Learning to Talk Back (Antirrhêtikos)
One of the true pleasures of studying is diving into deeper vocabularies than one's own to discover new words and their meanings. My studies have brought me into contact with ancient words, like that intimidating one in the subject line of this email (antirrhêtikos), which retain nourishing illumination for us today.
As I've mentioned before, as part of my PhD studies with ETF Leuven, I'm considering the concept of acedia in civic and political democratic life, with particular attention to the conversation around political emotions -- that is, how we emotionally "participate" in our political communities. Acedia is a term that's received more sustained attention in the last decade or more, thanks to books like Kathleen Norris's Acedia & Me, and I mention the concept briefly in my book Keys to Bonhoeffer's Haus too.
The fact that it's a "lost" temptation, dropped from the common taxonomies of sin -- Gregory the Great compiled the standard seven in 600 -- gives it a sort of storied appeal for constant re-discovery and interpretation. It can also be a tricky word to define. The pandemic brought a lot of renewed attention to acedia (and its various modern interpretations) because many people thought that the constraints of public health measures were fairly perfect breeding grounds for acedia to take hold. But, honestly, acedia can operate in our lives and communities powerfully -- pandemic or not -- simply by means of us participating with it, and we do, reader. We do.
A desert monk named Evagrius (of Pontus; 345-399) taught that acedia was one of the eight deadly or bad thoughts (or yes, -- interchangeably -- demons) that would attack men and women in their desert-based religious commitments. Acedia's tempting rhetoric would entice a monk into a despairing prayerlessness or at times busy, even outwardly righteous distractions: "It's so hot; you don't have to pray. The day is fifty hours long! Take a nap! ... What's that guy doing over there? ... No one understands you; no one appreciates what you do. This work is so hard to do; you could have a much easier life. Prayer is pointless. It makes no difference whether you do it or not. Maybe it would be better for you to go visit so-and-so, do a good deed for them. That'll help you feel better." The bad thought attacked the monk's identity and committed vocation. The bad thought drew them out of connection to God and themselves, out of the work of the day, and into deceptive escapes or inertia.
Evagrius paired the thought of acedia, and other "bad thoughts" like gluttony, lust, or vainglory, with demons. Demons were a reality in the ancient world, pagan and Christian alike. Today, talking about demons is tricky business, and for good reason. But the larger, widespread belief that we are free of them, that we are so advanced as humans that we cannot be hoodwinked into cooperating with their immiserating ways or into destructive levels of evil, including non-dramatic evils, isn't exactly sane either.
I'm still trying to work out how to talk about demons in wise and non-nutty ways, which is tricky in a religiously plural civic and political domain, but I fully agree with Alan Jacobs's recent meditation in The New Atlantis that having a proper demonology in hand is critical to living freely with others. (Strong N.B.: If your demonology is simply "other people, especially those hated others over there," and it leads you into a mesmerizing narrative of despair, not into sanity and joyful lucidity that serves you for the real tasks of today, you do not have a decent one.) Hear Jacobs, please:
Now, as it happens, I am myself a Christian, but I do not write here to issue an altar call, an invitation to be saved by Jesus. Rather, I merely wish you, dear reader, to consider the possibility that when a tweet provokes you to wrath, or an Instagram post makes you envious, or some online article sends you to another and yet another in an endless chain of what St. Augustine called curiositas — his favorite example is the gravitational pull on all passers-by of a dead body on the side of the road — you are dealing with powers greater than yours. Your small self and your puny will are overwhelmed by the Cosmic Rulers, the Principalities and Powers. They oppress or possess you, and they can neither be deflected nor, by the mere exercise of will, overcome. Any freedom from what torments us begins with a proper demonology.
Evagrius offered an early demonology that informed nearly all of Christian monasticism, both East and West.
The ancient Christians like Evagrius who went to the desert saw and lived the Christian life as a battle -- not a culture war, but a spiritual battle. They expected suffering, waged with discipline, and also poured their lives out in prayer and practice (that is, ascetics). Their ascetics weren't some dour and private piety party; they certainly weren't mere self-flagellation. The asceticism comprised the battle. These monks went into the bleak desert not to escape the world but to face the world within themselves, to retreat from the noisy and addictive distractions of cities to better face and attack the dark realities that the cities allowed them to avoid. Their insights into human psychology are profound, and we are indebted to them. One of the written inheritances that Evagrius left the world was his book, Antirrhêtikos, or Talking Back. These are bible verses that he gleaned to equip monks to authoritatively answer tempting thoughts, or demonic temptations.
Learning to talk back to ourselves -- developing a personal "anti-rhetoric" -- when we are in the heat of a difficult moment, or in the inert listlessness of life, is a critical skill to have. It also takes practice, just like physical exercise necessitates real doing, not just more thought or peppy inspiration. I am paying closer attention to my need of this skill and how learning it slowly builds confidence in me when I do. "Talking back" to those thoughts, addressing their powerful rhetoric with experimental anti-rhetoric, doesn't just mean flexing my willpower, all white knuckles and bared teeth. It looks more like slipping a knot that's threatening to close around me.
Here's an example. Beguiling rhetoric, "I'm too tired to walk today." Anti-rhetoric, "Yeah, I'm tired, but I know that even an eight-minute walk can be a real mood boost, so off I go." Almost always, I'll manage to take a longer walk. Even if I only take an eight-minute walk, it's still eight minutes of walking rather than zero, and I'll have successfully slipped the "too tired to walk" excuse-knot. Knowing how to talk back to myself can help guide me back to firmer ground, to emotional and spiritual equilibrium, and to the good thing -- exercise, creativity, beauty and sanity, connection with others -- that the bad thought is tempting me away from.
Acknowledging the substance of the (bad) rhetoric matters for the (good) anti-rhetoric too. A recent study that I came across in reading commends "self talk" when meeting a challenge. In the study's "lay" interpretation of its results, it notes that acknowledging "negative self talk," while pairing it with a "challenge statement" -- e.g., while cycling, "My legs are tired" (negative self-talk) "but I can push through it" (challenge statement) -- can equip a person to perform well and endure to greater lengths, much more so than letting negative self-talk go unaddressed or simply trying to pep yourself up with excessive positivity.
Most of the people I know who are productive and content in life are able to "talk back" to themselves. (For what it's worth, they are also capable of receiving meaty feedback from others too.) Practicing "talking back" builds confidence in a way that compounds. We come to know ourselves and our own beguiling eddies and know better how to avoid them in satisfying ways. At the end of a battle -- yes! a battle! -- one discovers that it is possible to be gathered, collected, and even resolute in the face of bad thoughts and temptation. Human flourishing means gaining in real human agency, which is a supremely good thing indeed.
PS. If you're interested in learning more about acedia itself, Baylor University's Institute for Faith and Learning put out an entire journal on the subject through their Christian Reflection project. It's free to download (PDF) or you can purchase print copies at the link here. It's an excellent resource, as are all of their journals in that project series.