Author: benfarhner

I’m working through an idea centered around holding the middle between two seemingly opposing ideas. This is a theme that has come up a lot in my marriage, where my wife, who is very black-and-white, tends towards one extreme or the other, and I tend to propose holding the tension of the so-called middle ground.

I don’t want to confuse this with the argument to moderation, as I’m not saying we should find the compromise in every situation. Rather, I think our world is filled with many paradoxes, or apparent paradoxes, and it can be valuable to learn how to hold the tension of those paradoxes instead of veering to one side or the other of them.

I recently read Return of the Strong Gods by R. R. Reno, in which he lays out the case that the anti-fascist post-war consensus essentially throws the baby out with the bathwater: if strong gods, as he calls them, can lead towards fascism, then we must avoid all strong gods, such as absolute truth (this is admittedly an oversimplification of his argument). However, the tension of holding some strong gods (not the ones that lead to fascism) leads to better outcomes for society than rejecting all strong gods in favor of weak gods.

As humans, we have a propensity to lean towards extremes. Holding the middle ground, the tension, is uncomfortable and, in a way, unnatural. It’s, well, work. We can relax at the extremes, but in the middle, we have to hold the tension.

Another example, also from Return of the Strong Gods, is the false dichotomy between individualism and collectivism. This is not an argument that R. R. Reno makes, and I may be abusing the definitions of these terms, but my thinking here is that individualism and collectivism are not diametrically opposed. Drawing on the study of symbolism by Jonathan Pageau, I think another perspective is to view individualism as a smaller scale and collectivism as a larger scale of the same symbols, the same principles. This also draws on Plato’s Republic and the forms that can be found at both the individual level (the parts of the soul) and the city-state level (the parts of society). Through this lens, it’s easier to see that individualism at the exclusion of collectivism (anarchy) is just as harmful as collectivism at the exclusion of individualism (communism). Instead, we need to see the value in both and hold them in tension: we need to find the middle ground.

As a Christian, I also find numerous instances of paradoxes or apparent paradoxes that many believers and non-believers alike struggle to reconcile. There’s a tradition of holding these paradoxes and calling them mysteries, which I’m quite partial to: it’s an acknowledgment of our limited understanding while retaining our faith that they must be true. The classic example is God’s sovereignty versus man’s free will. I think the Bible makes a pretty good case for both, and since they’re hard to reconcile, we are essentially called to believe that both are true and hold that tension. If we veer to one extreme or the other, we end up with heresies on both sides (either we are robots and thus not responsible for our own actions, or our free will overrides God’s sovereignty, making us more powerful than God).

As I said, I’m still working through these ideas, but since they’ve become a recurring theme in conversations with my wife, I’m sure I will have more thoughts to share in the future. In the meantime, it might be worth looking for the middle ground.

Science fiction writer’s Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law states that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” meaning that to an observer, a technology which is not understood can appear magical. In this sense, magic specifically refers to an outcome whose origin is unknown. When we are children, the whole world is magical because we do not understand it. As we learn how the world works, it becomes less magical as we understand it more. But there are still things that we find magical: technologies or even features of nature itself that are outside our individual realms of knowledge. No one has yet achieved such a perfect understanding of our entire world that nothing is magical to him anymore.

But there is an interesting inversion of Arthur’s Third Law, which I recently heard on Jonathan Pageau’s podcast The Symbolic World in an interview with Mary Harrington (episode 388): “When people say, ‘magic is just misunderstood technology,’ I would flip that and say, ‘technology is just misunderstood magic.’” In context, they were discussing the need for meaning, and he was making the point that it’s magic, not technology, that shows us the purpose of something. I have been mulling this over in terms of worldbuilding as I ponder the mechanics and makeup of a universe for a story that I am (very slowly) working on.

There are two paths one may take when devising a magic system in a fictional setting: one path may be called, simply, magical, and the other, technological.

The magical magic system doesn’t explain anything. In fact, it may not even be internally consistent. Tolkien’s works feature a magical magic system because it is never explained how magic works: it is, intentionally, not understood—perhaps not even by Tolkien himself. Yet the use of magic points to something else, some meaning or purpose that furthers the story and our understanding of the world.

The technological magic system, on the other hand, attempts to explain all the details about how the magic works, what laws guide it, what its limits are, etc. as if magic were just an extension of physics. The magic system in Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series seems to be a good example of this.

Applying Jonathan Pageau’s quote, if a technological magic system is sufficiently advanced—that is, explained sufficiently thoroughly and bounded by sufficiently clearly defined laws that it can be well understood—then a technological magic system becomes, itself, indistinguishable from technology itself.

Paradoxically, by explaining how the magic works, a technological magic system removes the magic quality from the magic itself, with the magic becoming more just a tool—a technology—that can acquired, learned, and put to use for one’s needs, imbuing no meaning or purpose in and of itself, and pointing to nothing outside of itself. Put simply, understood magic is not magical.

I have a basis for the magic system in my story’s universe, but I’ve struggled to develop an internally consistent understanding of how it functions; that is, I’ve struggled to develop a technological magic system. However, after pondering Pageau’s inversion of Clarke’s Third Law, I think I’m coming to terms with leaving it as a magical magic system and foregoing any understanding of the magic and simply allowing it to be magical.

After the conclusion of Lent and the celebration of Easter, I’ve been struggling to coalesce my thoughts into a presentable blog post, but I’ll give it my best shot. Looking back, there were a number of things that I experienced during my Lenten fast that stood out to me.

Resiliency

On the physical plane, the first thing that struck me was my own resilience during the fast. I was surprised how quickly my body adapted to only one meal per day, and how little it seemed to affect me. I paid close attention to myself when working outside, moving perhaps a little slower and staying hydrated, but otherwise was still quite capable on a restricted diet.

During Lent, I also happened to read Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, in which he discusses his experience in German concentration camps. He mentioned a similar phenomena, where the prisoners were limited to one (very meager) meal per day, yet their bodies adapted and they were still able, for the most part, to do the work that were forced to do. Obviously, I did not suffer anywhere near as much as those prisoners, but it was a poignant passage that I felt I could now, in some very small way, relate to. Man is resilient.

Failure to Connect

One of my primary goals during Lent was to use my physical hunger as a trigger to direct me to prayer. I actually failed pretty miserably at this—it was too easy, when hunger arose, to drink some water and continue on with what I was doing. It wasn’t until the last couple of weeks that I finally made some headway here and was able to starting connecting hunger to prayer. Nevertheless, this was really insightful for me, and now I know an area where I need to grow.

Anticipation

Still mostly on the physical plane but moving upwards, I had a growing sense of anticipation through Lent, looking forward to three meals a day and the celebration of Easter. Here, I was able to connect the physical plane to the spiritual much easier. I think the celebration of Easter itself being a combination of the physical (a feast) and the spiritual (a focus on what Christ accomplished) helped me in this regard.

Isolation

One thing that I felt was missing during my fast was a sense of togetherness. I think this is evident in Protestant denominations and particularly in America, where individualism means there is no prescribed fast that everyone in church follows, but rather, each person gets to decide if and how they will fast during Lent. The downside to this, though, is a lack of community within the fasting itself. It becomes a personal journey instead of a corporate journey, and in a way, this makes the celebration feast a personal feast instead of a corporate feast, too. So, I felt a bit isolated during Lent for this reason, which made me a bit sad.

Midday Prayer

Partway through Lent, a friend invited me to join him in a virtual Midday Prayer. I had never participated in the Liturgy of the Hours before, but, given my Failure to Connect, this was a perfect opportunity to institute a practice to help direct me upwards in place of a meal. We traded off the readings and prayers, and it was a very meaningful experience. I think

Morning Liturgy

During Holy Week, I also began doing a morning liturgy from Jonathan Gibson’s O Sacred Head, Now Wounded with my family during breakfast. Together with the Midday Prayer, these “meal replacement” liturgies really helped me refocus my attention upward by the end—I only wish I had done both of them from the beginning of Lent: a goal I now have for next year.

Celebration

Easter feast was special this year, not only because I could eat before dinner, but because we invited over a lot of people who didn’t have other Easter plans, and it was wonderful to have a full table for the feast. Instead of spending the day with family, who are all out of state, we spent it with friends, and we feasted well. It was a great conclusion to the Lenten season, and overall, I’m very grateful that I persevered with my fast and grateful for all that I learned during the six weeks.

Oh, and I did fit back into my size 32 pants by the end.

There’s a lot of work remaining to be done, and if you want to be successful you must devote all your waking hours and all your efforts to the task personally. This is not something that admits of delegation.

. . .

A sound mind can neither be bought nor borrowed.

—Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, Letter XXVII

I recently read a P. G. Wodehouse novel for the first time, and I don’t think any other book has made me laugh out loud while reading to myself the way his did. Anyone who appreciates British humor would enjoy his works. While reading Thank You, Jeeves, however, I was struck by the way that Bertram Wooster relied on Jeeves to fill in gaps in his knowledge of quotations. Shakespeare, the Bible, other cultural references: Jeeves proved himself a wealth of knowledge pertaining to these subjects and quick to help Wooster fill in the blanks in the moment:

“Oh? Well, let me tell you that the man that hath no music in himself…” I stepped to the door. “Jeeves,” I called down the passage, “what was it Shakespeare said the man who hadn’t music in himself was fit for?”

“Treasons, stratagems, and spoils, sir.”

“Thank you, Jeeves. Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils,” I said, returning.

—P. G. Wodehouse, Thank You, Jeeves

Separately, I’ve been working my way through Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic as part of a philosophy book club. This is really my introduction to Stoic philosophy, and it’s been very eye-opening and inspiring. Here’s the tie-in: in Letter XXVII, Seneca relays the story of a man whose “memory was so bad” that he had to take similar measures to Wooster, yet even more drastic:

But this didn’t stop him wanting to appear a well-read man. And to this end he thought up the following short cut: he spent an enormous amount of money on slaves, one of them to know Homer by heart, another to know Hesiod . . . He would have these fellows at his elbow so that he could continually be turning to them for quotations from these poets which he might repeat to the company . . . Sabinus was none the less quite convinced that what anyone in his household knew he knew personally.

—Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, Letter XXVII

The human tendency towards laziness manifests itself in the persistent desire to offload our work—to externalize it. I keep a to-do list so I don’t have to memorize what I need to get done throughout the day. Wooster had Jeeves as a personal valet to help with much more than just remembering quotations. And Sabinus had, by Seneca’s account, at least eleven slaves to memorize and recall the works of specific authors for him.

But it’s that last line that stands out the most to me: he “was none the less quite convinced that what anyone in his household knew he knew personally.” And herein, I think, lies the risk of artificial intelligence, particularly the chatbot-style large language models like ChatGPT that so many are interfacing with today: with so much information at our beck and call, we no longer feel the need to retain that information ourselves, in our own minds. We can just ask our personal valet, our eleven slaves, our ChatGPT what was it Shakespeare or Homer said, or how to solve this or that sort of problem, or who such and such was.

I think Seneca would agree with me that this easy access to so much information—and not just information now, but problem-solving, too—weakens the mind and quickly becomes a crutch. What if one finds oneself without access to the Internet, or without one’s smartphone? What if one finds oneself in a bind without Jeeves by one’s side to concoct an elaborate solution to the problem? Suddenly, the curtain is pulled back and the lack of knowledge revealed plainly, and like Sabinus, we become ripe for the picking-on. The real problem is that we can delude ourselves into thinking that we’re smarter than we actually are: we can become convinced that what ChatGPT knows we know personally.

This is not to say that artificial intelligence doesn’t have any benefits. Certainly, there is benefit to offloading certain information or tasks: we each have our own strengths and proficiencies, our own areas of interest and expertise, and I think it’s wise to lean on others when it comes to scenarios outside of our own wheelhouses. In such situations, leaning on ChatGPT can be a boon, a timesaver, and a smart strategy. But it’s important to be able to discern when you’re leaning on others’ strengths versus outsourcing your own abilities.

I’m admittedly a late adopter and something of an AI pessimist. But I like to look at LLMs as a tool—a tool that we’re still actively trying to create and refine, mind you. And if ChatGPT is the hammer, I’m still trying to figure out what the nail is. In the meantime, I’d prefer to focus on building my own skills and proficiencies. I’ll end with an admonition from Seneca to utilize the capabilities of our own minds to create valuable works:

It is disgraceful that a man who is old or in sight of old age should have a wisdom deriving solely from his notebook [or his favorite AI agent] . . . What have you said? How much longer are you going to serve under others’ orders? Assume authority yourself and utter something that may be handed down to posterity. Produce something from your own resources.

—Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, Letter XXXIII

I haven’t truly participated in Lent before this year. But several factors coalesced in the beginning of 2025 that led me to fast during this season.

Firstly, admittedly from a vain and human perspective, I found that, after the past holiday season and for the first time in my life, I no longer fit into my size 32 jeans. My metabolism (and probably my homebrewing hobby) had finally caught up with me and caught me off guard.

Secondly, I’ve been tangentially exploring the Orthodox church over the last couple of years, and while I still consider myself firmly in the Reformed tradition, I have found that I greatly admire the emphasis on participation in the Church calendar that exists in Orthodoxy. Lent presented the perfect opportunity to bring more of the Church calendar into my life.

Thirdly, as I began to consider fasting for the Lenten season, I determined that I wanted to fast from something that I would actually feel—giving up social media, for example, might be inconvenient or annoying for me, but wouldn’t really impact me the way that giving up food would by leaving me physically hungry. And, in fact, that’s exactly what I landed on: I chose to give up both breakfast and lunch for the full duration of Lent.

Parameters and Goals

To get specific, this is the criteria I decided on for the fast:

• No food for breakfast or lunch.
• No beverages except bulletproof coffee and water until dinnertime.
• No restrictions on food or drinks starting at dinnertime.

I had a primary goal and a secondary goal for this season:

1. For my physical hunger to draw me closer to God, particularly by using it as a signal to pray.
2. To lose the holiday weight and fit back into my size 32 jeans.

Reflections

On this twelfth day of Lent, I have some initial reflections on how this fast has affected me.

Firstly, I have been consciously trying to redirect my focus from physical hunger to prayer whenever I feel hungry throughout the day. I’ve had moderate success with this but I think I will continue to improve throughout the season as I practice this. I’m recognizing that I need to be much more intentional about my prayer.

Secondly, I have a much greater appreciation for food. Eating only one meal per day means that meal is much more satisfying and enjoyable, even if it is comprised of simple or plain foods. God could have created us to get all the nutrients we need from breathing, but instead He gave us tastebuds and the ability to enjoy the food we eat, and I’m really appreciating that gift during this time.

Thirdly, skipping meals frees up a fair amount of time. I’m still making breakfast for my wife and daughter in the mornings, but there are fewer dishes to wash afterward, and I don’t have to stop midday to make lunch and clean up from that. In effect, I have more time in the mornings before work, and fewer interruptions during the workday.

Finally, because this is only a season, this fast is quite effective at building up a sense of anticipation in me. I’m already eagerly looking ahead to Easter, if only for the feasting that entails. If this was a permanent lifestyle change, it could quickly become wearisome and discouraging; I’m grateful for the seasonality and rhythm that this introduces.

I hope that the next few weeks help me to focus more and more on Christ, and less and less on my hunger, as I attempt to shift my heart posture, both permanently and in preparation for Easter. In the meantime, as I sip the last drops of my third coffee today, I look forward to a beer and a filling dinner this evening.