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.
I’m glad you are encouraged by the reflections on family. It would be a far better world if the equivalent of one parent could be at home (whether that means a mother, a father, or each splitting it half-time) – and not just to tend the home, but to engage with neighbors and the local community.
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 fully agree with you Ryan "All you can do is raise them with love and try and arm them with an independent mind." Keeping a mind independent is crucial, but may be extensively hard to maintain while entangled in the system. You may find my recent post "How to Train Sheeple - A crash course in John Taylor Gatto's educational Machine resistance" of interest.
“Having them certainly binds you into the fate of the world.”
Wonderfully, poignantly said.
And I feel the same trepidation about the future. Loving them and encouraging independence of mind is part of the approach we take as well—and trying with all our might to lead by example.
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.
Thank you for these thoughts, Skip. I think more and more people are sensing the intrusiveness of government in various domains of life. They will all draw their “lines” in different places, of course; but it will be their frontline experiences, like yours, that will galvanize into a wider awareness that things are going in the wrong direction. At least, that’s my hope.
And I agree with your reflections on heroism. The “heroic” impulse will always be there, but the real victories are small and mostly hidden in the little corners of life, not the internet.
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
I remember longing to be a hero as a boy, yet continually discovering I was more of a hermit. Now I am a hermit – actually, perhaps a “part-time” hermit to use Andrew’s designation below – and a full-time hearth-man.
I have too many thoughts on all this to put down now, but I think you’ve highlighted something important here: that you came to identify with the hermit after “failing” in the other archetypes. Did you fail? Or did you pass through the underworld that is an integral part of the hero’s journey?
In the Hindu tradition, no specific archetype appears to be valued over any other. Instead, each of these archetypes are to be expressed during different phases of life. These phases are described as:
The First Ashrama: "Brahmacharya" or the Student Stage
The Second Ashrama: "Grihastha" or the Householder Stage
The Third Ashrama: "Vanaprastha" or the Hermit Stage
The Fourth Ashrama: "Sannyasa" or the Wandering Ascetic Stage
In this sense, the purpose of the hero and hearth part of life’s journey is not to “succeed” in any worldly objective, but to elevate consciousness through the crucible of worldly affairs. Only once one has struggled against the forces of the world and thereby learned about the nature of those forces and of oneself can the hermit phase provide real value. It is the integration period as one proceeds through the second half of life and advances towards death.
The modern world seems stuck in the first two phases, as evidenced by trends like reaching the benchmarks of adulthood at progressively later ages and retiring later and later, if ever. Perhaps the ills of the modern world can be attributed to some degree to a shortage of true hermits and ascetics (elders), and an overabundance of students, “heroes,” and homemakers who lack both access to and reverence for the elders’ hard-earned wisdom.
The progressive steps you described are interesting, as I have seen variations of this idea before. Is it to be understood that the latter steps are more spiritual than the earlier ones? Or that they are necessary steps to advance spiritually?
I can’t speak for the Hindu community, but I see it generally as the latter. For me, a world weariness and disillusionment is a prerequisite to real spiritual development. For me, the difference between a spiritual path and any other path is that one seeks satisfaction/fulfillment/enlightenment/heaven/immortality/whathaveyou through a sort of internal alchemy rather than through worldly means. What better way to realize deeply and profoundly that what your heart sincerely seeks cannot be achieved through worldly pursuits than to really give worldly pursuits all you’ve got, only to have the world chew you up and spit you out? I’m not saying this realization can’t be made in a cave or forest hermitage. I just think if you exit society too early on, it is quite a bit more difficult to attain the necessary level of disillusionment.
But don’t mistake me for being dogmatic here. Everyone’s path is their own. I personally leaned heavily into the hero archetype until around my mid-thirties (by which point I became a chronically ill and deeply depressed alcoholic) and have since drifted more and more into hearth and hermit. And based on my current mental state, I’d say that was definitely the right move for me. I’m still involved in the world, especially around civil liberties issues, but I no longer seek or expect to find what I’m really looking for in that “hero” dimension of life, other than more world weariness/disillusionment that in turn motivates my more spiritual pursuits.
David- Thank you for your reply. It is insightful and helpful. Perhaps it would be better to say I learned from these different phases of my life, even in my failures. Though at times *especially* because of those failures. Failure has a way of greatly and mercifully clarifying things. But yes, the successes, as well.
I like the idea of moving through the phases and learning from each as is necessary and good for us. I find hope in that. And honestly I have actually thought about the wandering ascetic phase--though I wasn't aware that hit was part of lifelong process--particularly as depicted in The Way of the Pilgrim.
I agree. It is abundantly clear that ours is a culture of arrested development, of the eternal teenager. The puer aeternus is an archetype that has been pushed in commerce for a long time. Teenagers aren't typically known for their impulse control. What could be better for the economy than a nation of teenagers?
It appears to me that the system cannot deal with too many folk reaching stages 3 or 4 any more and actively makes those levels harder and harder to reach.
Essentially once you pass from student you need to be economically viable, ie a positive contributor to the machine, or you need to shuffle off quietly and efficiently, with minimal cost to the state. If we were in any doubt about the drive to euthanize the sick and elderly (those without financial means to support themselves through these phases) then the way Covid was allowed to rip through care homes as just one example should put that argument to bed.
It is getting harder to achieve hermit status, but we can choose to engage the Machine as little as possible, at least for now. It is though, for many, something of a luxury, due to the level of indebtedness that many have. It isn't possible just to walk away in most cases.
For me, with a wide and two teenagers to fend for, the best I can do is be a part time hermit, in as much as spending and engaging the machine as little as possible, but praying, learning, reading, gardening, spending simple time with the family etc as much as possible. Tgat much I can afford, thankfully, but to others who the machine renders time-poor, even that would be seen as a luxury of privilege.
Designating human beings as "Homo Economicus" is probably one of the more pernicious events in human thought. But what you describe is exactly what would result from such a toxic anthropology. As it intensifies more of us are chafing at its constraints.
It is worth the effort to change course, both individually and as a culture. We can all play a part.
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.
And ChatGPT 4 is on beta-release. By this time next year, I predict there will be many new Substacks, all intelligently written, even entertaining, and all driven by AI.
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.
Oh, and I'd love to hear from you and others on the question of what technologies we might refuse, the lines not to be crossed. For me, I'm worrying it isn't future lines but ones I have already crossed that I need to go back on. Like this computer.
Thanks, Clara. I had never heard of John Woolman and will have to look him up.
On the subject of tech, I would find it unacceptable to use microchip (or related) technologies that interface with the nervous system. The only possible exception might be for individuals who are suffering from serious medical conditions, such as dementia (e.g., Alzheimer’s) or paralysis. However, the line between “medical condition” and “human optimization” can be fuzzy. For example, the same technology might, in theory, be helpful for people with severe intractable depression, but what about mild depression? What about slightly melancholy people who otherwise function well?
It is easy to imagine how new technologies might be rolled out first for medical conditions, as most people would see that as reasonable, when the real goal might be to modify them for wider use, and therefore greater profit and perhaps (eventually) behavioral control and management. The same microchip that optimizes your attention or mood, for instance, could be used for monitoring your mental state.
Other kinds of tech I would resist are home sensors that had video/audio capabilities, that could be used for surveillance (I am imagining here a social credit system scenario). Then again, a smartphone or laptop, rightly hacked, is already capable of this.
Yes, the definition of "medical condition" can get frighteningly fuzzy. Especially in mental health. Religion itself can be "diagnosed" as delusion. And those who refuse "medical care" can be declared "a danger to self or others" and locked up, forcibly medicated.
In nursing school I did a rotation in a mental health facility, a locked ward. Many of the patients spoke of demons and God, and the staff had an almost universal disdain for all religious sentiments. That was creepy for me. I'm not saying that the patients were just nice, wholesome religious folk.... not at all. The staff seemed to believe that religion was partly the cause of all the problems, which was the scary part. I can imagine if a chip is a "medicine" people with wrongthink being coerced into taking this medicine.
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.
As far as I can tell, he will be fighting it down to the last dime. It has been a great stress on his family, as they live on only one income, and so losing money or possessions (like the extra vehicle) to deal with this issue has been challenging, and also because the stress has been stretched out over many months. Add to that, the fact that the border guard lied in her report, and one can only imagine the blood pressure boiling inside.
I doubt many people would have drawn their “line”, as he did, at giving a phone number, but we all have different limits and tolerances.
"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.
Certainly many people will be thinking “neo-Amish”, and I’m one of them. The challenge is where to draw “the line”, as we will all tend to draw it in a different spot. One person will say “no smartphones”, while another might say “smartphones are okay for business only” or something like that.
That being said, if the more intrusive technologies keep advancing as quickly as they are, the change may happen, especially if life becomes too intolerable for too many – in which case your prediction may well come true: “The amish moment is going to be painful because it will require sacrifice...”
Thanks, Rich. Yours is a painful story, more than Dietrich’s. I know others who lost their jobs or suffered greatly under the stress of the mandates, with astonishingly little sympathy. It is not a good sign for any future crisis, in a society already so prone to division.
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.
The EXACT same human beings since the dawn of time (just regular joes) who like problem solving, building new things, and math.
The only difference this time is that man is rebelling against God. Men in our foolish pride have forgotten God. Without Jesus Christ we are fallen, evil beings under the devils dominion. Without Gods grace we cannot overcome sin and the more we sin the sicker and more evil we become. At a certain point some humans can deviate so far from Gods grace that they literally experience living Hell on Earth.
We are incapable of creating anything good without the divine inspiration of Gods grace. The devil has an inverse version of Gods grace that his servants can access. The problem is us, too many have become nonbelievers or selfish or addicted to the lie. The rise of abusive technology and wickedness in our culture is a reflection of our collective rotting corpse of a soul.
Does that mean that all technology ect is bad? No! Anything (including technology) that was created by humans under the divine grace and authority of Jesus Christ is GOOD! The key to avoiding being abused by "the machine" is to acknowledge that science is the study of God's creation and submit to his laws when we study or work in these fields.
We have lost the simple wisdom and moral judgement needed to heed God's law. Just because we can do something does not mean that we should.
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.
I’m glad you are encouraged by the reflections on family. It would be a far better world if the equivalent of one parent could be at home (whether that means a mother, a father, or each splitting it half-time) – and not just to tend the home, but to engage with neighbors and the local community.
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 fully agree with you Ryan "All you can do is raise them with love and try and arm them with an independent mind." Keeping a mind independent is crucial, but may be extensively hard to maintain while entangled in the system. You may find my recent post "How to Train Sheeple - A crash course in John Taylor Gatto's educational Machine resistance" of interest.
“Having them certainly binds you into the fate of the world.”
Wonderfully, poignantly said.
And I feel the same trepidation about the future. Loving them and encouraging independence of mind is part of the approach we take as well—and trying with all our might to lead by example.
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.
Thank you for these thoughts, Skip. I think more and more people are sensing the intrusiveness of government in various domains of life. They will all draw their “lines” in different places, of course; but it will be their frontline experiences, like yours, that will galvanize into a wider awareness that things are going in the wrong direction. At least, that’s my hope.
And I agree with your reflections on heroism. The “heroic” impulse will always be there, but the real victories are small and mostly hidden in the little corners of life, not the internet.
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
I remember longing to be a hero as a boy, yet continually discovering I was more of a hermit. Now I am a hermit – actually, perhaps a “part-time” hermit to use Andrew’s designation below – and a full-time hearth-man.
I have too many thoughts on all this to put down now, but I think you’ve highlighted something important here: that you came to identify with the hermit after “failing” in the other archetypes. Did you fail? Or did you pass through the underworld that is an integral part of the hero’s journey?
In the Hindu tradition, no specific archetype appears to be valued over any other. Instead, each of these archetypes are to be expressed during different phases of life. These phases are described as:
The First Ashrama: "Brahmacharya" or the Student Stage
The Second Ashrama: "Grihastha" or the Householder Stage
The Third Ashrama: "Vanaprastha" or the Hermit Stage
The Fourth Ashrama: "Sannyasa" or the Wandering Ascetic Stage
https://www.learnreligions.com/stages-of-life-in-hinduism-1770068
In this sense, the purpose of the hero and hearth part of life’s journey is not to “succeed” in any worldly objective, but to elevate consciousness through the crucible of worldly affairs. Only once one has struggled against the forces of the world and thereby learned about the nature of those forces and of oneself can the hermit phase provide real value. It is the integration period as one proceeds through the second half of life and advances towards death.
The modern world seems stuck in the first two phases, as evidenced by trends like reaching the benchmarks of adulthood at progressively later ages and retiring later and later, if ever. Perhaps the ills of the modern world can be attributed to some degree to a shortage of true hermits and ascetics (elders), and an overabundance of students, “heroes,” and homemakers who lack both access to and reverence for the elders’ hard-earned wisdom.
The progressive steps you described are interesting, as I have seen variations of this idea before. Is it to be understood that the latter steps are more spiritual than the earlier ones? Or that they are necessary steps to advance spiritually?
I can’t speak for the Hindu community, but I see it generally as the latter. For me, a world weariness and disillusionment is a prerequisite to real spiritual development. For me, the difference between a spiritual path and any other path is that one seeks satisfaction/fulfillment/enlightenment/heaven/immortality/whathaveyou through a sort of internal alchemy rather than through worldly means. What better way to realize deeply and profoundly that what your heart sincerely seeks cannot be achieved through worldly pursuits than to really give worldly pursuits all you’ve got, only to have the world chew you up and spit you out? I’m not saying this realization can’t be made in a cave or forest hermitage. I just think if you exit society too early on, it is quite a bit more difficult to attain the necessary level of disillusionment.
But don’t mistake me for being dogmatic here. Everyone’s path is their own. I personally leaned heavily into the hero archetype until around my mid-thirties (by which point I became a chronically ill and deeply depressed alcoholic) and have since drifted more and more into hearth and hermit. And based on my current mental state, I’d say that was definitely the right move for me. I’m still involved in the world, especially around civil liberties issues, but I no longer seek or expect to find what I’m really looking for in that “hero” dimension of life, other than more world weariness/disillusionment that in turn motivates my more spiritual pursuits.
David- Thank you for your reply. It is insightful and helpful. Perhaps it would be better to say I learned from these different phases of my life, even in my failures. Though at times *especially* because of those failures. Failure has a way of greatly and mercifully clarifying things. But yes, the successes, as well.
I like the idea of moving through the phases and learning from each as is necessary and good for us. I find hope in that. And honestly I have actually thought about the wandering ascetic phase--though I wasn't aware that hit was part of lifelong process--particularly as depicted in The Way of the Pilgrim.
I agree. It is abundantly clear that ours is a culture of arrested development, of the eternal teenager. The puer aeternus is an archetype that has been pushed in commerce for a long time. Teenagers aren't typically known for their impulse control. What could be better for the economy than a nation of teenagers?
-Jack
It appears to me that the system cannot deal with too many folk reaching stages 3 or 4 any more and actively makes those levels harder and harder to reach.
Essentially once you pass from student you need to be economically viable, ie a positive contributor to the machine, or you need to shuffle off quietly and efficiently, with minimal cost to the state. If we were in any doubt about the drive to euthanize the sick and elderly (those without financial means to support themselves through these phases) then the way Covid was allowed to rip through care homes as just one example should put that argument to bed.
It is getting harder to achieve hermit status, but we can choose to engage the Machine as little as possible, at least for now. It is though, for many, something of a luxury, due to the level of indebtedness that many have. It isn't possible just to walk away in most cases.
For me, with a wide and two teenagers to fend for, the best I can do is be a part time hermit, in as much as spending and engaging the machine as little as possible, but praying, learning, reading, gardening, spending simple time with the family etc as much as possible. Tgat much I can afford, thankfully, but to others who the machine renders time-poor, even that would be seen as a luxury of privilege.
“Part-time hermit”.
That is a role I can certainly relate to.
Andrew-
Designating human beings as "Homo Economicus" is probably one of the more pernicious events in human thought. But what you describe is exactly what would result from such a toxic anthropology. As it intensifies more of us are chafing at its constraints.
It is worth the effort to change course, both individually and as a culture. We can all play a part.
-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.
And ChatGPT 4 is on beta-release. By this time next year, I predict there will be many new Substacks, all intelligently written, even entertaining, and all driven by AI.
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
Oh, and I'd love to hear from you and others on the question of what technologies we might refuse, the lines not to be crossed. For me, I'm worrying it isn't future lines but ones I have already crossed that I need to go back on. Like this computer.
clara
Thanks, Clara. I had never heard of John Woolman and will have to look him up.
On the subject of tech, I would find it unacceptable to use microchip (or related) technologies that interface with the nervous system. The only possible exception might be for individuals who are suffering from serious medical conditions, such as dementia (e.g., Alzheimer’s) or paralysis. However, the line between “medical condition” and “human optimization” can be fuzzy. For example, the same technology might, in theory, be helpful for people with severe intractable depression, but what about mild depression? What about slightly melancholy people who otherwise function well?
It is easy to imagine how new technologies might be rolled out first for medical conditions, as most people would see that as reasonable, when the real goal might be to modify them for wider use, and therefore greater profit and perhaps (eventually) behavioral control and management. The same microchip that optimizes your attention or mood, for instance, could be used for monitoring your mental state.
Other kinds of tech I would resist are home sensors that had video/audio capabilities, that could be used for surveillance (I am imagining here a social credit system scenario). Then again, a smartphone or laptop, rightly hacked, is already capable of this.
Yes, the definition of "medical condition" can get frighteningly fuzzy. Especially in mental health. Religion itself can be "diagnosed" as delusion. And those who refuse "medical care" can be declared "a danger to self or others" and locked up, forcibly medicated.
In nursing school I did a rotation in a mental health facility, a locked ward. Many of the patients spoke of demons and God, and the staff had an almost universal disdain for all religious sentiments. That was creepy for me. I'm not saying that the patients were just nice, wholesome religious folk.... not at all. The staff seemed to believe that religion was partly the cause of all the problems, which was the scary part. I can imagine if a chip is a "medicine" people with wrongthink being coerced into taking this medicine.
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.
As far as I can tell, he will be fighting it down to the last dime. It has been a great stress on his family, as they live on only one income, and so losing money or possessions (like the extra vehicle) to deal with this issue has been challenging, and also because the stress has been stretched out over many months. Add to that, the fact that the border guard lied in her report, and one can only imagine the blood pressure boiling inside.
I doubt many people would have drawn their “line”, as he did, at giving a phone number, but we all have different limits and tolerances.
"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.
Certainly many people will be thinking “neo-Amish”, and I’m one of them. The challenge is where to draw “the line”, as we will all tend to draw it in a different spot. One person will say “no smartphones”, while another might say “smartphones are okay for business only” or something like that.
That being said, if the more intrusive technologies keep advancing as quickly as they are, the change may happen, especially if life becomes too intolerable for too many – in which case your prediction may well come true: “The amish moment is going to be painful because it will require sacrifice...”
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
Thanks, Rich. Yours is a painful story, more than Dietrich’s. I know others who lost their jobs or suffered greatly under the stress of the mandates, with astonishingly little sympathy. It is not a good sign for any future crisis, in a society already so prone to division.
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.
“…the mirror of my family…”
Yes. We need more mirrors like that.
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.
As I have tried to tell others about these new AI tools: who programs the programmers? Who is controlling the algorithms?
Precisely. There is no god behind the AI machine, only people, fiddling with parameters.
The EXACT same human beings since the dawn of time (just regular joes) who like problem solving, building new things, and math.
The only difference this time is that man is rebelling against God. Men in our foolish pride have forgotten God. Without Jesus Christ we are fallen, evil beings under the devils dominion. Without Gods grace we cannot overcome sin and the more we sin the sicker and more evil we become. At a certain point some humans can deviate so far from Gods grace that they literally experience living Hell on Earth.
We are incapable of creating anything good without the divine inspiration of Gods grace. The devil has an inverse version of Gods grace that his servants can access. The problem is us, too many have become nonbelievers or selfish or addicted to the lie. The rise of abusive technology and wickedness in our culture is a reflection of our collective rotting corpse of a soul.
Does that mean that all technology ect is bad? No! Anything (including technology) that was created by humans under the divine grace and authority of Jesus Christ is GOOD! The key to avoiding being abused by "the machine" is to acknowledge that science is the study of God's creation and submit to his laws when we study or work in these fields.
We have lost the simple wisdom and moral judgement needed to heed God's law. Just because we can do something does not mean that we should.
"Just because we can do something does not mean that we should."
Agreed. And part of the conversation here is to figure that out.
The solution is to help these people find Jesus.
https://open.substack.com/pub/ascensionfromdarkness/p/welcome-to-the-great-tribulation?r=25fg9s&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web