Stepping into the New Year: What's Your Problem, Fear, or Hope?
An invitation to shape the road ahead
“The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.”
-G.K. Chesterton
Happy New Year!
On the last day of 2023 we went for a long-distance walk around a conservation area near our home, made some pine-needle tea in the snow with our teenaged son’s new pocket stove, and indulged in delicious pork tenderloin at grandma’s home down the street. As we write these words our children are out in the dark, enjoying the snow and playing manhunt with their neighbourhood gang of friends. Life is not always so idyllic as it sounds in these lines: life stresses overcome us, our patience gets tested, and there is never a lack of daily challenges to be addressed. Yet we endeavor, albeit imperfectly, to act in hope, to keep our faith and family at the core, and to live and embrace the life we write about. It is a resolution not just for the New Year, but for every new day.
In our writings over the last year, Peco and I aimed to share glimpses of a husband and wife trying their best to point a way through the Machine for their children and others striving to find anchors of hope. We have been discussing a myriad of questions in relation to technology for well over a decade around the dinner table and during our late-night couch talks. On Pilgrims in the Machine and School of the Unconformed we have been striving to address how we can bring about lasting change by building different life foundations that support a tectonic shift in our relationship to technology. Substack Reads has referred to our writing as a “rallying call for a new way to behave in the world”.
In the year ahead, we will continue to focus our writing on agency, hope, and generativity.
Peco has recently added these reflections to our About page, which provide an additional glimpse at what you can expect from our writings in 2024:
Nietzsche said God was dead. Today, transhumanists say we can become gods through machines and biotechnology. Is this the life we want?
Either way, the world is in upheaval. Disruption is the new normal, and many of us feel adrift as we try to figure out what is real and true and good, and what isn’t. Devices and new technologies are part of this upheaval, but the changes we’re facing encompass everything from the social to the spiritual, from the temporal to the eternal.
I often ask myself what I can do to help my children navigate the tumult. But I can’t help them unless I can help myself, unless I can find a stable and healthy foundation from which to grow as a human being. Which perspectives and practices can help me do this? Which ones help me see more clearly, ground me in reality, and help me develop fully into a person?
As we step into the new year, we would also like to specifically address areas that are of concern to you. We were initially thinking of creating a poll to ask you in what areas of life technology posed a problem. Yet, the side-effect of all multiple-choice questions, is that they lock us into a predetermined framework. One thing we have learned from our readers this year is that their backgrounds, experiences, and ideas are vast and often beyond what we could have conceived of ourselves.
We also learned that when we invite our readers to respond, they are eager, insightful, and are willing to share their perspectives for the benefit of others. Readers’ responses to The 3Rs of Unmachining were indeed responsible for prompting the Unmachined Coffee House Event, a live zoom discussion with readers from around the world, along with Dixie Dillon Lane , Hadden Turner and T. Carman you can read about here.
When we asked readers to contribute their own practices on our post Sowing Anachronism: How to be Weird in Public, and Private, an intensely lively comment section erupted with well over 200 contributions, which you can find sorted and summarized in Simple Acts of Sanity: A Seed Catalogue.
Now, we will venture to pose you these open-ended questions
in relation to devices or any new/emerging technology:
1. What is your problem?
2. What fears do you have?
3. What hopes do you have?
Please share your thoughts in the comment section or, if you prefer, send an e-mail to schooloftheunconformed@proton.me. While we will not be answering questions immediately, we will take note of the specific concerns raised by our readers and, to the best of our ability, integrate our responses in articles throughout the year.
2023 - A Retrospective
School of the Unconformed entered the Substack universe one year ago with an initial list of around a couple dozen friends from our homeschool community. Thanks to the generous and repeated support of Paul Kingsnorth, as well as many others including Tsh Oxenreider, Caroline Ross , Dixie Dillon Lane, Haley Baumeister, Hadden Turner, Adrian Gaty, Roman S Shapoval, Molly Young, our readership has exploded. The immense increase in readership was evidence to us that many people felt a burning urgency to reevaluate their relationship to technology. Here are some of our articles that stood out for us over the last year:
Peco wrote on Pilgrims in the Machine:
I wrote here on School of the Unconformed:
Inviting readers to join in community for a digital detox month
Providing resources to strengthen classic vocabulary and deep reading
Offering guidance on reshaping the altars of our homes
In October, Peco and I decided to combine our writing efforts, resulting in a rich cross-fertilization of thought and practice:
Some recent favorites from around Substack to consider when stepping into the new year:
Paul Kingsnorth on faith and the Machine:
Jonathan Haidt and Zach Rausch highlight the most essential readings that address the question: Why does it feel like everything has been going haywire since the early 2010s, and what role does digital technology play in causing this social and epistemic chaos?
In case adding more reading is part of your New Year’s resolution, start with Joel J Miller’s post on Reading Resolutions. See also:
Hadden Turner on “using our time for quality not quantity”:
Also, if you are interested in digging into the writings of Wendell Berry and would like some guidance and company: Hadden Turner will be starting live zoom meetings for his Wendell Berry Reading Group in January 2024. His guided questions to the selected essays are incisive and profound and I am hoping to join in on the live meetings whenever possible.
Myles Werntz on friendship, intimacy, and connection:
Tsh Oxenreider provides an excellent set of (printable) end-of-the-year reflection questions that dig much deeper than “what was your favorite highlight of the year”:
As we are stepping into this new year, we would like to offer all new and free readers a New Year’s Special 20% discount on paid subscriptions. You can take advantage of this offer until January 6th.
Your support not only helps us to continue our work here on Substack, but also in writing a book on “The Making of UnMachine Minds”. A tremendous THANK YOU to all of our paid subscribers who have offered us their generous support and encouragement!
Happy New Year!
Ruth and Peco
1) What is your problem? I am a heavy internet user.
2) What is your fear? I think I fear genuine intimacy. I fear trusting others. We lived through a serious betrayal and it seems we're not coming out the other side of that.
3) What is your hope? I have to say I hope in Christ. Being new to faith and church life I can't say I believe yet. But I do hope.
My number one problem is trying to navigate my life around people that are addicted to their devices. I gave up my smart phone for a very simple flip phone and I am the only one I know that has done this. I refuse to be chained to that flip phone either, but oh boy, does it create an issue in others that want the instant gratification of everyone being at their beck and call. I can work around the inability to use apps and use cash a lot for payment (my preference) but the people part of this is difficult. I have taken to leaving the room if someone I am speaking with includes checking their phone in our conversation. Some days I feel like an old dinosaur that won't step into the future, then I remind myself that what I am fighting for is my humanity that is being infiltrated and changed by something non organic.