I have always held a certain fascination with monks. At various times in my life, I’ve wondered if I should enter a monastery. A life of seclusion, contemplation, freedom from the burdens of modern society: it all sounds good to me. Of course, I’m not too keen on the abstinence thing, but I suppose it wouldn’t be such a special way of life if some sacrifices weren’t made. Lately I have been reading some of Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s writings and very much enjoying them. I just wanted to share a couple of quotes that resonated with me. I think Thomas and I would’ve had a few things to talk about, had we ever met.

“Technology has its own ethic of expediency and efficiency. What can be done efficiently must be done in the most efficient way—even if what is done happens, for example, to be genocide or the devastation of a country by total war. Even the long-term interests of society, or the basic needs of man himself, are not considered when they get in the way of technology. We waste natural resources, as well as those of undeveloped countries, iron, oil, etc., in order to fill our cities and roads with a congestion of traffic that is in fact largely useless, and is a symptom of the meaningless and futile agitation of our own minds.”

“The attachment of the modern American to his automobile, and the symbolic role played by his car, with its aggressive and lubric design, its useless power, its otiose gadgetry, its consumption of fuel, which is advertised as having almost supernatural power…this is where the study of American mythology should begin.

Meditation on the automobile, what it is used for, what it stands for—the automobile as weapon, as self-advertisement, as brothel, as a means of suicide, etc.—might lead us at once into the heart of all contemporary American problems: race, war, the crisis of marriage, the flight from reality into myth and fanaticism, the growing brutality and irrationality of American mores.”