Friction-maxxing and Lent
Possibilities: Choose the harder path.
“Possibility is for the self what oxygen is for breathing,” wrote the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Meaning: when you’re in despair and can’t see a way forward for yourself or for the world, what you need is a sense that something new can happen, and that another life is possible.
Welcome to Plough’s Possibilities. Each week, we’ll be putting new possibilities and unexplored opportunities before seemingly intractable situations.
Convenience Has Its Downsides
Every new app, device, or program is offering something faster, quicker, easier.
Food & Wine reports that take-out is now the primary way people eat at restaurants:
A whopping 75% of restaurant traffic consists of takeout orders, according to a new report by the National Restaurant Association. And they better hope that food is delivered quickly: Nearly 95% of consumers deem speed as “critical” to the experience, while 90% see it as the top priority …
Last year, Walmart shoppers demanded more convenience – and the company obliged:
Walmart is profiting from the desire of consumers to stay home and have goods delivered to them, CEO Doug McMillon told investors during a conference call Thursday. The retailer’s revenue from Walmart Plus—which offers free delivery for $12.95 a month—jumped year-over-year by double digits in the fiscal fourth quarter.
David Zahl lamented one downside of this optimization craze last year:
In theory, [online homework programs are] supposed to make communication between teachers and students easier. Rather than print out an assignment and hand it to your teacher, you just click to turn it in. And yet I spend as much time troubleshooting the various homework programs on my sons’ computers, updating the software, and filling out endless two-factor authentications as I do helping them with their homework. It is a crazy-making experience that leaves everyone frustrated, tired, and not remotely in the mood for learning.
Of course there are obvious benefits that come with this new economy of convenience (like getting your prescriptions delivered to your door), but are there more serious downsides or consequences?
According to a recent article by Ella Whelan, our love of convenience is a direct cause of declining fertility rates.
Their aversion to parenthood was existential – a feeling that children were too much of a challenge. One woman told of her hyperawareness of the daunting nature of motherhood from parenting blogs and how-to books.
Friction-maxxing
One way to push back against this culture of convenience and ease is friction-maxxing.
As described in a recent article by Kathryn Jezer-Morton of The Cut:
Friction-maxxing is not simply a matter of reducing your screen time, or whatever. It’s the process of building up tolerance for “inconvenience” (which is usually not inconvenience at all but just the vagaries of being a person living with other people in spaces that are impossible to completely control) – and then reaching even toward enjoyment. And then, it’s modeling this tolerance, followed by enjoyment and humor, for our kids.
Jezer-Morton offers a few suggestions for how to friction-maxx:
Stop using ChatGPT completely. No, it does not have good ideas for meal planning. Buy a cookbook. Text your friends for advice. Go to Trader Joe’s. Come on. Let your kid experience a bit more independence than they did last year, and self-soothe while you worry about them until eventually you stop worrying so much. (You will always worry a little bit; worrying is friction and there’s nothing wrong with it.)
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained In the hollow round of my skull. And God said Shall these bones live? shall these Bones live?
— T. S. Eliot, “Ash Wednesday”
Lent
Christians have long understood the benefits of leaning into inconvenience, especially during the forty days of Lent (which began last Wednesday).
During Lent, fasting from food, from technology, from convenience, helps Christians remember the suffering of Christ.
The start of Lent, Ash Wednesday, is particularly focused on Christ’s suffering and our own mortality. Tish Harrison Warren writes about Ash Wednesday:
Jesus calls the weary to himself. He does not call the self-sufficient, nor those with the proper religious credentials or perfect, Instagram-able lives. He calls those exhausted from toil, from just getting through the day. He calls those burdened with heavy loads, those weighed down by sin and sorrow. It is these, not the confident and successful, to whom Jesus says, “Come to me.”
The forty days of Lent mirror the forty days of Christ’s temptation in the desert. Christopher Snook writes in our pages about preparing for our own temptations:
It would seem that the Lord was preparing himself to confront the devil not by extraordinary feats but by the daily work of daily life at home in Nazareth — in the words of an old hymn, “the trivial round, the common task.” And perhaps this is instructive as Lent begins. It may be that hiddenness and smallness, the humble life of love and prayer wherever we find ourselves, is where we will learn not to grasp life but to receive it.
This Lent, Plough has a revised and expanded edition of Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter. It takes the reader from the start of Lent all the way to Pentecost with reading by writers from the entire Christian tradition, from Søren Kierkegaard to Edith Stein.
Plough-Share
Reader Michael Nacrelli responds to “Why God Doesn’t Need Psychedelics,” Joseph Murphy’s argument for real Christian mysticism over the drug-induced alternative.
A psychedelic experience neither forces nor guarantees an encounter with God, but it can have the effect of opening one's mind to rediscovering a sense of awe and wonder at the created world and our very existence. Such was the case in my spiritual journey and that of others I've known. This doesn't mean that psychedelics are a means of saving grace, but I think they can make one more receptive to common grace, which can then draw one closer to receiving saving grace. They are not a substitute for the special revelation of the gospel, but they can awaken a desire for spiritual truth.
Do you have any comments or questions – or new possibilities? Send them our way:
I respectfully disagree with Michael’s response to “Why God Doesn’t Need Psychedelics.”
When we rely on substances to “rediscover God’s creation” we attempt to enhance it (and fail, because we create only a temporary illusion), effectively responding with “what You’ve made is not enough.”
Of course everyone’s path is different, but we should be cautious to dwell too long in—or glorify—our climb upward and away from the pull of the world.