1. Tonight I’ll look out my front window and see the same two towering beams of light that appear every year on this date. Where I live, it is nearly impossible to forget 9/11. This is by design, of course. Memorials of the day are as common as potholes. Pillars and plaques of commemoration adorn every park. Relics of twisted metal from the buildings that no longer stand are displayed like public art.
In the days and years after the towers fell, we all swore to “never forget.” It’s now been 25 years of not forgetting, and the architecture of our remembrances has, like the event itself, become as commonplace as wallpaper. As chronicled in the New York Times this week, in many instances the fading memorials have become literal wallpaper.
While there’s a melancholy in seeing dulled paint that was once so evocative, I would suggest that these fading murals of remembrance might now serve as testimonies of hope. We haven’t forgotten after 25 years, but we have also not been overcome by the trauma. The murals have faded because we don’t so acutely need the comfort they used to offer. I’m reminded of what Sam Bush wrote a few weeks back on grief and memory: “No one ever really ‘gets over’ anything … what we grieve can never be entirely forgotten. Nor should it be. Health is not a forgetting but a remembering differently.”
2. Turning to something else entirely, over at the New Yorker Jay Caspian Kang is launching the first in a series of articles on the decline of shame in social discourse, “The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart.” He begins by detailing the not-so-distant history of tanking in professional basketball, when the 1984 Houston Rockets shamelessly lost on purpose to land the highest draft pick. Since then, what was regulated by taboo had to be constrained by ever-increasing rules. While many might consider a cultural shift toward shamelessness to be more apparent than real, the product of technological shifts that warp our perception, Kang believes there is more to the story:
Sometimes, though, these genealogies of behavior can seem beside the point, serving only to dull one’s analysis of the situation. Twenty-four-hour news cycles, social media, and smartphones may have altered our sensitivity to shame, but they don’t explain everything. Social media has certainly helped spread what Foxworth called optimization culture, but the hiring of M.B.A.s and quants into management positions across markets didn’t happen because Elon Musk changed the Twitter algorithm. The kind of thinking that they embody has always been part of American capitalism — still, it’s everywhere now, and it’s worse.
In tech, finance, and, to a lesser degree, politics, those preaching a piecemeal gospel rooted in maximum optimization believe that they have obviated society’s need for shame. There is a conflict between those who still believe in social barriers and those who believe that all actions should be based on a proper calculation of the return on investment. That conflict constitutes both the present and the future of America’s culture war. The optimizers have all the money; the empaths only really have one another — and the assurance, however fleeting, that there are more of us than there are of them.
Efficient and sometimes monstrous thinking existed in the past, of course, but it generally made some effort to hide. Today, everything from our kids’ sports leagues to our parents’ nursing homes are profit-optimized right in front of our faces. Shame can no longer curtail a private-equity firm from buying up children’s sports facilities and shaving away every soft edge that made them feel like community property. Like the N.B.A., our world at large will need intervention and direct regulation to counter the gospel of flagrant optimization.
To me, part of what Kang is describing is an effect of secularization in a different a register, how we moved from categorial imperatives to more utilitarian calculations (see Lewis Black below: “Since there is no God, maxxing … now applies to everything”).
But I also want to suggest that the push toward optimization away from more ethical ways of thinking is precisely the kind of spiraling that happens when law is increasingly introduced as a means of improving human behavior. What was once governed by a shared sense of mutual trust and responsibility (the love of the game) is now regulated by a lengthy rule book that itself “increases the transgression” (Rom 5:20) and incites an arms race of ever-optimizing thinking.
3. I’d say these next two articles on mental health work really well in tandem with one another. In Aeon this week, historian Katherine Harvey takes a deep dive into “Medieval Mental Health” and some of the many homespun remedies they proposed. How-to books about how to stay healthy were incredibly popular. It’s a fascinating study of a much overlooked era.
Fear and anger were usually acute emotions, quick to come and go, but medical experts also warned about the dangers of chronic emotional distress. One of my favourite medieval images compares the mind to a bent bow which, although strong, cannot survive continual strain, so that ongoing ‘disputes in the household’ could ‘shorten a person’s years’. Just as we worry about stress, medieval people recognised that too much responsibility could make a person ill, with high-status men thought to be at particular risk. In an English conduct book written around the turn of the 13th century, Daniel of Beccles claimed that a master ‘lives like a toiling ant’; his ‘pressing worries gnaw at his gut and burden his shoulders’, and his mind is ‘always focused on calamities’. The anonymous biographer of the French knight Jean II Le Meingre (c1366–1421), better-known as Boucicaut, described his packed daily schedule, but suggested that ‘those who love him indeed, those who would wish him long life and the good health which makes public duties manageable … ought rather to advise him to be a little less conscientious and to take at least some time for repose and recreation.’ If he did not do so, he would surely become ill. […]
More broadly, medieval people shared our interest in the ability of mind-altering substances to prevent and treat mental health problems. Saffron was widely believed to provoke joy – although one Welsh recipe collection (c1400) warned against eating too much ‘in case you die of happiness’ – and both oregano and fennel were credited with similar powers. Alternatively, a melancholiac might be advised to eat ostrich liver – a suggestion I find particularly unappealing, though I could be persuaded to test the supposed benefits of precious stones. According to Abbess Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179), ‘If you are oppressed with sadness, [you should] look at an onyx intently, then place it in your mouth. The oppression of your mind will cease.’ She also advised that holding and looking at beryl, or placing a sapphire in one’s mouth, could calm anger.
But these remedies worked best when combined with lifestyle changes, so that patients were also told to do things that would cheer them up – much as modern doctors use social prescriptions to encourage activities that improve wellbeing. When Taddeo Alderotti treated Obizzo II d’Este, lord of Ferrara (c1247–93), who had suffered from melancholy and insomnia for more than two years, his prescription included ‘taking walks … seeing things that are beautiful and delightful to him … hearing songs and instruments that he likes … being told about and promised great yields from profitable markets’. In fact, joy was widely considered to be not just a useful cure but also an important part of a healthy lifestyle for, as one mid-15th-century German verse regimen reminded readers: ‘A sorrowful heart often brings people to the end/but the joyful mind always makes the life’s age blossom.’ While virtually every other strong emotion dried up the body, joy was good because it moistened it; other benefits included purer blood, sharper wits, higher energy levels and a healthy complexion. It could even make a person more attractive.
Who’d have thought that medieval Europe was so … modern? Not only in the holistic/woo treatment options but also their wide range of physical maladies. That said, I’m not about to consume ostrich liver any time soon.
4. I imagine that cherry-picking from the ancient wisdom of medieval Christianity won’t necessarily appeal to many. Cherry-picking from the ancient wisdom of medieval Buddhism, by comparison, is far more en vogue. I’m talking of course about meditation and its modern cousin, mindfulness. But as told by Olga Khazan in the Atlantic, there is a dark side to mindfulness often ignored by its Western practitioners. If that sounds surprising or far-fetched to you, it’s probably because the adverse effects of meditation have only recently been studied (which, it should be said, is wildly irresponsible).
Britton [a psychology researcher] began to perceive that the research on mindfulness contained a giant lacuna: its potential risks. Meditation researchers, she felt, tended not to find adverse effects among their study participants because they didn’t ask their participants about them. What’s more, many meditation studies are funded by pro-meditation organizations, and some study participants might feel pressured to say that their mental health improved after meditating. There’s no such thing as a placebo for meditation, which complicates studying its effects. When Britton looked for past studies on the risks of meditation, she found mostly isolated case reports and small studies — one of which found that two of 27 long-term meditators had had “profound adverse effects,” including confusion, depression, and severe shaking.
Britton still believed in many of the potential benefits of meditation, but she began to rethink her role as a booster for it. “It just seemed like the world does not need another meditation researcher who’s going to promote meditation,” Britton told me. “We’re like Starbucks — there’s one on every corner.” Assessing the extent and severity of possible negative effects of meditation, she decided, would be her version of a problem to solve — her niche. In 2007, she began interviewing meditators for what would become the first comprehensive study of meditation’s adverse effects. […]
Some of the side effects these researchers are finding may be attributable to the fact that, in the years since Eastern traditions of meditation were introduced to the West in the 19th century, this once primarily religious ritual has expanded far beyond its original intent; its more sweeping remit may have consequences that the practice’s original Buddhist context might have prevented. But as Salguero and others pointed out, early Buddhist texts cautioned that “meditation sickness” plagued even the devout contemplatives of earlier eras: In one eighth-century Chinese writing, the Buddha warns of 50 “demonic states” in which meditators could become trapped, including hallucinations, sorrow, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and possession by ghosts. […]
“I was trying to tell people ‘Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so,’” channeling Hamlet and Stoic philosophy. For a while, this idea seemed radical, and constructively life-changing: The secret to a good life is to just be okay with whatever! But then her own meditation practice started to make her think “like, Okay, but wait; I don’t feel like I exist now.” That didn’t seem like a good thing, no matter how you thought about it.
Now, I should say that the prevalence of negative outcomes Britton finds is more around 10% (and disputed by others), but the whole article is kind of wild and reads as a cautionary tale of syncretism.
5. What starts with a laugh but ends in tears? Aaron Belz’s poem “Things Artificial Intelligence Can’t Do,” and it couldn’t have come at a better time:
Things Artificial Intelligence Can’t Do
Stare for 25 minutes at a blank screen.
Write half a poem and give up.
End up walking down to the bus stop bench,
sit strangely erect, look dead
into the winter sun. Hate itself.
Resent the apparent happiness of others.
Miss its daughter. Go back in time.
Wish it had been a better dad.
Leave church after 15 minutes even though
it needed nothing more than the company
of the faithful. Even though it needed
the Word of assurance, the taste of God’s
blood in its mouth. Drive home cold,
order a pizza. Feed itself. Numb itself.
Shut itself down and dream of love
lost, of a girl refusing to speak,
of all that beauty slipping into ether,
nor can it remember kissing her blue
forehead in a Los Angeles funeral home.
We’re only a few years into the debate about the utility of AI writing, but that poem is the best thing I’ve read on the subject.
6. In actual humor this week, the Babylon Bee adds a theological twist to the LLM doomsday conundrum, “‘Oh, Your Intelligent Creations Are Trying to Kill You. That’s Interesting,’ Says Jesus.” There’s some low anthropology humor this week from the Onion and their “Everything Finally Clicks for Man After Getting Diagnosed as Stupid.”
Oh, and Lewis Black has some curmudgeonly hilarious (and decidedly not PG-13) opinions on the maxxing trends:
7. Almost the entirety of Lewis Black’s humor is of the old-man-yells-at-clouds variety. It has been for decades now, but the fact that Black is now actually old — and repeatedly tells you this — makes the whole rant almost charming. Unlike most today, he’s not hiding anything, trying to act younger than he is, or sporting a ridiculous comb-over. Cue “Old Age Is Not a Problem to Solve” by Jen Pollock Michel, who finds something disturbing in our cultural obsession with perpetual youth.
If glory is goodness on display, as Thomas Aquinas defined it, vainglory is preoccupied with the aesthetics, not the substance, of goodness. And it can take different forms: one derived from pride and an overeagerness to have our goodness displayed, or one cowering in fear, seeking less to reveal our goodness than to conceal its deficits.
It’s that latter form — fearful vainglory — that plays into our resistance to aging. Though youthful beauty has all the worth of Monopoly money, we are nonetheless afraid to be poor. “The industry thrives on self-loathing, bad body image, and feelings of painful inadequacy,” writes DeYoung. “Vainglory is, in cases of fear, not a show-off vice for excellence, but a cover-up maneuver for its acutely felt absence.”
Vainglory is sin, and through Christ, we are saved and healed. This means not only that we are forgiven personally but also that we’re delivered communally, DeYoung argues. Together, she writes, it’s imperative we learn to celebrate our belovedness in God through grace alone and by faith alone, dispensing with the need to prove our worth. […]
Here, Wilkin’s book sings. As the author dreams of a “wish list” for her own future, she does not pine for a more youthful face, a stronger body, and a guarantee against future decrepitude. She yearns to age according to a better story. “I wish to age gracefully, not as the world does but as someone who understands grace as unmerited favor,” Wilkin writes. “I wish to use the unmerited favor of good health and long years in service to others. I wish to treat my body as worthy of honor, but not as ultimate.” By God’s grace, her inner old lady will bloom, and it will be no cause for regret or apology or fear.
As the body of Christ, instead of offering honor for the shadow of the real — fleeting physical beauty, personal charm, social status, celebrity, and fame — we can praise the substance of goodness that can enlarge and expand with age. Even amid intense social pressure to stay young, this perspective is possible because we live a better story. We can honor the aged and commend those who give them care. We can find beautiful a godly woman like Elliot, who looked her age of 60. We can stop idolizing all things young.
The future will come, and time will shake us like a storm. Though we will bend in those great winds of infirmity, strengthened in the great forest called the church, we will not break.
Strays:
