But how can asceticism, often associated exclusively with monks and mystics, be a societal principle? As I write in my paper,<\/p>\n
\n[W]e can confirm this by reflecting on the everyday habitus <\/em>of the family. Do we not call dysfunctional a family in which the children are allowed to eat ice cream for breakfast, where the family spends no intentional time together, and disobedience is never disciplined? Do we not rightly call deadbeat a parent who abandons his\/her children, refusing to sacrifice in order to provide for them, instead pursuing a selfish existence? Healthy families, on the other hand, eat meals together according to their own established dietary limitations (\u201ceat your vegetables, then you can have dessert,\u201d for example); they share time and space with one another; the parents sacrifice their time and desires in order to work to provide for the children; the children are required to do chores to contribute to the household; and so on. Society simply does not \u201cwork\u201d apart from ascetic self-renunciation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI go on to clarify: \u201cTrue, such asceticism may be quite light by most standards and not the perfect embodiment of the ideal, but the basic principle must, nonetheless, be present.\u201d Understood in this way, there is no society that can survive apart from some degree of asceticism.<\/p>\n
I find this to be a perspective particularly suited to the Orthodox tradition because there is still an expectation there that everyone would take part in asceticism to some extent. Wednesdays and Fridays are fast days, and the periods of Advent and Lent, among others, are periods where greater emphasis is not only put on fasting, but prayer, almsgiving, simplicity, repentance, etc. Intentional asceticism is still an integral part of the Orthodox ethos, and the Orthodox tradition is full of wisdom regarding the ascetic way of life.<\/p>\n
All of this is well and good, but what does it mean for a free society? According to Edmund Burke,<\/p>\n
\nSociety cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Asceticism is historically the means by which Christians train themselves, in cooperation with divine grace, to put \u201ca controlling power upon will and appetite.\u201d The more self-restraint people have within, the more limited government they can afford to have. The more austere people are with themselves, the more they will have to give to others, thus reducing the need for government assistance. Thus government austerity requires a culture of austerity (and generosity).<\/p>\n
In our nation today, both are needed to a great extent. We have a problem with debt that is only getting bigger by the day<\/a>, and a significant portion of it is due to making promises to future generations that we cannot realistically keep if our attitudes and practices toward debt and deficits do not change<\/a>. We are simultaneously promising our children all sorts of entitlements, many of which are in fact laudable things and worth trying to save, but all of which together are economically unsustainable at our current rate. Yet if we want our government to be more austere for the sake of fiscal responsibility\u2014and we should<\/a>\u2014then we also ought to encourage a more ascetic culture, where austerity for the sake of generosity and love, i.e. true asceticism, is seen as a way of life, what holds our society together, and the means by which we are truly free. Otherwise it will be our own passions that \u201cforge [our] fetters,\u201d and we will only need to look in the mirror to see who to blame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The underlying thesis in the essay below is that 1) man is fundamentally a moral being, and 2) the restoration of culture is fundamentally a moral enterprise. The essay is reproduced by permission of the Acton Institute but note something about that: There is more interest in the Orthodox contribution about the intersections of faith […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1784],"tags":[1844],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12460"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12460"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12465,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12460\/revisions\/12465"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}