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How to reduce digital distractions: advice from medieval monks - Jamie Kreiner | Aeon Ideas
The problem of concentration
Any plan for sidestepping distractions calls for strategies on sidestepping distraction.
It is a fantasy to think that we can dodge distraction once and for all. There will always be exciting things to create distraction for the mind.
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Medieval monks
Medieval monks had a hard time concentrating while they were supposed to focus on divine communication: to read, to pray and sing, and to work to understand God.
The ideal was a mind that was always and actively reaching out to its target by working hard at making the mind behave. The monks found it easier to concentrate when their bodies were moving, whether they were baking or farming.
A method for concentrating
Nuns, monks, preachers and the people they educated were to visualize the material they were processing. A branchy tree or a finely feathered angel. The images might loosely correspond to the substance of an idea.
The point was to give the mind something to draw, to indulge its appetite for interesting forms while sorting its ideas into some logical structure.
The problem of concentration
Any plan for sidestepping distractions calls for strategies on sidestepping distraction.
It is a fantasy to think that we can dodge distraction once and for all. There will always be exciting things to create distraction for the mind.
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The cultural backdrop
For most of recorded history, people got married for logical pragmatic sorts of reasons.
Since around 1750, we have been living in an era in the history of love that we can call Romanticism w...
The Romantic template
- Romanticism tells us that a long-term marriage can have all the excitement of a love affair.
- Romanticism proposed that true love must mean an end to all loneliness.
- Romanticism believed that choosing a partner should be about letting oneself be guided by feelings, rather than practical considerations.
- Romanticism believes that true love is synonymous with accepting everything about someone.
The Romantic script is delusional
It's normative points include:
- we should meet a person of extraordinary inner and outer beauty and immediately feel a special attraction to them, and they to us
- we should understand one another intuitively
- we don’t need an education in love
- we should have no secrets and spend constant time together
- we should raise a family without any loss of intensity
- our lover must be our soulmate, best friend, co-parent, co-chauffeur, accountant, household manager and spiritual guide
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Stoicism: the art of staying calm
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy that was founded by Zeno of Citium, in Athens, in the early 3rd century BC.
It is an ancient tool for remaining calm in adversity, a philosophical ...
“The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skilful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.”
“Circumstances don’t make the man, they only reveal him to himself.”
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Dealing with change
And here’s a secret: actually, we’re always in times of change. If you’re waiting for things to settle down, it’s a beau...
"We are always in transition. If you can just relax with that, you’ll have no problem.”
How our mind reacts to change
- It complains. It doesn’t like change that it didn’t choose.
- It gets angry at others. It blames and might lash out at them.
- It looks for comfort, for a return to what you’re used to, what you know, what you’ve always gone to for comfort.
- It tries to get control. This can be stressful, trying to control the massively uncontrollable.
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