(This little piece was written for and submitted to a prestigious national magazine for online publication, but rejected. It was tailored specifically to their conservative Abrahamic and political orientation and interests and proclivities, though obviously not enough.)
An Individual 'Benedict Option'
by Eric S. Fallick
To all appearances, the modern world is becoming more secularized and deluded practically day by day. Traditional and absolute moral values and any sense of the transcendent are disappearing. Scientism, positivism, materialism and the like are the dominant 'religion', brooking no dissent, and a 'new totalitarianism' is spreading—one that is all the more insidious for the fact that it is based unconsciously on the most dubious and undemonstrable of metaphysical propositions, but thinks that it doesn't have a metaphysics and, in fact, denies the possibility of metaphysics at all. We live in a world that is the most inimical to any sort of genuine spirituality of probably any in at least the last 25 or 30 centuries. We are in the depths of the 'Kali Yuga', as it were, and there doesn't seem to be much likelihood of any reversal in the foreseeable future. Given this situation, I have seen that some traditional Christians have concluded that the battle for the soul of the modern world has been lost, at least for the time being, and that the only remaining alternative is a withdrawal into separate enclaves, this being referred to as the 'Benedict Option'.
Reading about this 'Benedict Option' was an opportunity for reflection on my own experience and situation. For more than three decades, I have lived and practiced alone as a single and solitary contemplative ascetic and renunciant incognito right in the middle of the most contemporary urban environments virtually without any kind of support at all of any kind—moral, spiritual, emotional, cognitive, financial, material or logistical. I have been celibate in the midst of sex-obsessed permissive, promiscuous and pornographic society; vegetarian and non-harming among flesh-eaters; teetotaling among drinkers and users of intoxicants; without a television or a car; unconcerned about the pleasures of food, drink and entertainment among those who know nothing else; concerned only about realizing union with the Divine Absolute and transcending this world among people who acknowledge only the realm of the senses and matter. Often, even basic physical survival has been tenuous in a Procrustean world that no longer has a place for renunciants and contemplatives outside of society. Great difficulties have presented themselves in such things as trying to rent housing without a credit history or much income, finding enough part-time employment to get by while not fitting the norms of society, and many other such things. Emotionally, I have had to endure crushing loneliness and the frightfulness of feeling like the only sane person in an insane asylum and being alone without fellow travelers or peers. I much sympathize with the loneliness and anxiety now felt by traditional Abrahamists, but the degree of support and company that they have seems, in comparison, downright luxurious.
In the end, what makes a person eudaimon or not is only the closeness or distance of the individual soul from the One, the Good, the Absolute, God. This doesn't mean just doctrinal acquiescence, but rather actual approach to God in contemplation with striving for holiness, asceticism, renunciation, purity and wholehearted devotion in all one's life. This is certainly much easier, more pleasant and less frightening to pursue in a traditional, pre-modern, and supportive environment with the aid of fellow travelers. Its necessity, however, is not at all negated by the adverse conditions of the present day. The individual soul needs to turn from the things of the senses and this world to the transcendent Divine, to God, wholeheartedly and follow the Ancient Path of the communion of saints, however more difficult and unsupported this Way may be in this brave new secular materialist modern world. This is an individual 'Benedict Option' that each soul can implement right now, if only Providence lights the Way.
© 2015 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (with) (Gee) mail (period) com
