I am, and clearly have always been, the Hermit, but a Hermit whose daydreams, and choice of high fantasy novels transform her into a Hero/Heroine. The "hero of a thousand casseroles" is really the heroine's journey, which Maureen Murdoch writes about in her insightful book. I can say from experience, raising and homeschooling three children, one of whom is level 3 autistic and continues to live with us at 30 yrs old, my Hero/Heroine daydreams equipped me to internally find the courage and self-discipline necessary to be a "heroine of the hearth and home". I love your insight that the family, the traditional family, for all of its imperfections is a form of resistance to "the machine". I think the same can be said for the quiet and inner focused lives that all hermits lead, tending their soul's, their gardens and family becomes something more powerful than most could imagine.
Mar 18, 2023·edited Mar 19, 2023Liked by Peco, Ruth Gaskovski
Your piece brought me to reflect on my kids. I like your analysis of the hero and the hermit. I think I have one of each in my boy and girl! Each can learn from the other as they grow.
Having them certainly binds you into the fate of the world. I honestly have trepidation when I think of what awaits them as they grow older, with the escalating level of youth technological absorption. All you can do is raise them with love and try and arm them with an independent mind.
I am a man of the hearth. My circle is small. I own and run a business, with people under my authority (I am often humbled that they put up with me), and I am a father. There will be no hero's journey for me, and in fact though I love to travel, I am rarely able to do so - someone has to be there in the morning to open the factory, and close it at night. That is not to say that there is no journey involved, however, for I have had to face many battles, but I'm not out slaying dragons.
One constant battle is with bureaucracy - with government pencil pushers foisting varieties of new "compliances" and "accountabilities" that have no other function than social shaming. I'm supposed to record and report my "conflict minerals" (certain materials that largely come from central Africa), as though by reporting on myself I'm supposed to shame myself into not using them (even though my little company is never going to get some large multinational semiconductor company to only sources its raw materials from less immoral nations). California demands I monitor every possible carcinogen my goods might have, and slap warning labels on everything about their nature, but California seems to think everything is toxic, and moreover people would have to devour my goods whole to encounter any danger. Large corporate customers demand I hire by race and gender ideology, and shame myself for not being diverse enough. These are battles enough. The more pervasive computer control becomes, the more these bureaucrats think every last datum can be accounted for and controlled, and used for shame and influence.
And that leads me to the issue of the hero. I cannot stand the endless push for heroism - it gives people ideas. Real heroes do not seek out battle for the sake of glory, but fight battles to serve the better ends of protection and family (contrast Aeneas, always trying to avoid war but not shirking from it to protect his people, with Achilles for whom glory in war was his highest calling). But it is the battles we glorify and remember. I was once very very online, even moderating an active web forum with a heavy emphasis on politics. The false heroism of so many there became galling. So many people there each thought they were the center of the world, and on them did the hinge of the future pivot. As such they thought it their sacred duty to seek out and do battle with the impure, the heretics, and the moderates. And they claimed glory and honor for driving others away, as though by winning that little corner of the internet they were saving society itself. I see the same mentalities in so many bureaucrats, who see everyday society as an enemy who must be punished or purged for non-compliance - these people think themselves heroes, and seek glory without ever really wondering at what ends they serve.
Campbell and his Journey, endlessly pummeled into us now by strings of Super Hero films, bears much blame. These stories teach a dangerous gnosticism, wherein special revelation and training leads to awards of hidden powers which then gives permission to step outside the rules of society (and always against someone else with a similar gnostic revelation, just aimed in a worse direction). I have seen far too many people, believing their bureaucratic offices are this gnostic revelation, or their political fanaticism has revealed the "hidden knowledge", elevating themselves into heroes on Campbell's journey, instead of tending to their own hearths and homes, or withdrawing like hermits to pray for the world.
I have related to all three archetypes/roles at various points in my life, though now I certainly identify with the hermit. I had long thought my role would be of the hearth--it seemed obvious to me-- but that's not how it turned out. But I think I do understand its value and deep resonances--at least from the outside. For a while, as a younger man, I practiced--or tried to--a much more active, extroverted heroic role.
I have learned from all of these and especially from my failures in each. In a coherent and more or less integrated culture all these roles would be far clearer than they are now. The hermit can easily devolve into escapism. The hero into a bully. And the family into crushing conformism, or even downright abuse. Restoring each, as best we can, to their fullness is a challenge for all of us.
I am going to have to think more on this. Thank you. -Jack
As a homeschool mother I definitely relate to the hearth, although I admire the guts of the hero and the silent solitude of the hermit.
"Are there any lines of technology that you would find very difficult to cross?"
I think the danger lies in tech that makes it so easy for us to cross lines before we realize what we have lost. The cell phone and social media were designed to "connect people" but have served to produce the most disconnected, asocial generation yet. I do not keep a cell phone on me (except for long or wintry car rides) as I figure that we have always made do without them before. I keeps me more free.
As an educator I realized that ChatGPT will inevitably lead to the demise of language (see my article "Tilling the ground for ChatGPT") and I will do my utmost to teach my children and other students to write in a rich and unique voice of their own. Words produced by AI are not language, they are anti-language. In order for language to have meaning there must be a producer, a creator, and AI is a hollow shell. To me, employing AI truly does have a demonic hint, serves to devalue our creative abilities, and makes us in turn less human.
People of the Hearth. Straight up, with a dose of hermit.
Yet my chosen patron is St. Thomas More, who was forced to be a hero.
I have abandoned social media and have no intention of ever going back.
I will never incorporate outside tech into my body, save for surgical repair. Anything that would then convey information out would never be allowed in.
One of my heroes is the Quaker, John Woolman. He was hearthman, hermit, and hero. He refused to use silver (even as a guest) because of what he learned of the conditions for people in the silver mines.
He also refused to wear dyed cloth when he learned of the horrors associated with that process. He was very quiet and thoughtful and felt terribly embarrassed to be wearing strange, light colored outfits that drew attention to his appearance and was not boastful or preachy about his reasons-- accepting misunderstanding humbly. He also refused jobs that violated his principles, for example, wouldn't sell sugar in his shop, resisting certain technology in his own day. He lovingly nurtured his small family and apple orchard but when he felt called, he travelled on a heroic journey through the wilderness to visit Indian tribes in order to dissipate growing tensions between groups during the French and Indian war period. Through all this he was exceedingly humble, quiet, and prayerful.
There is a modern book about him that paints him as a mentally ill, deluded weirdo. We can expect similar treatment.
I like how you bring these three pathways together and suggest the overlap between them, thank you Peco.
It takes all kinds and we change as we grow. I’m glad we can each live out our current stage of development. I hope your friend never pays that illegal fine.
"And yet, things do happen. As we share our observations with each other, we give life to ideas, which become the foundation for how we might better understand and respond to the roaring techno-industrial juggernaut overshadowing our society."
This is basically what I tell myself each time I feel a little guilty for reading content such as this online or writing my own content. Thank you for this.
And thank you for the image of the hero and hermit and the balance that might be created between them. I'll be thinking over this for days.
The primary mistake the technocrats have made is that they have forced too much innovation on us all at once, when the need for the innovation was not obviously imminent. I first started waking up to this trick when Apple computers opted to remove the disc drive from all forthcoming machines, and then again when the traditional wired headphones were being phased out. These are small changes but it was significant enough for me to make me wonder at the reason for it, and I gradually started to realize that total tech-dependence was the goal. Since then it’s been just a mad dash of innovation, which perhaps began as glitzy and truly “cool” gadgets (e.g. smartphones), but more recently has devolved into something clearly more autocratic (e.g. your friend’s border beef) The result is that enough of us feel a cognitive dissonance in adopting the change, even if many around us gladly and blindly accept the changes as the Way of the Future.
The amish have provided for us a model in which a community said “No, that’s too far,” and then as a community used their purchasing power to abstain from the oncoming innovation they deemed potentially too harmful to their way of life. We, perhaps, are a little behind the eight ball, having already adopted much of the innovation that that we know is destroying us. The amish moment is going to be painful because it will require sacrifice, but it’s still not too late.
Finding myself currently straddled between hermit and hearth. I'm a hermit at heart. I imagined well into my late 20s that I would never marry or have children and was perfectly content with that seeming likelihood. Yet here I am, at 45, with a wife and 4 children! I see now (acknowledging immediately that it's not just all about me) that my family has helped to ground me in important ways. Left to my druthers, I'd undoubtedly rarely leave the house or engage with others more than was strictly necessary. In deed, it was the forthcoming arrival of our first child, a son, that pulled me out of a 5 year hiatus from all things pertaining to Christianity. I knew with this new life came an immense responsibility not only for his physical care and upbringing, but his spiritual upbringing as well. That got be back to church and re-engaged - not just for his and my families sake, but for my own as well. I would probably imagine myself as having a pretty good handle on everything and being a down right quality human being if I didn't have the mirror of my family to show me how truly disheveled and broken down I am. Among other things, they are certainly God's gift to me to teach me humility and love. And I am certain there's to teach them mercy and forgiveness.
We are made in the image of the LIVING CREATOR GOD. Not technology, not a machine, not a dead black box. The CREATOR God, do not confuse the creation with the creator because some billionaire technical geek does. "For God sent the weak things to confound the strong of this world." This is the great delusion, take a step back and raise your perspective. God uses the simple things to confound the wise. You can destroy these peoples entire house of cards using simple logic. If we truly believe that we are made in the image of God, it is blasphemy to claim that his image can be conformed or shaped into an image of technology, a machine, or any other man made creation. Creativity and divine inspiration cannot be replicated by technology. Technology or a machine can not create anything new, it can create a copy. It mimics real life but it is not real life. Just a fancy simulation of the real thing. Its a modern Golden Calf. Stop worshipping it, like an idol. Its an object, a tool. Its actually quite funny, considering what everyone was expecting the end days delusion to be. It is a fitting delusion for that those who worship science, reason, and the things of the material world.
The only thing "intelligent" about AI is the name. IT IS A MATHEMATICAL ALGORITHM NOT SENTIENT. I have played with it and its "intelligence" has been massively oversold. Has anyone considered that these billionaires are purposely starting these rumors because this new computational method will cause their own companies software "word and excel and outlook" to become obsolete? You want to not be manipulated by the machine? Get up and do something about it, take a class in computer programing. Learn how the machine is built and how to use it... problem solved.
I am, and clearly have always been, the Hermit, but a Hermit whose daydreams, and choice of high fantasy novels transform her into a Hero/Heroine. The "hero of a thousand casseroles" is really the heroine's journey, which Maureen Murdoch writes about in her insightful book. I can say from experience, raising and homeschooling three children, one of whom is level 3 autistic and continues to live with us at 30 yrs old, my Hero/Heroine daydreams equipped me to internally find the courage and self-discipline necessary to be a "heroine of the hearth and home". I love your insight that the family, the traditional family, for all of its imperfections is a form of resistance to "the machine". I think the same can be said for the quiet and inner focused lives that all hermits lead, tending their soul's, their gardens and family becomes something more powerful than most could imagine.
Your piece brought me to reflect on my kids. I like your analysis of the hero and the hermit. I think I have one of each in my boy and girl! Each can learn from the other as they grow.
Having them certainly binds you into the fate of the world. I honestly have trepidation when I think of what awaits them as they grow older, with the escalating level of youth technological absorption. All you can do is raise them with love and try and arm them with an independent mind.
I am a man of the hearth. My circle is small. I own and run a business, with people under my authority (I am often humbled that they put up with me), and I am a father. There will be no hero's journey for me, and in fact though I love to travel, I am rarely able to do so - someone has to be there in the morning to open the factory, and close it at night. That is not to say that there is no journey involved, however, for I have had to face many battles, but I'm not out slaying dragons.
One constant battle is with bureaucracy - with government pencil pushers foisting varieties of new "compliances" and "accountabilities" that have no other function than social shaming. I'm supposed to record and report my "conflict minerals" (certain materials that largely come from central Africa), as though by reporting on myself I'm supposed to shame myself into not using them (even though my little company is never going to get some large multinational semiconductor company to only sources its raw materials from less immoral nations). California demands I monitor every possible carcinogen my goods might have, and slap warning labels on everything about their nature, but California seems to think everything is toxic, and moreover people would have to devour my goods whole to encounter any danger. Large corporate customers demand I hire by race and gender ideology, and shame myself for not being diverse enough. These are battles enough. The more pervasive computer control becomes, the more these bureaucrats think every last datum can be accounted for and controlled, and used for shame and influence.
And that leads me to the issue of the hero. I cannot stand the endless push for heroism - it gives people ideas. Real heroes do not seek out battle for the sake of glory, but fight battles to serve the better ends of protection and family (contrast Aeneas, always trying to avoid war but not shirking from it to protect his people, with Achilles for whom glory in war was his highest calling). But it is the battles we glorify and remember. I was once very very online, even moderating an active web forum with a heavy emphasis on politics. The false heroism of so many there became galling. So many people there each thought they were the center of the world, and on them did the hinge of the future pivot. As such they thought it their sacred duty to seek out and do battle with the impure, the heretics, and the moderates. And they claimed glory and honor for driving others away, as though by winning that little corner of the internet they were saving society itself. I see the same mentalities in so many bureaucrats, who see everyday society as an enemy who must be punished or purged for non-compliance - these people think themselves heroes, and seek glory without ever really wondering at what ends they serve.
Campbell and his Journey, endlessly pummeled into us now by strings of Super Hero films, bears much blame. These stories teach a dangerous gnosticism, wherein special revelation and training leads to awards of hidden powers which then gives permission to step outside the rules of society (and always against someone else with a similar gnostic revelation, just aimed in a worse direction). I have seen far too many people, believing their bureaucratic offices are this gnostic revelation, or their political fanaticism has revealed the "hidden knowledge", elevating themselves into heroes on Campbell's journey, instead of tending to their own hearths and homes, or withdrawing like hermits to pray for the world.
Peter-
I have related to all three archetypes/roles at various points in my life, though now I certainly identify with the hermit. I had long thought my role would be of the hearth--it seemed obvious to me-- but that's not how it turned out. But I think I do understand its value and deep resonances--at least from the outside. For a while, as a younger man, I practiced--or tried to--a much more active, extroverted heroic role.
I have learned from all of these and especially from my failures in each. In a coherent and more or less integrated culture all these roles would be far clearer than they are now. The hermit can easily devolve into escapism. The hero into a bully. And the family into crushing conformism, or even downright abuse. Restoring each, as best we can, to their fullness is a challenge for all of us.
I am going to have to think more on this. Thank you. -Jack
As a homeschool mother I definitely relate to the hearth, although I admire the guts of the hero and the silent solitude of the hermit.
"Are there any lines of technology that you would find very difficult to cross?"
I think the danger lies in tech that makes it so easy for us to cross lines before we realize what we have lost. The cell phone and social media were designed to "connect people" but have served to produce the most disconnected, asocial generation yet. I do not keep a cell phone on me (except for long or wintry car rides) as I figure that we have always made do without them before. I keeps me more free.
As an educator I realized that ChatGPT will inevitably lead to the demise of language (see my article "Tilling the ground for ChatGPT") and I will do my utmost to teach my children and other students to write in a rich and unique voice of their own. Words produced by AI are not language, they are anti-language. In order for language to have meaning there must be a producer, a creator, and AI is a hollow shell. To me, employing AI truly does have a demonic hint, serves to devalue our creative abilities, and makes us in turn less human.
People of the Hearth. Straight up, with a dose of hermit.
Yet my chosen patron is St. Thomas More, who was forced to be a hero.
I have abandoned social media and have no intention of ever going back.
I will never incorporate outside tech into my body, save for surgical repair. Anything that would then convey information out would never be allowed in.
One of my heroes is the Quaker, John Woolman. He was hearthman, hermit, and hero. He refused to use silver (even as a guest) because of what he learned of the conditions for people in the silver mines.
He also refused to wear dyed cloth when he learned of the horrors associated with that process. He was very quiet and thoughtful and felt terribly embarrassed to be wearing strange, light colored outfits that drew attention to his appearance and was not boastful or preachy about his reasons-- accepting misunderstanding humbly. He also refused jobs that violated his principles, for example, wouldn't sell sugar in his shop, resisting certain technology in his own day. He lovingly nurtured his small family and apple orchard but when he felt called, he travelled on a heroic journey through the wilderness to visit Indian tribes in order to dissipate growing tensions between groups during the French and Indian war period. Through all this he was exceedingly humble, quiet, and prayerful.
There is a modern book about him that paints him as a mentally ill, deluded weirdo. We can expect similar treatment.
I like how you bring these three pathways together and suggest the overlap between them, thank you Peco.
Clara
It takes all kinds and we change as we grow. I’m glad we can each live out our current stage of development. I hope your friend never pays that illegal fine.
"And yet, things do happen. As we share our observations with each other, we give life to ideas, which become the foundation for how we might better understand and respond to the roaring techno-industrial juggernaut overshadowing our society."
This is basically what I tell myself each time I feel a little guilty for reading content such as this online or writing my own content. Thank you for this.
And thank you for the image of the hero and hermit and the balance that might be created between them. I'll be thinking over this for days.
God bless.
My vote is for the neo-amish route.
The primary mistake the technocrats have made is that they have forced too much innovation on us all at once, when the need for the innovation was not obviously imminent. I first started waking up to this trick when Apple computers opted to remove the disc drive from all forthcoming machines, and then again when the traditional wired headphones were being phased out. These are small changes but it was significant enough for me to make me wonder at the reason for it, and I gradually started to realize that total tech-dependence was the goal. Since then it’s been just a mad dash of innovation, which perhaps began as glitzy and truly “cool” gadgets (e.g. smartphones), but more recently has devolved into something clearly more autocratic (e.g. your friend’s border beef) The result is that enough of us feel a cognitive dissonance in adopting the change, even if many around us gladly and blindly accept the changes as the Way of the Future.
The amish have provided for us a model in which a community said “No, that’s too far,” and then as a community used their purchasing power to abstain from the oncoming innovation they deemed potentially too harmful to their way of life. We, perhaps, are a little behind the eight ball, having already adopted much of the innovation that that we know is destroying us. The amish moment is going to be painful because it will require sacrifice, but it’s still not too late.
I resonate with Dietrich's plight. There was a line for me too that came at the cost of my job
https://deeplevity.substack.com/p/the-cost-is-great
Finding myself currently straddled between hermit and hearth. I'm a hermit at heart. I imagined well into my late 20s that I would never marry or have children and was perfectly content with that seeming likelihood. Yet here I am, at 45, with a wife and 4 children! I see now (acknowledging immediately that it's not just all about me) that my family has helped to ground me in important ways. Left to my druthers, I'd undoubtedly rarely leave the house or engage with others more than was strictly necessary. In deed, it was the forthcoming arrival of our first child, a son, that pulled me out of a 5 year hiatus from all things pertaining to Christianity. I knew with this new life came an immense responsibility not only for his physical care and upbringing, but his spiritual upbringing as well. That got be back to church and re-engaged - not just for his and my families sake, but for my own as well. I would probably imagine myself as having a pretty good handle on everything and being a down right quality human being if I didn't have the mirror of my family to show me how truly disheveled and broken down I am. Among other things, they are certainly God's gift to me to teach me humility and love. And I am certain there's to teach them mercy and forgiveness.
We are made in the image of the LIVING CREATOR GOD. Not technology, not a machine, not a dead black box. The CREATOR God, do not confuse the creation with the creator because some billionaire technical geek does. "For God sent the weak things to confound the strong of this world." This is the great delusion, take a step back and raise your perspective. God uses the simple things to confound the wise. You can destroy these peoples entire house of cards using simple logic. If we truly believe that we are made in the image of God, it is blasphemy to claim that his image can be conformed or shaped into an image of technology, a machine, or any other man made creation. Creativity and divine inspiration cannot be replicated by technology. Technology or a machine can not create anything new, it can create a copy. It mimics real life but it is not real life. Just a fancy simulation of the real thing. Its a modern Golden Calf. Stop worshipping it, like an idol. Its an object, a tool. Its actually quite funny, considering what everyone was expecting the end days delusion to be. It is a fitting delusion for that those who worship science, reason, and the things of the material world.
The only thing "intelligent" about AI is the name. IT IS A MATHEMATICAL ALGORITHM NOT SENTIENT. I have played with it and its "intelligence" has been massively oversold. Has anyone considered that these billionaires are purposely starting these rumors because this new computational method will cause their own companies software "word and excel and outlook" to become obsolete? You want to not be manipulated by the machine? Get up and do something about it, take a class in computer programing. Learn how the machine is built and how to use it... problem solved.
https://open.substack.com/pub/ascensionfromdarkness/p/welcome-to-the-great-tribulation?r=25fg9s&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web