Narration
We continue through Chapter 2 of The Spiritual Roots of the Ecological Crisis by Jean-Claude Larchet, returning to St Maximus’s explanation of the passions. The saint explains that God forbade Adam from eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, because He knew that he would fall prey to the “epicurean” belief that pleasure is good and pain is evil. Other saints, such as John Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia, taught that the passions are often related to the desire to escape death. Therefore, we see them at work in the activities with which people fill up their lives in order to avoid thinking about, or encountering, death. So, altogether the passions drive us to seek to replace spiritual joy with physical pleasure, and to preserve our life instead of trusting and relying on God, as well as to accumulate physical instead of spiritual wealth.
Before the fall, Adam’s work was to be effortless, whereas afterwards, it was characterized by difficulty. We learn in Genesis 4:22 that the first blacksmiths developed this technology in order to ease this difficult work. If we zoom out, we can see that the development of technology is a consequence of severing the mind from contemplation of God and turning it to its own devices. This is why science was originally considered a form of occultism and related to magic. Scientists, philosophers and saints alike remark on how scientific understanding is never synonymous with reality: it is always developing and never complete, because it is based only on the physical observation of appearances. Clement of Alexandria contrasts faith and science, saying that faith is more certain. Maximus the Confessor and Gregory Palamas see technology and its development as symptoms of separation from God. (Wow!) For example, simply by existing, technology tempts man and divides his attention so that he cannot focus it any longer on God alone. Isaac the Syrian shows how trusting in science is a counterfeit form of faith in God, and itself gives rise to many fears.
When sin entered the world, it brought all kinds of disorder with it, ultimately including death. Gregory of Nyssa says that man’s soul is a mirror of divine beauty and that nature is a “mirror of the mirror”; it mirrors our soul. When the human soul is corrupted by sin, it becomes ugly, and makes nature ugly as a result, causing it to be essentially disordered. According to Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor, sexual reproduction was a consequence of the fall, and transmits ancestral sin almost like a genetic factor from generation to generation. Man infects the creation with sin, and is in turn re-infected by it, because as he goes down he drags all of creation with him. According to Macarius of Egypt, man offers creatures to demons instead of to God. Man no longer acts as the caretaker and master of creation, so it no longer obeys him. Larchet also points to an ancient Orthodox text called the “Paracletic,” which reads:
I have become the jest of the demons, the disgrace of the human race, the grief of all the righteous, the affliction of the holy angels, the pollution of the air, the earth and the water; I have soiled my soul, my body and my spirit; I am become the enemy of God by my senseless deeds: Alas, O Lord, I have sinned against Thee, I have sinned, grant me pardon.
Therefore, all forms of pollution are due to man’s sin.
Application
The idea that science is not to be trusted (and that God is) is hardly a politically correct one. And yet we see that the rationality of human beings cannot ignore this essential truth. Writers like Jonathan Haidt, Greg Lukianoff, Freya India, Tsh Oxenreider, Peco and Ruth Gaskovski, and many more all remind us of the detrimental effects of modern technology on our humanity, and here the Holy Fathers show us why.
But the flip side of the coin is that we have grown accustomed to and dependent on these technologies and comforts. Returning to my question about self-care and self-love from yesterday, I wonder whether or how to take a balanced, rational approach, and still remain a faithful Orthodox Christian. Do I persist in the discipline of self-care and moderate use of technology, out of humility for my own limits, perhaps fasting from them voluntarily during certain seasons (like the digital/screen fast that the Gaskovskis led this year during Lent)? It’s also impossible not to read these lines and think about the recent debates surrounding Covid, and I think I’ll just say that for now… I was also reminded of how not only the monasteries I’ve visited live much more simply and “unplugged,” but about how hermits such as St. Paisios truly eschewed almost all technology, cooking his food in an old tin can instead of a pot for decades.
I was also intrigued by the discussion about security and how fear about our own safety is another symptom of lack of faith in God. I see this fear EVERYWHERE today, especially in the measures people take to protect their homes.
While reading about how the natural world mirrors the human soul, I remembered the Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander, and how he points out that architecture from traditional societies (and the West before World War II) is harmonious, beautiful and “living.”
Finally, the “scientific” part of my mind wants to know more about evolution/the history of the world and how death and decay could be part of it before the first people sinned. Is Larchet a young-earth creationist, or is there another, symbolic (?) way to interpret this?
Commonplace Quote
When knowledge is stamped with love of the body, it is attracted to the following things: riches, vainglory, elegant clothes, bodily comfort and a taste for rational wisdom which is well adapted to the way of this world. It is pleased by the abundance of new inventions in science and technology and by everything which helps to glorify the body in this visible world. All this means that it is opposed to Faith as we have said and explained above. We say that it is a “bare knowledge” (psile gnosis) since it has been stripped of any memory of God and gives birth to the weakness of an unreasonable spirit since it is ruled by the body and cares for nothing but this world. Knowledge at this level is unaware that there is a spiritual Power, an invisible Governor Who guides man, and a divine Providence which cares for him and looks after him in a perfect way. This knowledge thinks that every good thing which comes to man, everything which saves him from possible harm, everything which preserves us from all the perils and dangers which threaten us, openly or secretly, and are found in our nature, arises solely from our own efforts and our natural genius. In this state, knowledge believes it can boast of being universal providence itself. It agrees with those who believe that there is no [higher] ruler of the visible world. However, it is impossible for it to surmount its disquiet and continual fear for the body. It is spineless and haunted by sadness, despair, the fear of demons, cowardice before men, rumors of brigands, tales of deadly deeds, worries over illness, fear of poverty and lack of necessities, fear of death and suffering, fear of dangerous animals and storms at sea, and many other such things which threaten us every hour of the day and the night. It cannot lay its cares upon God with the confidence which comes from Faith in Him. This is why it never ceases to ponder over works and to calculate everything; and when all its efforts fail through some circumstance and it sees that its secret plans [will not succeed], it fights those men who are in its way and opposes them. (The Ascetical Homilies of Isaac the Syrian)
Alexandria's Daughter 