We are all familiar with the assertion that we live in an age of science. So many times have we heard it that probably few of us pause to give the state- ment reflective content. When we do attempt to say more, particularly what the “science” is that dominates our world, we find ourselves looking at a program of inquiry, and at the solid or tangible results of that program. About the inquiry itself I shall say what may seem a dreadful thing, but I propose to ofter my grounds. It seems to me that this inquiry reflects a habit of mind which must disquiet us. The habit appears to rest on a supposition that if you can do a thing, you must do it. And I can characterize that only as an infantile mentality. It is like the stage of boyhood one passes through during which one feels that if he can chin himself twenty times, he must do it; that if he can throw a rock across a certain stream, he must-do it. The criterion then is not whether you should do a thing, but whether you can do it. I am afraid that much of the vast scientific activity which goes on about us is predicated on nothing profounder than that.

Your fellows that vote for the other team? Oh, those are your enemies. And you should treat them worse because of that. Why would you treat your enemies well? Are you insane?

This is why unpopular policies, such as mass immigration, can continue despite persistent majority public opposition. The public’s opinion does not matter—even if the powers that be cannot change the public’s mind. Though usually, they can change the public’s mind. This is called “change,” and is the most sacred kind of democracy.

Askesis signifies not simply a selfish quest for individual salvation but a service rendered to the total human family; not simply the cutting off or destroying of the lower but, much more profoundly, the refinement and illumination of the lower and its transfiguration into something higher. The same conclusion could be drawn from an examination of other key ascetic terms, such as hesychia (stillness, tranquillity, quietude). This too is affirmative rather than negative, a state of plenitude rather than emptiness, a sense of presence rather than absence. It is not just a cessation of speech, a pause between words, but an attitude of attentive listening, of openness and communion with the eternal: in the words of John Climacus, “Hesychia is to worship God unceasingly and to wait on him. . . . The Hesychast is one who says, ‘I sleep, but my heart is awake’” (Song 5.2). Interpreted in this positive way, as transfiguration rather than mortification, askesis is universal in its scope--not an elite enterprise but a vocation for all. It is not a curious aberration, distorting our personhood, but it reveals to us our own true nature. As Father Alexander Elchaninov observes, “Asceticism is necessary first of all for creative action of any kind, for prayer, for love: in other words, it is needed by each of us throughout our entire life. . . . Every Christian is an ascetic.'" Without asceticism none of us is authentically human.