined” form too. You can look at samples of both here.

Sri Lanka imposed a social media blackout after the massacres. This piece reflects on the risks (authoritarianism) and upside. Quote:

Overall the sound of silence is not only more dignified for the dead, but also more beautiful to my ears. What have I ever gained from social media during terror attacks? Nothing, I expect, that I couldn’t have obtained more easily and with greater certainty elsewhere. And if so: Why do we bother, either consuming or producing social media posts during these events? I know I am not alone in wondering whether social media is not so much a new medium for communication as a novel form of mass psychosis, more like ergot poisoning than the invention of moveable type. It is a compulsive behavior that induces delusions about what is individually or collectively healthy. I hope that in the future we find more ways to mute it voluntarily.

From an interview with the author of a memoir by a “mixed-race” author:

It ended as an argument against race, just all the way, saying that we’re not going to transcend racism so long as we believe that you are a different race than I am, which necessarily imposes and implies hierarchies. So, I don’t think you can transcend racism without transcending racial categorization, and the book became a kind of memoir making an argument.”

One of the many, many ways that I feel we’ve backslid in my lifetime is that, all across the political spectrum, we seem to have abandoned the “color-blind ideal” as a path to human solidarity. Left and right promote identitarianism for their own purposes, and the ideal is lost. It’s bad, and no good will come of it.

I know one answer is “Color-blind is the ideal, but to get there we first have to go in the opposite direction.” Believe that if you want, but please count me out.

I know it’s difficult, and countless forces work against it, but I continue to believe that the ideal is the only way.

I was reminded of this powerful Bob Marley song, whose lyrics are excerpts from a speech by the Emperor Haile Selassie.

Report from the trenches: “I have a friend who teaches philosophy. They have a student who said demanding people have reasons for their beliefs is the same as colonialists going to other countries to tell poorer people how to live their lives. So, insisting you defend your position (in a philosophy class, mind you), is the same as invading another culture and telling them how to live. SMDH.”