If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post.

And indeed I heard these words repeatedly at a theology department at Fordham, so much so that I wondered if the woke at Fordham knew G.K. Chesterton wrote anything else. I kept my mouth shut about the fact that G.K. Chesterton was an absolutely prolific author; that besides numerous apologetic essays he tried his hand at poetry and detective stories; that his works about Roman Catholic doctrine and apologetics by itself represents quite a prodigious output. But as far as the woke at Fordham were concerned, he might have written the "new white post" quote and nothing else. Or at least I do not recall any of the woke who quoted the new white post quote or reference a second work or quote from him; I do not even recall the words up to and including the quote being quoted:

We have remarked that one reason offered for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow better. But the only real reason for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow worse. The corruption in things is not only the best argument for being progressive; it is also the only argument against being conservative. The conservative theory would really be quite sweeping and unanswerable if it were not for this one fact. But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post.

And the words before it well enough speak of trying to be a progressive above being conservative!

(Now I might briefly mention before passing on that G.K. Chesterton speaks of the "new white post", not the "new paisley post" or, ahem, the "new rainbow-colored post."

The "new white post" I'd like to look at

I'd look to look at a deep new change to being human, and a deeper new change after that.

Depending somewhat on where and how you draw the line, our human race has been around for somewhere between 100,000 and 4,000,000 years. The agricultural revolution took place less than 10,000 years. This means that for over 90% of the time human times, we have lived as hunter-gatherers without civilization, books, or cities. Narnia fans may remember how in Prince Caspian, Cornelius tells Prince Caspian, "This castle is a thing of yesterday. Your great-great-grandfather built it." But if you recognize the realization behind the Paleo lifestyle (I would rather call it "neo-Paleo"), you would recognize that all medieval castles are a thing of yesterday, around for less than 1% of the time humans have been around. We think of medieval castles as something very, very old when, compared to over 99% of the time people have been around, medieval castles belong to the same geological eyeblink as we do.

And the core insight in neo-Paleo is not that we now live as hunter-gatherers or that we should abandon what we have to resume being literal hunter-gatherers, but that we are built on a virtually unchanged hunter-gatherer chassis, and we ignore it at our peril. There are lifestyle choices we can do to counteract depression and other diseases of civilization, and be considerably gentler to our hunter-gatherer nature than people under civilization's auspices live by default.

Nonetheless, I would like to look at just time within the agricultural revolution for now. On this point I would recall a fellow American friend's words that when he thinks about normal human life, he imagines an African village. And for most of the time civilization has been around, people have been living more like an African village than we do.

Electronics in the modern sense date to 200 years or less. If we take the age of civilization as at least beginning about 10,000 years ago, then electronics have been around for perhaps 2% of the time humans have lived in civilization. Jean-Claude Larchet's The New Media Epidemic details technologies that have become endemic for significantly less than 1% of the time civilization has sputtered and significantly less than 0.1% of the time humans have been around and have been human.

These things that are normal to us, the miasma of technologies we navigate are atypical of human life as human life has been lived as we know it, and this is true enough that a speaker in a seminary course video had to point out as far as fabrications go that people who wrote the New Testament didn't have access to Google. To people who think the New Testament to simply write fabrications, one speaker talked about how the book of Acts names four local leaders encountered who had four separate Greek titles, and evidence on coin inscriptions and other sources back up the book of Acts on four out of four. He offered as an example of an ancient fabrication a book that has a then-contemporary traveler visiting the hearts of two ancient empires and receiving a royal reception in an empire's (bustling) capital city when in fact the capital city was an ancient ruins that had just barely begun to be repopulated.

The old white post has turned black and long ago crumbled into dust. If we want the new white post, we don't just have to paint it white; we need to rebuild it. Maybe even hew the wood, or acquire non-electronic tools that can hew wood instead of just serving information.

Now there are a number of layers and aspects to the situation, and technology alone is not responsible. For the eyeblink of human life and the eyeblink of civilization, even, that The New Media Epidemic has been around, there have been profound shifts in culture; scholars look at Einstein's theory of relativity and Picasso's work as representing radical acceleration to the rate of cultural change unprecedented in history, and we've upstaged this. Political correctness used to say that a picture of a group of people pictured has to include a black person and not be all-white; now we take in stride that such a picture should include a hijab or an obese woman and we take this all in stride as instantly relatable. The civil rights movement seems to increment just slightly to advocate for a brainstorm of sexual perversion. Woke people may accelerate the change and call for more, but even conservatives who have reasonable control of their lives are still living conditions, realities, and changes unimaginable across over 99% of history and vastly more than 99% of the human ways of living that include prehistory.

Which brings me to my signal contribution to the conversation. I do not broadly articulate cultural differences, or moral differences, which I am aware of and acknowledge, but I write about one simple, basic issue: how we can live a properly human life in this world of technology. I do not wish to reduce things to a technological determinism, but I hold that our technologies are tremendously important. And our ways of using technology are even more important.

My signal contribution to the conversation

A lesser "Four Noble Truths"

I really hope Buddhists will not be offended by the adaptation; I wish to evoke the kind of mindset that says that suffering comes when our desires exceed our possessions, and the American approach is to increase our possessions while the approach in India is to subtract from the sum of our desires. That stated, let me offer a lesser "four noble truths":

1. Almost all human life today is dominated by an empty, unnatural, dehumanizing suffering.

2. The cause of this empty and inhuman suffering is overengagement with technology.

3. The means to unplug this empty and inhuman suffering is to refrain from use of technology that is not governed by ascesis.

4. The means to technology use governed by ascesis is the Orthodox ascetical path, in particular such things as fasting, silence, and most of all repentance.

These lesser "four noble truths" sum up the area of the problem I address, and what I propose to address it.

This brings me to my signal contribution to the conversation. I do not broadly articulate cultural differences, or moral differences, which I am aware of and acknowledge, but I write about one simple, basic issue: how we can live a properly human life in this world of technology. I do not wish to reduce things to a technological determinism, but I hold that our technologies are tremendously important. And our ways of using technology are even more important.

My signal contribution to the conversation is written in the seven volume series Hidden Price Tags, and a shorter introduction to the topic in A Pack of Cigarettes for the Mind. I invite you to click on the links and just explore the cover images; the cover images are both made very carefully to say what the titles are about.

Hidden Price Tags and A Pack of Cigarettes for the Mind discuss, for instance, how I make my smartphone not be a ball and chain, and how I follow Larchet's suggestion and only check email once a day in my better moments. I have explored abstention and moderation in use of technologies, and looked at a historical parallel in the temperance movement.

I personally still live a life incomprehensible for 99% of the ages humans have been around, but I have some relative victories that could be added to the neo-Paleo movement that recognizes that in our hunter-gatherer natural element, we don't just get sunlight and have a diet that balances, for instance, Omega-3 and Omega-6 intake, but we also haven't been compulsively checking consumer electronics. The human race is disintegrating but Hidden Price Tags and A Pack of Cigarettes for the Mind cover real ways to disintegrate less, and that is of profound importance.

I invite you to return to the new white post.

It's a similar story to calling Native Americans "Indians" when Spanish explorers believed they'd reached India; the term is not politically correct but it is used widely by Native Americans to refer to themselves. (I personally avoid that use of "Indian" because I occasionally need to refer to natives of the Americas and much more frequently need to refer to natives of India, but this is not because I consider the term abrasive. They don't!) I grew up using the term "Native American," although I acknowledge the term "indigenous peoples."

For an example of perfectly respectful use of the term "redskin," I would refer to the reader by including Native Americans among a testimony to basic morals shared across all kinds of cultures, in C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, in an appendix:

'You will see them take care of their kindred [and] the children of their friends ... never reproaching them in the least.' (Redskin. Le Jeune, quoted ERE [Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics] v. 437)

'You will see them take care ... of old men.' (Redskin. Le Jeune, quoted ERE v. 437)

'The killing of the women and more especially of the young boys and girls who are to go to make up the future strength of the people, is the saddest part... and we feel it very sorely.' (Redskin. Account of the Battle of Wounded Knee. ERE V. 432)

'You will see them take care of., widows, orphans, and old men, never reproaching them.' (Redskin. ERE v. 439)

And as far as the insensitivity of renaming the Washington Redskins and trampling the wishes of those in the community who appreciate the recognition, we have an example of political correctness at its worst. Old references to Native Americans are removed and tarred not politically correct even when they are not offensive to Native Americans.

So I would like to give a small and inadequate tribute to Native Americans.

I am interested in cultures, and I was always fascinated by the encounters with Native American cultures in books like Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television and The Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of Time. And after earning a second master's in theology, one of the places I contacted about teaching was an Orthodox seminary in Alaska where a friend moved to, that would be serving Aleuts. And I've brought toys for, and spoken in broken Spanish with, an Ecuadorian family who fled the violence there and reached the back yard of a parish I'm connected to. Though there it hasn't really been a cultural interest for me; it was, "The parents are working on basics like getting an income; they probably don't have leisure to buy good, colorful, stimulating toys for their ten month old boy whom they obviously love very much."

Beyond that, I don't know what to say besides that Native Americans have always been a little on my radar, I count it a personal treasure to have been invited to join a Native American dance, and they are more on my radar now that political correctness is erasing references to "Redskins" and "Indians" over the strident objections of Redskins and Indians themselves.

You, Native Americans, are on my radar and always have been, at least a little. And if the erasure is effaced from a handegg team, I will humbly offer you a posting on my own website.

The Virtual Python Shell ('p') lets you mix zsh / bash / etc. built-in shell scripting with slightly modified Python scripting. It's kind of like Brython for the Linux / Unix / Mac command line.

curl https://cjshayward.com/sourcecode/p0.0b > p && chmod +x p && sudo cp p /usr/local/bin && hash -r

An example

christos@inner-sanctum ~ $ p
Welcome to p (or vpsh), the Virtual Python Shell. Please visit cjshayward.com!
Hit '?' for help.
--

christos @ inner-sanctum.hsd1.va.comcast.net - Mon Sep  4 09:01:29 2023
/home/christos
p>      for x in range(3):
->              print('Python: ' + str(x))
-> echo Shell: %(x)d
-> 
Python: 0
Shell: 0
Python: 1
Shell: 1
Python: 2
Shell: 2

christos @ inner-sanctum.hsd1.va.comcast.net - Mon Sep  4 09:02:09 2023
/home/christos
p>

The core concept is that all Python code is indented with tabs, with an extra tab at the beginning to mark Python code, and all shell commands (including some shell builtins) have zero tabs of indentation. They can be mixed line-by-line offering an opportunity to use built-in zsh, bash, etc. scripting or Python scripting as desired. The Python is an incomplete implementation; it doesn't support breaking a line into multiple lines. Nonetheless, this offers a tool to fuse shell- and Python-based interactions from the Linux / Unix / Mac command line.

Try it!

I found Star Trek robotic Tribbles the best I had seen as an electronic pet, for those whose living situation would not make it appropriate to keep a pet in the solitary confinement of your apartment for forty hours a week plus overtime plus commute. There are things that are appropriate in a family setting that are not appropriate for other living situations.

I have owned tribbles, a Furby 2.0, and Joy for All cats to be a step up, but they were all still missing something. Compared to visiting a cat shelter, a real live cat has desires and feelings, and much of the pleasure in visiting with these pets is in negotiating to see when a cat wants to be petted and when to leave them alone. And all of these, specifically including Joy for All pets, had a robotic lack of soul. All of them were programmed to give a certain interactions when you touched sensors a second way. And all of them felt emotionally flat: you could get a Joy for All cat to purr by petting itself in a certain way, but there was never the pleasure of negotiating consent. None of the pets seemed to have real emotions or desires.

The intended audiences varied; tribbles were made for adult Star Trek fans, Furby 2.0 for children, and Joy for All pets for lonely seniors in nursing homes, but the extremely lifelike-looking Joy for All pets were scarcely less emotionally flat than the others, with an advertising video that I could not find which showed seniors being delighted at the gift of an electronic pet—but not ongoing delight at companionship after the novelty wore off. And I assure you that if you are an animal lover who has loved real, furry pets, the novelty will likely wear off surprisingly quickly.

A new generation of toy

An originally pink "What the fluff?" robot toy with a Magnum 44 black marker applied a few times, an operation for which plastic gloves are recommended.

What the Fluff?, never mind the name, is intended for girls aged four to six and has a far more engaging nature than any of the earlier toys (though it does not strike me as being addictive like Facebook where it will suck you in all the time). The $22-ish price tags is significantly cheaper than e.g. a $140 Joy for All cat. Its voice and behavior are far more programmed, and its developers show a sincere attempt to imitate emotion and desires, the engaging features that fell flat in all the older generation of toys. Now with newer resources this may be a point where the competition has improved; a $70-ish Furby (or internet-powered $150 Furby Connect) joins What the Fluff? in having over 100 responses, and the Furby's advertising copy claims an "incredibly interactive toy" which may well imitate emotions and desires.

What the Fluff? also has a power switch option for being turned on with low volume. It acts like it wants to interact, but goes to sleep if left alone for a couple of minutes.

I have looked on Amazon and have not been able to see evidence that Joy for All pets have been updated with newer technology. The appearance and advertising copy are the same as when I purchased one in 2017, and videos I've seen on Youtube advertise the same limited features my Joy for All cat already has.

I have found very little relation between the price of an electronic pet and how relatable it seems to an animal lover. The 2022 What the Fluff? is the cheapest electronic pet I have owned, perhaps with a lower price point deliberately chosen for inflation-pinched budgets, and it and a 2023 Furby have 4.4 and 4.6 star ratings respectively on Amazon. Amazon's Best sellers in electronic pets include an interesting-looking Hamstermania and Robo Fish look interesting.

I don't have the resources to compare the different newer-generation electronic toys, but everything I tried up to the time of Joy for All cat was similarly emotionally flat, and seemed to lack emotion and desires. Now I can say that I have tried one newer-generation toy that has more life in it, and is to say the very least less flat. How it will seem to me a year from now may be another question, but it reflects serious apparent effort to address what made earlier generations of toys emotionally flat.

I would be very interested if current-generation levels of toys could be made for adult audiences. They have been made before, whether Star Trek fans who would like an interactive toy tribble or seniors in a nursing home. An animal lover's toy for adult animal lovers who cannot responsibly own a live pet in their current living situation would be without real initial competition until others came on the scene, and could additionally have a lovely chance at beating Joy for All pets at their own game.

The original article, lightly revised:

Please read the article below for a note on animal lovers who are not in a position to responsibly own a pet and don't want to put a companion animal in solitary confinement throughout business hours.

If you're just looking for links about what to buy, Tribbles were the best thing I knew of when this article was originally written. Since then, there are Furreal Friends, which seem designed to give pleasure to children, and Joy for All Silver Cat with White Mitts appears specifically created for the pleasure of adult animal lovers. For reasons I will explain, my present best choice is What the Fluff? (puppy, kitten

Years back, one friend, Cynthia, explained why she will never own a furry pet. An editor, her work often allows her to be in her apartment building during business hours, and when she walks through the halls, she hears so many wimperings, whinings, barks, and the like, every one of them saying, "Will you come in and be with me?"

That conversation made an impression on me. I am an animal lover. I grew up with a dog about the house, kept kind and gentle care of a lab even when her barking cut into my sleep, and when I am visiting my brother Joe's house, I love to see his cats. And I would love to have a furry cubicle pet. But the options there are somewhat limited, and not only because bosses sometimes have to say "No" to eccentric behavior. Though there have been workplaces where employees were welcome to bring well-behaved dogs, (see, for a rare example, Dreaming in Code), bringing a pet to work beyond a fish appropriately would include either transporting the pet with you or leaving your pet unattended for sixty or so hours straight each weekend, keeping the animal in an enclosed space without freedom to wander or explore, and so on. Now hamsters are solitary creatures and for what I know now, it might be possible to keep a hamster cage in a cubicle, leaving only problems like pet dander irritating other employees' allergies. But on the whole, the question of how to keep an office pet without cruelty is a difficult question.

And, up to a point at least, for a single person to keep a pet at home is dodgy. Families and people who work out of their homes are a separate case, and two or more cats may be able to keep each other company, but if you have a fulltime job or serve as a consultant, the question of how to keep a pet without cruelty may be a bit of a challenge.

Some common and respected practices are in fact cruel. My brother has taken in rescue cats which were already declawed, but he and my sister-in-law have never declawed a cat they owned. The common statement is that even front declawing a kitten is like cutting a baby's fingers off at the knuckles. My brother added that declawed cats are not, in fact, safer for owners to deal with: for a cat with front claws, the first line of defense is a swipe with claws which is only an abrasion, while for a declawed cat the first line of defense is abite, which is a puncture wound. Not only is that a more serious wound, but the puncture wound exposes you to whatever bacteria live in the cat's mouth, and mouths tend to have lots of infectious bacteria. Strange as it may sound, if you have a cat, you want the cat to be able to swipe its claws at you if it's cornered, angry, or afraid. It's better than a declawed cat's bite.

I have swing-mounted horses, and I would happily do so now if the opportunity offered to me. To swing-mount a horse, you crouch down, get a good grip of the horse's mane with both hands, and leap up, pulling yourself up by the mane, and ideally land squarely on the horse's back, and this is not cruel. Different species of animals have different thresholds of pain, and a lot of animals are tougher than us; the average horse's threshold of pain is seven times higher than the average human. This means, for instance, that you can grab a good bit of a horse's mane in your hand and pull as hard as you can, and not only will it not injure the horse, it won't cause pain or even really annoyance for the horse. Now horses can be skittish around people and may not be used to you, but if a horse is comfortable with your presence, yanking on its mane doesn't mean anything.

And different thresholds of pain apply to dogs, too. The dog I had growing up would leap and dance for joy when she saw a family member starting to reach for her leash, because she knew that meant she would go for a walk outside. Years later, a dog a few months old would leap and dance for joy when he saw me reaching for a specific pair of workgloves, because he knew that meant he could bite me significantly harder when we were playing. He had a very high threshold of pain, unusual for even a dog, and he expected me to have the same high threshold of pain, and so things felt more natural and pleasant for him when I wore gloves and allowed him to bite me harder. And there's no way those thin gloves would have protected me if he were really trying to hurt me; if he had been trying to do damage, he could have easily sliced through my gloves and cut me to the bone. He was pulling his punches with me, even when I was wearing gloves and I allowed him to bite me much harder. (It really was just horseplay.) Seeing as he didn't draw blood on me, chances are pretty good it was just friendly horseplay to him. (Although dogs do not eat a meat-only diet, both cats and dogs are predators with powerful jaws, and both are well strong enough to cut to the bone.) And really, from my perspective those interactions with the puppy were pleasant play, and from his perspective they were nice, friendly horseplay. I have felt no inclination to bite any of my pets, but if I had started nipping at him with equal force, his enjoyment would probably have been so much the better. Nothing says love like a playful nip and ten or twenty slobbery kisses.

(From a dog's perspective, your hands are your paws, and if you are touching a dog with your paws, that means you want to play. Slapping a dog with your hand to discipline it (as opposed to, for example, pulling a chain attached to its collar, or hitting it over the snout with a rolled-up newspaper) comes across to a dog as an extremely confusing mixed message.)

That is part of why I am puzzled when I occasionally hear of a man who was training dogs, and as something the dogs would relate to, bit the dogs for discipline, and he was rightly arrested for cruelty to animals. Part of my response was, "Um... why? Was he biting the dogs too hard? Did he draw blood? Did he misunderstand some detail of how an adult dog would use biting to discipline a younger dog? Did the police enforcing the anti-cruelty laws for animals have any idea of what normal social interaction between dogs looks like?" I thought of wearing gloves with that one puppy because I found his playful nips more painful than I wanted, but I can say in general of cats and dogs, that if it nips or bites you and it doesn't draw blood, it almost certainly wasn't trying to hurt you. Even if, perhaps, we need to draw lines and train dogs that they need to restrain their natural playfulness when horsing around with people, which most dogs purchased as pets can do well enough.

But more broadly than cats and claws, the question of how a single working person can responsibly own a furry pet without cruelty is difficult (I do not say necessarily impossible: but at least difficult). And I've explored a few things, starting when I was in grad school in 2007.

For reasons I don't completely understand, people have made electronic pets that you wouldn't want to pet; there is a whole line of artificial cats, dogs, etc. that are usually not furry and do not look like something you'd want to pet. Just search for something like robot pet and look at the pictures.

But by accident, that's not the whole picture. I managed to get a Furby 2.0, and it seemed to be very well-done for its target audience of children, but have unnerving "uncanny valley"-like effects on me as an adult. I got my money's worth out of the purchase; I gave it to a friend's two-year-old where it became an almost instant hit and may have become his favorite toy. (Before letting it go, I quite deliberately gave it a fresh set of batteries, and showed both his parents where the "Off" switch was.)

Cue Star Trek. I am not the world's biggest Star Trek fan personally speaking; there was one conversation when cell phones had recently become a common thing to have, and a friend was gushing about Star Trek, and said, "And cell phones! What would our society be like today if there were no Star Trek?" (My response: "We would have had much better science fiction?") But Star Trek has many devoted fans, enough that when conditions would support it, it was economically viable to sell live, robotic, spayed-and-neutered Tribbles.

There is a large variety of Tribble merchandise; I have had medium and small Tribbles, and the small ones have been much less interactive. But for a cubicle pet and for people like me who would like to own something furry but aren't in a position to take on a live pet responsibly and without cruelty in solitary confinement or whatnot, a Tribble may be the nicest thing out there. Animated Tribbles are available in tan, Gray, or brown.

—His Beatitude Metropolitan JONAH, leitmotif

And also. . .

  BUDDHISM
  + ISLAM
—————————
ORTHODOXY

—The Sum of Popular Religions

One person I respect did not give any warm reception to my repeating an observation that Orthodox fall into two categories: Muslims and Buddhists. But I maintain that the analogy works pretty well. There are people who devote their energies to Jihad, and on the other side there are mystics.

I have for a long time functioned like a Muslim and have pulled no punches: see works like An Open Letter to Catholics on Orthodoxy and Ecumenis, followed by an even more explicit "The Church Must Breathe with Both Lungs" is Rome's "Amos and Andy" show. Neither was intended as a troll; both were intended to demarcate to Romans why cooperating with the mirror image of Rome's outreach to Orthodoxy simply does not make sense to Orthodoxy. I've seen, in Roman sites, statements that Orthodox believe Romans have valid sacraments and valid orders (a question that I have only heard one Orthodox raise, namely a former Roman), but just don't care about reunion, and a broader social nexus in which I have never heard a Roman acknowledge Orthodox concerns about proper doctrinal reconciliation, nor any awareness that Rome's St. Thomas Aquinas represents a problematic figure to Orthodoxy.

However, I am stepping away from that, after a "self-conversion" to be more on the Buddhist side, after I wrote A Mechanism, which I would invite you to read and come back to this place.

Advice offered

I know and love divorced Orthodox fathers who are involved in a power struggle with their ex-wives. I have only heard one side of their stories, and I don't want to assign guilt, but the account I have been given is that the fathers are trying to raise their kids in Holy Orthodoxy in a world that is going to Hell in a handbasket, and their ex-wives are trying, in effect, to pack the couple's children into the handbasket more snugly. But I would like to offer a word: There are alternatives to fighting.

As far as things to do... wait, let me step back and just give a message to something that takes precedence. One advice given to teachers in reference to children is that the words, concepts, and so on taught by a Sunday School teacher seem like they always go in one ear and out the other, but there is one lesson that is mind-bogglingly effective: the moral character of the teachers. Children taught by a perpetrator of financial scandal had severe handicaps at appropriately extending trust afterwards. Children taught by a loving and caring teacher, never mind if they lose 50% of the teacher's words and concepts, are given a boost to themselves to be more like a teacher they admire.

I don't know how effective it is to be in a power struggle. In for instance the Philokalia, people are very squeamish about appearing at legal courts, even if they are defending themselves and not pressing charges against others. However, gaze not long into the abyss, for the abyss will gaze into you. Heresiologists come to think like their opponents. To join a power struggle is to agree with an ex-wife about what is important and how it may best be pursued. And I recall St. Nikolai, in Prayers by the Lake, saying that if someone treats us in anger and we join their anger and degrade ourselves by going to their level, we have done nothing noble. There's a touch of "Even if you win the rat race, you are still a rat," that applies.

I have some reservations about recommending Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives, because it is the most occult-related book I have read from a canonical author. (It never condones occult practice but it is clear about how a curse can be given as part of how we are advised to avoid cursing.) However, it is a book which almost from cover to cover deals with alternatives to fighting, and describes a peacemaking power that someone consumed with legal power struggles would find difficult to even conceive.

I also have some reservations about recommending The Orthodox Martial Art is Living the Sermon on the Mount, because it is one of my titles and the jury is still out on it. However, I will say that the opening chapter and A Mechanism contain its high points.

I do not absolutely say that it is wrong to engage in a power struggle to have one's children brought up in the nest of Orthodoxy, but I would advise people in this situation to relax their grip on Jihad, and discover the Buddhist side of Orthodoxy. Your ex can only see and trade in one kind of power; you do not need the same albatross around your neck. But there is other power to be had, and the Buddhist character of being tranquil in stressful situations (see Calm), and love for your enemies and especially your ex. Your primary power base should be such as is discussed in Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives and the better bits of The Orthodox Martial Art is Living the Sermon on the Mount. Legal wrangling should perhaps take a back seat.

A brief aside

Stoicism has been discovered today and is treated like an ultimate secret weapon in the National Football League. I do not wish to try to explain or unpack Stoicism for everyday people today (this TED talk is decent), but I would ask: Stoic Seneca the Younger said, "We suffer more in imagination than in reality," and it provides ways of suffering nothing less.

Are we men or are we mice? If stoicism can help athletes who live for high-stakes conflict, do not Orthodox Christians have something better?

One closing suggestion

The story is told of a mature Orthodox teacher who was given a class of unruly kids who had driven away her predecessor. She got up to teach, and the children as before launched all the verbal missiles, but this time the missiles caught hold of nothing in her. They just passed through, ignored, and not one making even a ripple of hurt. After a few days, the children's active hostility gave way to an incredible curiosity about who she was and why they had not sunk her.

Part of how Christianity spread under the Roman empire was not just that Christians were publicly martyred; not only did families allow themselves to be tortured to death instead of offering sacrifice to idols, but the fact was that families came to their martyrdoms happy as could be, next to whom the torture was impotent.

A divorce is a process of formerly tightly bonded people fighting bitterly, and it may open doors, and possibly impress a judge, if you go through any legal proceedings you need, but without stress, hurt, or anger. I know someone who was joyful during a termination where his boss was first giving huge requests on next to no time and was very, very upset when he completed them successfully, and then things got worse. I do not say that a mere termination is anywhere the league of a divorce. However, God can give grace to people who "should" be miserable, and if you cannot choose to have a heart at peace in divorce proceedings, maybe you could pray for such and ask others' prayers.

Don't have a Muslim divorce. Be a Buddhist.