Patience, Signature Afflictions, and Cultural Renewal

The Israelites despoiling the Egyptians, The Golden Haggadah, f. 13, 1325-1349

1. Bible & Fathers: Patience by St Augustine of Hippo

“The Virtue of the soul which is called patience is so great a gift of God that it is even said to belong to Him who bestows it, in that He waits for the wicked to amend.” That’s the opening of Augustine’s treatise on patience.

Augustine admits the impossibility of explaining “in words the nature and quantity of God’s patience" and then turns to define the patience of man

which is good, praiseworthy, and deserving the name of virtue is said to be that by which we endure evils with equanimity so as not to abandon, through a lack of equanimity, the good through which we arrive at the better. By their unwillingness to suffer evil, the impatient do not effect their deliverance from it; instead, they bring upon themselves the suffering of more grievous ills. But the patient, who prefer to bear wrongs without committing them rather than to commit them by not enduring them, both lessen what they suffer in patience and escape worse things by which, through impatience, they would be submerged. In yielding to evils that are brief and passing, they do not destroy the good which is great and eternal, for “the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared,” the Apostle says, “with the glory to come that will be revealed in us” (Rom. 8.18). And he also says, “our present light affliction, which is for the moment, prepares for us an eternal weight of glory that is beyond all measure” (2 Cor. 4.17).

Read the rest of Augustine’s reflection on patience here.

2. Books & Culture: “All Ages Have Their Signature Afflictions” by Scott Beauchamp

I’ve read a bit of Don DeLillos fiction but was unfamiliar with the philosophy of Byung-Chul Han. Beauchamp’s reflection on the works of these two writers offers a good introduction to them. It also provides good insight into the nature of our “age of anxiety.” Here are the opening paragraphs:

Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han’s latest book to be translated into English, The Disappearance of Rituals, was published at nearly the same time as American writer Don DeLillo’s most recent novel, The Silence. A coincidence, but not merely so. Both books resonate within the same frequency. Both are written in the same key. Han begins his signature book, The Burnout Society, by arguing that “Every age has its signature affliction.” With their two latest works, Han and DeLillo are both responding to the same disease, to the same symptoms: a reduction of the human experience to empty frenetic activity by a socioeconomic regime centered on self-exploitation and the tautological notion of endless self-production. 

It is not simply that everything becomes monetized under such a regime as we have seen dominate Western culture and globalism since the 1980s. It is that human experience itself is degraded. As Han titled certain chapters in The Disappearance of Rituals, things devolve from “Myth to Dataism,” from “Dueling to Drone Wars,” and from “Seduction to Porn.” Play becomes work. Silence becomes noise. And ritual, of course, decays into routine. Death, shorn of significance and meaning, becomes just another data point added to an already endless accumulation.

Or, as DeLillo characterizes this dénouement in White Noise, “That’s why people take vacations. Not to relax or find excitement or see new places. To escape the death that exists in routine things.” Even time away from work is itself an extension of work. Vacation is a momentary escape from the terror of routine, but only so much so that we are recharged once again for work. Vacation is something which exists to make us more efficient. And besides, DeLillo wrote those lines long before people had cell phones, neurologically addictive and tethering us to emptiness.

Beauchamp’s conclusion:

Han and DeLillo do much more than compliment one another’s work. They unwittingly carry on a dialogue about the meaning of ritual, the decay of the symbolic, and the desire for transcendence. Each of their works echo a silence deeper than the words from which they are built.

Read the whole piece here.

3. Essays et al: Cultural Renewal in Augustine: Despoiling the Egyptians by Louis Markos

In case you missed the Symposium video by Louis Markos yesterday, click here to hear his reflection on cultural renewal and the despoiling of the Egyptians.

Please do consider donating $50 or becoming an Eighth Day Member. We’ll send you the 15 other video presentations on “Hope in the Age of Anxiety,” plus we'll be adding some bonus written content to the Symposium Library over the next couple of weeks.