R.J. Snell > Quotes

“Moderns are tempted to consider the world as what Heidegger termed “standing reserve,” an undifferentiated set of resources awaiting our use. Rather than having the status of creatures full of God’s weight, things are just there, standing at attention before our desires, waiting to be led around on a leash. Things of the world become objects distanced and alienated from us, problems to overcome with some sort of method or technique. For the medievals, a thing known—a tree or cat, say—was a subject of being, it held its own act of existence, whereas we view things as objects. As subjects, creatures had interiority, a form or nature or essence that we did not create but were nevertheless bound to recognize. Now things are objects under our judgment, waiting to be captured in a sketch and cast aside. If we are not bound by the things, but they by us, what limits our use other than our own will? In what way can our desires be ordered so as to respect the integrity of things when their meaning is determined by the awful lightness of our whims?”
― R.J. Snell, Acedia and Its Discontents: Metaphysical Boredom in an Empire of Desire

“Dependency does not reduce value but rather grants dignity, a notion fundamentally counter to those for whom the freedom of birds is insulting. God’s glory does not diminish ours, and our dignity is not a threat to God, for God’s own glory, in part, is us. The glory of God is present to things as the graciousness of their being; things are never just themselves, they carry the weight of God along with them.”
― R.J. Snell, Acedia and Its Discontents: Metaphysical Boredom in an Empire of Desire

“When misunderstood autonomy governs our life, it is inevitable that the dignity of others must be rejected, for everyone else threatens our unchecked sovereignty. This terrible covenant is especially acute given the new power of technology. Not only have we freed ourselves from the bonds and bounds of creation, but we have alienated ourselves from them, declaring them enemy. Not only against the physical world, although that too, but also other persons and ourselves, as everything is bleached out and rendered defenseless against our frightful autonomy. Finding the world as nought, and ourselves as unchecked, we consume ourselves and all other creatures. To be free as we wish requires hatred of being, even hating life itself, just as Evagrius warned. As John Paul II recognized, this “encourages the ‘culture of death’ creating and consolidating actual ‘structures of sin’ which go against life. The moral conscience, both individual and social, is today subjected . . . to an extremely serious and mortal danger.”10”
― R.J. Snell, Acedia and Its Discontents: Metaphysical Boredom in an Empire of Desire

“indolence, sloth rejects the burden of order, choosing instead the breezy lightness of freedom. Loving self more than relation, and autonomy more than the good, in sloth one rejects the weight and density of living in an ordered creation.”
― R.J. Snell, Acedia and Its Discontents: Metaphysical Boredom in an Empire of Desire

“no way does God subvert or replace the act of his creatures. Instead, God “always governs things in such a way that it is they that really perform their own operations . . . creatures, from the very fact that they are, must be endowed with efficiency.”13 Aquinas goes further. He suggests that if God alone were the immediate cause of everything it “would imply” not God’s greatness, but, instead a “lack of power in the Creator: for it is due to the power of the cause, that it bestows active power on its effect.”14 Christianity, or at least in its Catholic fullness, is “an integral and solidary humanism,”15 and “the name for that deep amazement at man’s worth and dignity is the Gospel, that is to say: the Good News. It is also called Christianity.”16”
― R.J. Snell, Acedia and Its Discontents: Metaphysical Boredom in an Empire of Desire

“Our modern Empire of Desire manufactures endless appetite while simultaneously denying that anything is objectively good, beautiful, or desirable. The result is not great yearning or passion, but acedia or sloth, a pervasive ‘noonday demon.”
― R.J. Snell, Acedia and Its Discontents: Metaphysical Boredom in an Empire of Desire

“We live in a time of open revolt against God’s law—a time of sloth. Rather than causing delight and comfort, the story God tells of creation is thought repugnant to our autonomy, and we insist that we are suzerains, those rulers countermanding all other laws, even the rule of God. Limits of body, sexuality, death, or life, all are thought obstacles to overcome rather than considered the graciousness of being. At war with God, we scratch out his creation, especially the weak and fragile, fearing that anything outside our control threatens our freedom. We cannot avoid the culture of death now; it hunts us, asserting its control, seeking our embrace, claiming covenant over all things. Some resist the judge—just a few, it seems—attempting fidelity, guarding clemency in some corner of their souls. And they are being stalked. Part One The Weighty Gift of Responsibility”
― R.J. Snell, Acedia and Its Discontents: Metaphysical Boredom in an Empire of Desire