Hi everybody and welcome to the classical stuff you should know podcast put on by classy dudes at a classical school teaching classical things You should know you should know okay. I'm AJ Hanenburg I teach ninth grade English senior English and senior rhetoric and I'm joined today by Thomas magby Hey, and he is the dean of student life here at Veritas. He is also just a classical things enthusiast He actually wanted to invent this school before he knew this school existed. He came to our boss And was like hey, what if there was a school like this and our boss was like, you know, you know I work there right like that's that's our school and then also I'm here with Graham Donaldson who teaches 10th grade English senior English and senior thesis hello, and we three compose the podcast we like the three witches and we breath Yeah, we've together a spell to enchant you every week boil boil Fire burning cold bubble when shall we three meet again when the All right today Thomas is gonna be leading us through something so Yeah, we'll come up with a topic as we go.
No, I'll be talking about a cdia today also I'm related to sloths sometimes so this topic came up during AJ's discussion of the seven-day lissens from Dante's Inferno And I won back in listen to that part and it's great But we spent six minutes on this in a CD up and I thought there's probably a little bit more to share there So we're coming back to it today if you hear papers rustling during this which you probably hear during most of our podcast I'm flipping through a book called the noonday devil a cdia the unnamed evil of our time by John Charles nolt He's a very good argument and I have Calvin and Hobbes. Yep. That's my good. What do you have?
There's a Chinese squirrel in the bookcase I'm just listening papers. There we go. All right, so I'll be I guess what we've done through the book as we go So the way the book is organized is kind of a how the view of a cdia has changed over time And so this has been referenced a few times But so when Aristotle is talking about courage the way that we understand courage is from looking at soldiers in the battlefield The courage is that mean between them running? Has long into battle and I'm not going into battle at all courage is the mean between those two And so it's cdia likewise we only understand because of this group of people called the desert fathers I think it's Anthony is the most famous of them.
I don't know if you have like your favorite like saint Simon the one who's lived on a pole Yep, it's a time in stylights. Yeah, I know he's my favorite He's just like the story that's on a pole Which there was one and I might be just be thinking of Martin Luther here But he farted at the devil when he was tempted Inberg of no, honestly when he was tempted he would fart at the devil He's like one thing the devil cannot take and that's a big deal if you make fun of him He'll go away because he's very prideful. So he doesn't like that. I just googled that and I kind of regret it But there's nothing you're gonna watch this now.
I am on a watch. Yeah, I'm on a great. I was a wife No, I thought it's not a thing. No, sorry It is a thing I didn't look into it more than like the first result anyway here we are so the desert fathers this group of people who Have previously been in big cities and they fled to you guys at the desert to escape the temptations of that life But as all of them discovered but saying Anthony probably most famously is that just because you've escaped from places where sins happen Does mean that sins suddenly go away the desire for that sin is inside of a person and that travels with the person so there's It's repeated art Often the temptation of saying Anthony.
There's also it's like a short story or short book called the temptation of saying Is that where there's a guy who always looks real miserable and there's all these wacky demons like picking at him and pulling at him and Little hooks in him. Yeah, he's like a cave and over and over and over and over. Yeah, yeah, yeah It's a thing he has a poor guy so what he and all the discovers that sin doesn't simply disappear just because you're Out of yourself from other people. Yeah, sin is still present I'm kind of yeah There's still this kind of twisted desire inside of the person whenever they whatever they leave so one of those So so they go to the desert and then one of these people is named a vagreus We talked about him before a little bit too and a vagreus is trying to chronicle What are kind of the tendencies of sin that he sees in the month in the desert fathers the monks around him in one of them is this word?
Acedia, okay, so I guess we'll start here. Acedia. We sometimes translate as sloth Oh, you all have any other like awesome definitions that you are used to using for this despair despair. What's good one?
Is it laziness? Is it the same kind of thing? I think that like when we say sloth like laziness is one that but isn't it? I think it's laziness born of a deep spiritual despair, right?
You don't work because you don't think anything will actually come of it So that's why you stay at home It's not because you just tend to like your bed that that kind of goes into gluttony Yeah, right you want comfort you want to play video games you want to it's when you go to comfort and video games and home because you don't think There will be anything like any fruit of your work. Yeah. Yeah So the word itself the word in Greek means a lack of care a lack of care lack of concern So that is before it's used in any kind of spiritual connotation There's there are also uses of if you just look how the word is used it kind of to note this act of not burying one's dead Which is really interesting. Oh interesting But so then if a grace brings this this term in is no longer just a lack of care about the deceased It's the slack of care given to one's own spiritual life And that's what AJ is talking about right there.
It's a lack of concern for one's salvation It's a carelessness. It's an indifference. I think those kind of get more at like yeah I guess I hadn't heard the laziness brought into gluttony before is that is that in Dante like is he tie those two together? I think this is more my clear understanding of it and I again I could be totally wrong about this but I like that though But gluttony is the pursuit of personal comfort to excess right where you you go so far that you would deprive others was a piece of it When we talked about some deadly sins like you you consume so much food that someone else is going without and to an unhealthy level But laziness I think can stem from a couple different things You just because you really like the couch and you like sleeping or it can be that you you despair at the thought of actually doing anything Yeah, and we'll get to eventually Right here so despair so Aquinas for each of the cardinal sins There's the Senate self and then there are the children of those sins and despair is the first child of a cedia It's the first and worst of the of the children is despair that giving out that there is no hope But we'll get into that a little bit later cedia also So we're talking about this hopelessness But the hopelessness has some different aspects to it and again originally understood by vagrias There's this temporal dimension the spatial dimension And so when we talk about the new day devil we talk about a cedia coming at a specific time for the monks because they were supposed to be in Their room praying and fasting between ten and two ten three times that afternoon time But what happened was instead of it feeling like the four or five hours that it actually was that time would feel like it's 50 hours It'd feel like it's a never-ending amount of time between Your prayer in the morning the daily office and then your the evening prayer at the end I think I don't know.
I think this is something that we still see today that like People talking about the work that they have to do it's no longer like a pleasure at the work It's I don't know Do you all when you all sign homework and that it's reading heard I was lost in say a great book that we were just talking about on the last episode instead of being like I spent an hour reading this do you ever hear from students? It took me forever Yeah, and I think it's a little hard to gauge whether they're being on not other they're outright lying But to them the perception of how long something took must have been four hours because it felt like it I remember I had to practice piano 30 minutes a day every day when I was a kid and mom would put the Put it on the stove put like the countdown the timer on the oven and while I was practicing and I would practice and I would look up I was I was convinced she was bumping up the time because there was no way it's only been three minutes It felt like a eternity and I think that's the feeling of the time But when you are engaged in something and I think is it always something that's actually for your benefit? That time feels like it's taking forever. That's a great point So in this context it is look at what would the alternative be like you're sitting and it feels like it's taking forever or some sort of Like if you're in the dentist office or something that feels like it's taking I think it's a different thing point where you are you are sitting and you have sinned so often that it is no longer bringing much pleasure and now You're just going through the motions because it's what you know and it feels like it's taking forever And I think that's where the Satan is the happiest right he is not only cooks you into sin but taking away all the pleasure of it Right, that's man.
All right. Just this makes money. I lost like talking about I think that was So there's a temporary mention there's time things so these good acts that you so you saying that makes people that are trying to Like replace something in their life. So a granger example what no you just talk about video games taking the place I mean, sorry I'm just gonna talk about all of your great ideas.
So someone wants to move away from playing video games all the time And so they're like I'm not gonna play video games I'm gonna be my Bible imagine that first day of them doing that and where they could have spent four hours playing video games very easily Four hours reading the Bible would probably feel like an eternity right? They're just not used to using their time that way and so that would be a seat that would be a seat That would be the restlessness of moving into that good the other dimension of it is a spatial dimension This feeling of being hemmed in this feeling of being stifled this again We understand primarily from the monks that they had to they felt like they had to get out of their cell They even call it a cell and that's something they had to get out of their room between 10 and 3 But only because there was supposed to be in the room between 10 and 3 it's like if I say I'm gonna pray So Graham leads this morning prayer group and so if I said I'm gonna be there every day at 735 to pray The and I came and then I suddenly felt I need to be out of here It's only because I committed to that prayer that I feel like I then have to flee I have to escape I don't know if you're running out during your morning prayer. I don't know we don't but I wouldn't say it's well attended But I understand like that that thought that when you have a thing that you've dedicated yourself to I'm gonna fast today So that I can focus on this thing that I'm gonna be praying for Yeah, your relationship with food. Oh, it's just I cannot wait for this day to be over I don't think whereas I would never think about my day if I wasn't trying to better myself I guess what strings like there's nothing on the other side of that day like release the pressure Mm-hmm.
It's it's feeling that time has stood still while you're in the middle of this good thing and but on the other side of that is I don't know the better thing on the other side of that funny story about morning prayer after a holiday I had sent out an email just to everybody running people that morning prayer happens and My subject heading on morning prayer was morning prayer That was a subject heading and someone got the email and they only read it from the side like they were driving and they saw the email pop up And they thought it said morning player Why is dancin emailing the entire high school morning player so when I see that particular faculty member on campus Variation anyway, so it's a spiritual it's like almost so times I spell is your fallen nature wanting to rebel against the good right? Yeah, I'm gonna be able to right the more always something easier it is That's right. That's this book makes this really big distinction between a habit and a habit to and unless you are smarter than me I can figure out the difference one is latin. Thank you So we get into later that so when we talk about leisure many podcasts ago We talked about how the difficulty of a thing does not make it good So because I think it's hard does not mean it's good if the thing is good that makes the hard work worth it Okay, so virtue we grow in loving virtue by practicing virtue and then we get to a point where our instinct is virtue That practice of virtue is a heavy-tuse the external acts that we do our habits is how this is distinguished later So we overcome the cedia through the practice of virtue through through habit to but we're still I guess we're still talking about the problem itself We'll get to solutions for it because this is one like he actually has a solution to a CD We're gonna solve sloth on this podcast guys.
We did it. Yeah, we did it from solve I like in my leadership classes like that sometimes what we just all that and we did it Yeah, congratulations everybody. I don't think we actually did yeah people say that the questions that don't have answers the best questions I'm not sure that's true. I think questions that have hard answers are the best questions.
Yeah, okay So again, we're talking about if Igerius desert father's What does a cedia look like and again? He is writing to these people who are in the desert and they are monks and they are separated from society but I think this still describes people today he has these five principal manifestations of cedia So what does a cedia look like in person and I'll read off I guess I'll just start going through them. So the first one is an interior instability So we talked about that the spatial dimension of a cedia It's that one does not feel at peace with oneself one has to be somewhere else one has to do something else one has to to change That's the an interior instability that they have to change something anything and that was we'll make them right They're a runaway. They're deserted who flees the spiritual battlefield It's how does this manifest itself in people doing anything like is this the midlife crisis where all of a sudden you go You bought a sports car is this I need to get out of this town I've lived here for so long and my life is slipping away and I need to go do some sort of amazing thing Yes, both of those examples are brought up later in the book the yeah The feeling of the need to move when really there's nothing in that other city that's like better than where you are He has one of his manifestations I'll skip to it is neglect in observing the rule and when he talks about that He's talking about the rule of saying Benedict and so the rule of saying Benedict is about stability is one of the points conversion and obedience stability To the Benedict literally means staying in one place Yeah, it's that feeling that one cannot stay in one place in one place even though that's the life you've committed yourself to the Specific monastery in our specific monastery wherever and you've got this feeling like that was a terrible decision I need to get out of here whereas What's over there is very similar to what is here?
Yeah, and you are not any different. So you'll be the same person when you go to that other place There's an exaggerated concern for one's health again specifically the the concern that the monk had was they suddenly became ravenously hungry I thought this was a funny description so again between ten and two or ten and three they're fasting So at the third hour a cedar causes shivering headaches and vertigo by the ninth hour the patient has recovered to strengthen When dinner is ready he jumps out of bed So it's they suddenly became very sick just because they're fasting for four or five hours during the day Mm-hmm. It's funny. Yeah, this one probably doesn't land as well with us because there's not as much fasting I don't know if you all fasted about whatever you just was talking about it, but um, yeah I mean I or not so much faster than you're like or you can tell it there's a Yeah, but I mean I've fasted for things before and yeah, it's true like like on on a regular day on a regular day by lunchtime Maybe I'm hungry, but on a day where I'm specifically fasting like everyone is food Or you know Everyone looks like the turkey legs like you see on cartoons everyone and the food they have and you're sort of hyper aware of their food and it's your heart you like you said I'm gonna fast because of whatever reason yeah and And then it's your body.
It's like you know your little fallen spirit saying like I'm gonna focus on food and not focus on this particular thing that you're praying for this particular reason why you're fasting for it whereas on any other day you wouldn't even Be thinking about it. Yeah, you just be doing work. I also feel whenever I fast that I want to tell everyone that I'm fasting Which is like the one thing that you're committed not to do fasting. I think yeah, it's an exaggerated concern Like I want everyone to know like how hard life is for me right now.
Yeah, yeah, like no, it's true I yes, we all are holding the me and so I think last time I fasted I like make sure people See I just get meals on accident. I forget it's pretty hard and you love the school too much so I also I'm lazy I'm just forgetful. So when you talking about this Is this a similar thing to like when throw says most men live lives of quiet desperation? Is this kind of the same is that the sentiment the same sentiment you say more?
that people are living these lives of quiet desperation this idea that that People don't have a plan or a purpose or they're just sort of going through the motions and deep down if they ever thought about the plans And the motions that they're doing they kind of freak out about yes We're doing Hamlet in senior English And I'm becoming convinced that a CD and the problem of a CD is a really big topic in Hamlet Because there's this one moment where Hamlet is looking at men who are gonna march off to their death And he has this thought where he says they're marching off to their death for some battle that doesn't mean anything Do they and they're doing it they're seemingly doing it with their will but like fully knowing that this is what they're doing And he says to himself Do they know something about life that I don't like are they willing to die and because they've settled their hearts on this being a noble Purpose and I just never figured it out or am I actually the person that's figured out what life is and they're just going through their lives Going through the motions and they're these sort of like sheep people who are not even thinking about their life So my point is like throw says has a CD on that case Or back and forth Hamlet Hamlet often accuses himself of lack of initiative Something we talked about in my class going back to the tripartite soul He's got the intellect and he's got desires But he cannot isn't like does not spurring him to action and he will he accuses himself of that more than once and one of the times He does it is when he sees this army marching off And he's like they are going and fighting over this patch of land that means nothing they're all willpower Yeah, and they're gonna go and they're gonna fight this fight and I have all kinds of reasons to be doing stuff Like my honors besmirch my dad is dead my mom is married my uncle and it's weird And I like it and I'm responsible for all this justice and I'm doing nothing and so he accuses himself of yeah This lack of will and then eventually it just spirals down and Hamlet to you know if you're in my class spoilers watch out Well, it's bylers down and taking no action until the moment is come and he's like Oh, I'm just ready for it and that readiness is what matters and he hasn't really done much except put on a play once Yeah, but his musing of it is am I am I right in overthinking because I really want to make the right action or am I wrong in not acting because I'm not acting like I feel like the person who has the vice of a CD can really justify their inactivity or their laziness through lots of good reasons But and so the what I think you think are good reasons. Yes, but look at so the hard thing for the monk is that there's Just be in their room praying for those hours But what they want to do is go and encourage another person Yeah, go to another monastery and give them a really rousing speech on the level of God They want to go to the local city and and and evangelize and bring people to the Lord But what they're called I just I think of your talk on parents lost it There's a thing that they're called to their there's a location given to them They're rejecting their vocation in order to do another good thing and so by rejecting their vocation. They're doing a wrong And so it's almost it's a lack of faith in God that he will take care of the other monastery or will reach the people of the city Your question on cowardice the answer is yes, if that falls under a CD up so we Got going to this right now. So we said the first daughter.
So the first thing that flows out of the CD up we said was despair so What flows from a CD or two thing or how many kids are there many children? They're all very bad You don't want to be in this family so the sin Discrepures where we flee the acts that sat in us and he avoid so you're trying to handle it Is he avoids the things that leads to the end here again? He does this in the way of thing hardiness he avoids the acts that leads to the ends that are advisable but difficult And that's he should have stood up and done something instead chose not to and that was you're describing So absolutely that would be being hard in this and we were out of conversation Just before we start we have recorded the podcast that paying hardness is in opposition to magnanimity or great solidness Hamlet is making himself a smaller weaker lesser person instead of acting nobly acting acting greatly Yeah, absolutely that'll under CD. Okay.
I'm gonna go back to the signs of a CD and then we'll get to We'll go through all the children. I guess man. This is gonna be good. Okay.
This has given us a direction to go with this Okay, so it's adredated concern for one's health is a sign of a CD a another sign of a exaggerated concern for everyone's health Yes, that's what we talked about for the fasting and where suddenly people get headaches and it's fascinating that this book is like the modern What's it's not about the book the modern a CD of the unknown or times? I think it's not on with that with the over the over yeah fascination with one's health Yeah, it's to say so we're talking so it's a various as a father a long time ago But the book is written by Charles not so he's a still living but a decade monk and he is summarizing summarizing that work He'll eventually get to a coin is because I can't let a podcast go by without talking about Thomas coin is so you are playing the Classical stuff you should know you know at home that you can Thomas references Thomas can be your 25 squares Thomas Thomas appoint us would be yep, okay, so over concern for one's health next one is a version domain will work The funny one about this is that the way that the monks would make money. You know this you know how much money beer beer No, well, I mean yes, but not in this case because we can't talk about the devil's crew on this So they would they would knit the I don't know knitting or they would make these like baskets They make these like wicker kind of baskets and then they would go to the town to sell them and if no one bought them They would come back and they would make them they would take apart the baskets They made and put them down and then come back the next day make a basket go to town try and sell them come back take them apart Like a days opening his eyes and tear right now because doesn't that sound like horrible like it sounds awful? Yeah, I think it's meaningless I mean that's kind of yeah I mean you work kind of doesn't matter the reason they did this work is because it didn't require the full mental faculty to be making Baskets and taking them apart so let you pray while you're making those baskets and so That was the reason they picked a simple whatever a simple task to do but someone who is under the Under the influence of a city who someone who is influenced by cd only sees the meaninglessness of the activity and so Not the benefits that's the version to work and that's that's the version to work Wonder like once you got up a stock of baskets or how many baskets can you sell before I found on you know A basket and then like can't you make something else that simple that other people actually need a good for it?
It's not a good it's not about the basket like that's that's the beautiful thing that the work process itself is about the worker there It's about that person being able to grow closer to the Lord to pray to the Lord to be praying for other people instead of about the product They're making I don't know I'm also the business major knee is like this should be so much more efficient But I feel like you have a best of both worlds there like make some something else and then switch to stinkin blankets and make some Blankets that doesn't require the whole thing like it's not yeah, I don't know yeah Yeah, I mean that's the modern I guess another wrong with that they well they were in the desert any blankets I guess it's cold in the day. It's cold in the night and they're scorpions. You got to keep the scorpion It's just working blanket. We just invent sorry.
Okay. That's a version to work And then I already talked about neglect and observing the rule this that which primarily manifested itself in not praying and this is I mean this is why I see still today that like so people will get to a sad place and their focus turns to what can I Do to get out of this instead of praying to God believe in the sovereign God who can help them in that situation? That would be another sign of the creeping in and then just a general discouragement at the end There's some stories here, but I'll skip over this so a feeling of discouragement a Version to manual work all those things there, but a vigorous to the two these five things has five remedies for a CD out again What they kind of go with the causes we just talked about I'll just I'll run through these and then we'll jump forward to The dollar the dollars of a CD out which is really interesting. So what we do for one who shows these?
These actions guessing no no no no you want to quit I already have a bunch of points here because I Right yeah, so there are five What are the five remedies for a CD I would we already say one we can pick it off the list which one I don't know I thought we're just up Praying praying is one of them. Yeah I'm actually writing this down. So I actually get this right. Okay working now those are combining one but what I'm or I don't know what's that?
I'm working or on the border or are are paired together. Well because remember when they're making the best of the pranks I'm so there's a time together of those two. I don't think you'll get together for you might get one of them Fighting So if caring about your house is one of them is like willful neglect of your person like not showering or bathing or Or flagulation or something. I'm thinking of all I know about desert fathers and who did many of those things more fasting Is that a like that my solution?
I don't know. I feel like the thing that would pull me out of a cedar is Fellowship like brother buddies No one will go for a jog not one of them. Doesn't my niacal life mean yeah, no now does one. I mean there's a Yeah, I want us to it and the lonest to it.
So is it is it is it? Concentration the scriptures that one I feel like that's an automatic answer that Really Bible yeah, I brought in with prayer and work because you're praying through the Bible actually I'm gonna give you on Bible the term he uses is contradiction But the way that one contradicts is through the Bible and we'll talk about that is there's a fancy Greek term for it But I already know that I can't pronounce it. You're squashing your hopelessness by bringing pertinent verses to this Right, yeah, honestly so now we're tight again. I'm one one Think about your one more guess you want two more guess what you want.
Yeah, two more guess. It's great each or just a future Okay, I do not think I'll get these other three Momentum worry yes meditation on death. Yeah, think on death. Oh, that's just because it was in a hamlet recently I feel like that's cheap.
You also teach in your English. I know I wasn't gonna bring it up. I'll too easy two more Mmm. I mean I'm trying to think of something that would end in forgetfulness of self So can I give you a hint?
Sure I feel like that's one of the things is that you are if you are Disbearing of your own self improvement. That's very inward focused thing and if you can find something that would focus you outwards that that would bring hope Yes, so is it service that one yes? I'm gonna be the point because it's sticking with that service It's it's yeah is you can start with service and still be impacted by you see it's that you'll give up eventually So it's perseverance is one of them. Okay, you start with something you keep with it and so sir Yeah, absolutely for service.
So you are then tied it also says God on my sheet because you Gag a major Why do we do the quiz show with I mean we only do it when he's he's leaving the podcast I'm very with that because I would get all them wrong There's one more left Tears the last one is tears which might be kind of surprising when a CD is tied with despair and sadness all those things right there But is it just cried out like have a good cry it's so all these I can buy that yeah So great after good crisis but it's also that so all these things are done unto you They're done before they're done to I guess God and so it's it's not attempting to save oneself anymore It's that moment of like giving up to God. I can't hear for myself I can't I cannot will myself to stay in my room for five hours to pray I cannot will myself too fast well. I cannot will my to do these things God I need you to change me so one of the perseverance and one of them is giving up Um to God. I mean it's like it's like God work on me.
I need you so so I guess kind of a spiritual abandoned Yeah, but rather than being the opposite of perseverance it is leaving that perseverance up to someone other than yourself Yeah, but not in despair. It's a very mention faith. Yes Yes, there's a hope type to it We're like reaching out the other I mean if you've ever seen a movie none of you should ever see fight club You're seeing fight club. It's like they say what what once you hit bottom That's the only time that you can truly be free And if that's what this means like you hit the point where you don't think you can improve yourself And so you give it over to someone who can't somebody's not following the first rule.
Oh, yeah, so I'll talk about I'm sorry anyway, so I'm not in the club. I can talk about all I want so what the author talks about here is that to weep is to acknowledge That one needs to be saved so it is that point of being at the end of oneself? I like this so from our topic on the ways of reading scripture I like this kind of metaphor of way of thinking about tears tears tears of a second meaning They're like water that falls on a hard rock and over time and just a penetrative so that that hard rock is our heart that is being Changed so I like that as an analogy So run run run through them again, so first one is tears It's that emitting that acknowledging that one needs to be saved There's just this quote at the end that I was reading sadness is burdensome and a seed is irresistible But tears shed before God are stronger than both. Well, that was really good.
The second one is prayer and work So in response to desire to not do not pray and do not work is to do Yeah, and even what's funny is so first of all analogy Drop in three you got to your free throws your daily free throws you just work you pray But um so perseverance is point number five But also for instance is in one of the quotes given here for prayer work So these are many of these are tied together But first a quote from a vagus perseverance is the cure for cedia along with the execution of all tasks with great attention and the fear of God So measure for yourself and every work and do not let up until you've completed it So the next one is contradiction which is where scripture comes into this and so It's the use of so it takes its example from Christ in the desert against Satan So we're saying what offer he would say one thing to Christ But Christ would counter that with either a verse or another verse if Satan had quoted it depending on which part of it When Satan quote scripture Christ quote scripture right back So the use of a verse from scripture to confound level when evil thoughts come into one's heart the goal is to dash them against Christ immediately And they use the song 137 here, which is just really interesting spiritual reading of that verse It's a really tough part of the songs when I talk about like killing all of like the the children of Babylon, right? That's a rough one it is but the reading that they take here is that it's not actually go and kill those people It's there are these evil thoughts that are coming after you and what you are to do is to dash them against the rocks the rock of Christ Yeah, so it's a spiritual reading of that is a much more enjoyable reading up someone Then the next one is to meditate on death a grand subaminta mori which remember that you should die isn't that yeah? Isn't the famous story that Caesar had someone who was in Caesar? It was Marcus Aurelius I think and he would he would hire a slave to stand next to him and ever whenever somebody came in was like Oh great emperor Marcus Aurelius you were the most amazing thing your empire stretches to the heavens The slave would lean over and say you were but a man and you're gonna die one day Yeah, it's like a counterbalance to your pride or is it counterbalance to thinking that you were amazing as a slave I feel like I'll be a great job.
There's a lot of jobs that don't want to the slave telling your master that he's gonna die one day I feel like that's the good that's you get promoted to that job. That's not the mean you'll work And I guess for him it was to bring him down to earth and say that you're humbling your mortal and you'll die But what this is about so this is an elevating this is a little bit more because of the Christian is It's excellent. I mean it's it is to be with God and see him And be with him so and also one day the toil of life is gonna be done Yeah, and the fallen living in a fallen place there will be you know revelation chapter 20 is gonna happen one day where there are no more tears And every knee bows so it is so I can see I can see how a mental more in this is kind of doing double duty Yeah, it's you know humanizing you if you're feeling too too high up, but it's also Humanizing you if you're feeling too beast you're feeling too lowly. That's good I've done some counseling training and through the Christian counseling education foundation Which is great.
Yeah, yeah, they the first lecture that they do in the fundamentals of Forgive its fundamentals of biblical counseling or dynamical counseling is one of those two names But the first lecture that they do is an hour and a half description of heaven And that's awesome. That is how they started a discussion of counseling and I just think there's something to that That makes a lot of sense that what sin wants to do is curve us in word and to look only at the despair only at that sadness But we have great hope and death is in a weird way a part of that hope And so reminding oneself of hey when I want to you flee from here and experience some earthly pleasure is incomparable to or it is Probably beneath the heavenly pleasure I will experience and then I can't experience in a small way right now by saying and praying and growing toward God Cool. Okay, that's a to think on death and then perseverance is to stick with things very similar to praying and working with one of the other ones But the yeah, just stick with things is really what it is So there there's a part of like human volition and this of like you choose to stick with that thing But that's why I'm glad tears comes first that you have to recognize that you need God and that you can't will yourself But perfectly do all these things but you still you still try. I mean you still want to serve God basically at some point are we gonna talk about why the authors argument is that this is the unnamed modern sin of the times oh This is actually the one part of the book I was going to skip so God bless you so So the readers just rolling their eyes So let me say God bless you in the way that Catherine vals says bless your heart where maybe she's not necessarily blessing your heart My cursing your heart Sorry, okay, so so if a race is writing just poor Catherine So I think this is writing in 345 AD and then Thomas coin is like, you know Not quite a thousand years later, but you know whatever roughly is going to to write more on a CD able to talk about in a second But then from Thomas Aquinas to today that word is cd disappears and that's because so Vigorous has these eight eight wicked thoughts eight evil thoughts Is cdia is one of them well with Aquinas a cdia and sadness get combined into one which is sloth Yeah, I think we talked about that on the Sin's but from Aquinas to today.
There's a William of Occam I think it's the guy that they talk about and he removes a cdia at all from his list of sins And so that's why it's lost in that sense that it used to be a thing I was talking about up until Middle Ages right until the scholastics and then it's lost so to speak from that so to recovery of that term Occam in his razor just shaving it down Different Occam, right? Right, I don't say I'm Occam William of Occam. Yeah, yeah, so you know these things I just read in the book ones Okay, so that's why it is the unnamed almost literally because I don't know outside of Christian That's why I'm so close to the question circles often you talk about the CD. I'm sure oh and for listener Occam's razor is not that he shaved off a CD That's me at a poor attempted joke Occam's razor is something about simplicity Yeah, it's a bit the right one to the right one.
Okay, so he's never watched ancient aliens Facts I think the other reason it may have disappeared is just because we've we have moved to a different view of man Like as as an evolutionary based society on the large part We see man is not needing improvement and so why would you ever despair of being the thing that you are you don't need to change? Yeah, right and I think I Mean a lot of people get sad, but it becomes less about sadness of you know I think it becomes a more confusing sadness when you don't understand kind of where it's coming from or if the human heart does feel this kind of Despair we've either pathologized it and said something on the lines of like you are sick or your brain chemistry is all screwed up Or we've also sort of externalized it and said well, it's not a human Disspiritual dissatisfaction it's some sort of outside cause like the modern economy or anything enough exercise or yeah Or the breakdown of family units because of the internet or whatever right and and we always try one want to find some sort of outside Factor that we say is causing a spiritual malady because we don't want to say the human heart is wicked and broken It needs fixing and needs Jesus. I just came across the circle from David Hicks who we talked about before about norms and ability hopefully friend of the podcast David You have no idea. Oh, so he lives in rural Montana He should so so you wrote an ability this very influential book on Christian education so in 2016 wrote this article about whether classical Christian education is possible in the modern age Interesting he said no, yeah, have you read this?
I have not but it doesn't surprise me And he part of what you are talking about is is a piece of that is that there's no longer this view of man being both this material and immaterial And that's even even the Greeks who did not or not Christian still had this idea of there being kind of like a spiritual side spiritual aspect of a person one which is one there are four reasons that Classical Christianity classical Christian education is harder now than it was ever before that's one of them One of them is the loss of an idea of a telos the idea of there being an end or a purpose of a person I forget the other two or an end of purpose that is that is like an ideal to all people Yeah, I'm sure I think we have an idea of teleology, but it's an intensely personally crafted one You need to come up with your teleology for yourself you need to come up with why what is your reason for the your heart all your dreams figured out and That's what college is for and so that's why you know you can pay 40 grand to go figure it out and Yeah, and it's And so we've kind of we can still yeah since our hearts are wired for purpose But when we can now turn it in we can sort of commoditize it and we can say here is a here is a market so that you can go in and If you still haven't found what you're looking for you can go and try this other thing and I know you're describing Your article almost to a tea. I hear the you two song in my head right still found I'm looking for this idea of sort of going off and trying all of these various different things whereas in the ancient the classical world It was human beings have a tell us here it is this is what it is It is it is you it is the good life. It is happy here some prescriptions for how to follow I was actually wondering as you talked about the five solutions how How much has like modern psychology proven some of those things to be effective for depression or to be effective as solutions for Mansoul and how how we are trying to sort of find these same solutions, but we're doing it through a different avenue Right we're trying to do it for modern psychology and and lab studies rather than you know Like the tried and true wisdom of the monks. It's kind of a different a different thing But I'm wondering if we are ending in the same place so this Inspector Frankl, man search for meaning so he is He's a do who live to the Holocaust or by the Holocaust and that's what he wrote Man search for meaning about the experience of people going through the Holocaust and so the He is kind of discovering like who made it through like what what traits were there People who made it through and there was this like hope like but there was a meaning to anything that was happening that there was something on the other side of it Led to them making it through the concentration camps you then developed a field of psychology called logo therapy And so little therapy is what you just said.
It's like ascribing It's kind of picking a telos for yourself is logo therapy and so you give a meaning to your life So yes, like it's a secular answer to The Greek idea of telos is also secular so that's not a good way of phrasing it but there's a modern psychological version of what has been a classical solution instead of it being there is a telos that you pick one This is reminding me of theology the study of theology in the Middle Ages was seen as a medicinal art It was seen as something that you would use to cure spiritual maladies So it was actually a very practical thing Oh, well, you're feeling depressed about the world well What you need to do is know that heaven exists and there's your medicine for you Yeah, and here's the reasons why I have exist and here's a theology coming from from the book of revelation or whatever And here's all of the different passages that have to do with heaven and here's the story of it Ingested and you'll feel better. I love that. I love the idea that that theology was seen as a medicinal art in the Middle Ages So I feel like we've kind of nailed you we've talked about the symptoms we've talked about Your question of have the five solutions been kind of born out in in social research dancers Yes, but is it a theological answer is that religious answers? No, right?
It's I mean, yeah, it would be secular but like the very practices that they do, you know, like work Speak truth to yourself. I think it would be the modern version of contradiction by that kind of thing I for I for daily affirmations. Yeah, that's totally yeah, or the what about the like if you're feeling weak just like do a power stance Like stand with your hands on your hips and if you heard that talk did you watch that? Yeah?
What's the research fell under scrutiny? It has not been able to be replicated, but it's an interesting thing. I'm sorry Okay, so I think he writes this stuff and he I guess yeah He's what AJ saying is that like this is unique to the desert bothers for sure, but And so it's not always gonna translate perfectly to the modern context, but that's why we jump ahead about a thousand years to go into a coin So let's go into those the seven kids Yeah, not these nice little children. It's just because you mentioned seven So the bigger said eight and they were based on I think it's eight tribes that were surrounding Israel in the Old Testament at some point and so It's a malachites.
Yeah, I guess I know Your next question not really but so what the figure says is that each one of those represents a different one of these wicked thoughts It's kind of fun. Yeah, I think so it's one again another interesting example of someone not a it's not a literal reading of the scripture But a spiritual reading of scripture that those tribes each point to a different evil thought or sin But then quite it's really like this idea of sevens and so he doesn't want there to be eight of these bad things He wants to be seven. That's why Sloth and becomes this combination of a cedar and despair, but then what flows out of despair as a result of that so these are the results of the seven yeah, so When we talk about something being a cardinal virtue or I don't think cardinal advice is the right term for this but That term cardinal comes from the Latin cardo, which is a hinge because all Sends hinge from that main sin got you so things things come off of a cd Cd has a drop down menu Are all of these little little tabs you don't want to hit yeah So it's like recording a macro in word you just a bad one most people don't know how to use it You're like oh no, there's a record on what I do And so I don't know this probably brings it closer to home with like a cd as this fancy Latin term But like what does a cd actually look like in the day today? So here's what's going to be today?
So we talked about fleeing the acts that sadness as being one of those categories that happens through avoidance so Despair we talked about the first order the most terrible daughter of cd It's discussed with the things of God It's and no hope in there being spiritual good and it's very sad place to be that's despair It's the worst Fing hardness is a lab courage which also flows out of a cd and torpor with regard to the commandments That was really funny way for you to talk for like a lazy Inactivity or lethargy so yeah torpor with regards to the commandments Then there are so like that shall not murder I don't really want to that shall like honor thy father mother Or even commands that are like positive commands of pray or fast or things like that Okay, even would be even easier to see it's just kind of a I don't really want to Is there like a what good is this gonna do yes? Yes? Yes? Well, yes, I'll finish this will wrap up with that That's wrong.
Yeah, that would be interesting So then there are sins that spring from cd by struggling against what saddens us and the one of the things that can set us are other people And so struggling as other people they've used a fancy term of ranker But bitterness or sinfulness especially long standing so a resentfulness of other people is a thing that will flow out of this despair resenting it's like Bolding alone, right? Isn't that the the Bowling alone That famous book that says is going on hanging out anymore and people are yes They're still doing hobbies, but they are becoming more and more hobbies isolated in this modern world I don't know if it's because of bitterness or sinfulness. Yeah, but I could see that happening so we could point something like Politics becoming more polarized. So there's a few research on some really fun studies where they look at the number of people Who are moderates and that number is declining as people who are extremely conservative or extremely liberal are increasing That's a thing that's happening another thing that's happening is that people who are similar to one another are living close to one another so People are less exposed to those who disagree with them.
It's just a thing that's happened So there would be bitterness or sinfulness between opposing viewpoints and that thing that's ranker Which is a bummer and then the other thing that comes out of struggling against what saddens us is struggling against the spiritual goods themselves And that's malice that's hating of the good which is not good Don't do that and then there's a whole group of things that are wondering after unlawful things So that's an easiness of mind curiosity used here in a negative sense Laquosity which is Before about the interior instability and so one thing that being a child about is is an interior instability It's that one feels like they have to keep talking and talking it a manifestation of that interior unease is talking all the time So this podcast could be the three of us manifesting RC I hope we love good things. We love good things We don't have to spare a search a bit But one of those things where you said the hatred of good things Yes, this has been something I've been thinking about in regards to the heroes that we have in more modern movies I mean, I remember so when the new I don't know if it was new Superman movie came out and Superman as sort of our Did you see it? I have not seen it. I've not seen it, but you're in the majority I think but the I but what I read of reviews is Superman more in this like dark mold or we a lot more of our action heroes are these heroes that are like really dealing with like Dark personal trauma.
They're brooding angry people So it's like Superman has a gambling problem But we sometimes see we sort of see that as like Superman is more authentic because he's flirting with despair and badness Whereas if we actually had modeled before us a hero that loved the good and wanted good things We would think of that as sort of naive right like Harry Potter gets darker as it goes on I was thinking we think that somehow more authentic. Wasn't that that's the dark night trilogy? Yeah, that has to be that edge to do it for to be real But I mean can you think of of a hero who loves the good and and and sort of joys in that good And sort of like it's just sort of poppy action movies of modern times. Well, it just seems to be like a trope Yeah, not Sherlock Sherlock is all messed up on the coke, but Watson wants the good.
He has a family He wants good for Sherlock. He's his soldier. It seems like I mean He's not goes becomes become a bad guy. I mean she turns out she was a BBC version Yeah, I mean turns out she was like a spy kind of thing But she loves him and I mean seems like Watson's a pretty good shape at some point He does struggle with a little bit of sadness every now and again But I think he's like he's an example of someone who wants and seeks the good He's a supporting character exact kind of a problem.
Yeah, and not the hero And just like he's a wise game gee, right if we had a hero like for I think the modern dispositions we wouldn't buy it Because it's not believable. It's not believable. No, no, no Yeah, but again, he's a supporting character. He's not the main Frodo can't go home, right?
He's too and he's too changed by the experience, but I don't know. This is not a this is not a well thought through thought of mine It's just something I've been thinking about in that I can't think of heroes that Haven't been sort of put into this sort of more modern despair thing because we think it makes them more believable and authentic I think that this one on okay, so Wandering after a awful things we went on theiness of the mind curiosity the quasity restlessness of the body and instability and again I'm more than this Benedictine sense of the need to move to that I feel like you gotta go to any town or switch jobs or anything Just can't wait to get out of this place and go to college or just can't wait to graduate in here. That's whatever That probably very common one for graduating singers. I have the feeling that I'll get to college and everything will be better Yeah, but your soul is the same.
Yeah, a lot of things will probably be better a lot of things will change in college I thought they did. Yeah, I agree with that, but there's a role I don't know the role external things so like let's say that I go off to college and all these external things are removed And then I act better have I actually gotten better like my sin can still be present I'm just not manifesting it externally This is the thing the difference between a virtue and habit that my virtue can remain unchanged But my habits can be better because That person I fought with all the time. I don't I don't see them every day. Yeah, so I don't have to fight with that anymore I still might have hatred on my heart.
Sure. It's just I surround myself with nice people and so I never have to experience that anyway, so that is those are the children of cds that flows out of cds and Also, this will came up in the seven at least sins podcast before is that most of these virtues are in opposition to a vice And so a question might be what virtue is a cds in opposition to is it? I don't want to guess on this one. I feel like I should be our this could be our our tiger.
Oh gosh What is the cds in opposition to yeah one of the humility is opposite pride, right? I'm gonna answer your questions. It's not it's not charity. That's greed Temperance that is one guess for temperance.
What is your guess? I don't think it's temperance. I think temperance is for gluttony crap I think you're right. Um, yeah, I don't want to sit on this again.
Not the greatest That was a trick question. I apologize. It is an opposition to faith open charity. Oh, sorry according to a coin Sorry, that happened the way that he knows no one wins when Thomas System Tear this mother down we we talk about how we were taking modern phrases and making the nation select rip the system And then the evenly even lift bro was a dust now even heft brethren hoist hoist hoist hoist hoist hoist hoist hoist hoist hoist hoist hoist hoist hoistee We need to notify the attack with it would imply like my fully enroped system so at So I guess all three faith open love is acquaintances answer to what is a CVS in opposition to which and one level means to practice faith In love is to fight against love and such fight against interior and stability is to fight against So the reason he comes up with faith up and love being the three things in opposition is this idea of how one how one loves the thing how one loves.
So yeah, we'll go through this and we'll talk about how faith up and charity relate into all this and all about the end of that. So try to think AJ when you want, I don't know, like a really cool new DJ thing. Walk me through like what happens from you realize you need a new DJ thing to you get the new DJ thing. What happens?
First I really haven't ha over whether or not I really need it. Are we talking like one of my things breaks and I need to replace that? We're like, okay, so I want it to be something that you want. So if the reason is breaking, that's fine.
But it can also be you want a shiny new speaker. I don't know. Okay, so first I I have a hover where I really need it and then I accuse myself of greed because and then I wonder I ask myself am I ever going to get any new business because they're you know with DJing it's kind of a like is it gonna keep happening? I don't know.
People might stop calling me. I don't exactly advertise. So there's I'm like is the payoff worth it? Will I pay this off?
Do I need this? And I go through this big cycle and then once I'm and while I do this I'm also doing research for what kind of thing that I need because I don't I found out long ago when you buy cheap tools, you know, you pay for pay more for cheap tools than you do for expensive ones because you have to buy them again because they break. So I find a good tool that's reasonably priced that's gonna last me a long time and then I buy it and then I feel guilty for a while until I feel like it's paid itself off. That's kind of my whole program.
I'm not really like now this is actually money. Don't have a great relationship, but let's take that. So you start off in there's a thing that you need but you just kind of this back and forth of like whether you actually like have to have it or not. But eventually you find the thing that you need.
Right. So at some point you move from being passive as to whether you need this new thing to intending to buy that thing. Right. I mean, usually I got to have like fool myself.
I got Amazon. I'm looking at it and I'm like, yeah, this is the thing. And it's oh whoops, out of the car. Oh, how that happened.
Oh, I checked it and then I feel guilty for a couple of days. And then it comes in the mail and I'm like, well, can't set it back. So yeah, but that's perfectly weirdly enough. It's perfectly showing off the stages of what it means to go from being separate from a thing and growing to love a thing.
So obviously, quite as we point this regard, but from ages example right there, there's kind of this, this union of intention. So you go from being passive in regards to speakers, passive in regards to DJ equipment to the point of saying, I need one of those. I need one of those. At the second level, you take action toward that you take action toward getting a key thing, speaker.
I don't know the names for any other DJ equipment. So I hope this goes enough to a thing. There's things we need. So you're taking action, music, board, but at the second level, you take action to go on Amazon and click at the cart.
And then you buy that. And then the third one, you are eventually united with that thing. The thing is brought to you as speakers delivered to your door. And then you are one.
And then you are one. So it's kind of weird language. I'm using here. But that is how love works.
Love moves from this place of desire, or intending a thing, desiring a thing, which is taking action and then union with that thing. And so again, obviously, quite as points is primarily two spiritual things, but God being the ultimate good. So union with God is his ultimate goal. One step before that is we must take action to train our hearts to bring us closer to God, but to have those actions, we have to have an intention beforehand.
And so it's he has a breakdown of all three of those. And so ultimately, a CD has a breakdown of seeing God as an ultimate good, a thing that is worthy of worthy of union, worthy of affection, worthy of time. But it's also a CD as an opposition to taking action toward getting closer to God. It's not seeing the usefulness of prayer, not seeing the usefulness of time and scripture.
And then it's also opposed to that first moment of not seeing any purpose and intention. So anyway, that's the CD. I'll wrap up there. So I'll I'll I'll draw us to a close and I might note to the listener that we have confirmed that that thing that's scratching around with the floor.
It's not my chair. There's there's an animal under the floor. I'm pretty sure. Super fun.
I think that's fun. So this has been a lot of classical stuff. You know, thank you Thomas for leading us through it. If you'd like to get a hold of us, you can contact us at classical stuff at veritasacademy.net.
You can also check out our website at classical stuff.net. Yep, same same ending there. And you can find us wherever podcasts happen, except for Spotify. You can find us on Google Google music and you can find us on iTunes.
Yeah, we'd love to hear from you. Any questions you have any suggestions for shows we want to hear all that stuff. We love to interact with folks that love the same things we do. So give us a call.
And last words, gentlemen, oh, we have a quote, I got a commonplace book quote for you. This one is about it's from Plutarch's lives. And this is about Lycurgus and the Spartans. And therefore, as soon as they came to be well grown, they took a great deal of care of their hair to have it parted and trimmed, especially against the day of battle, pursuant to a saying recorded of their log ever that a large head of hair had a beauty to a good face and terror to an ugly one.
Truth. So that's a good ending. Alright, thanks again for listening to us and we will see you next time. Bye.