During Lent this year, some Christians will give up sweets or booze. Will Self, a secular humanist nonbeliever, is giving up art and culture. In an essay for the New Statesman, Self explains his decision to eschew the pleasures of books, music, museums, and the internet. He writes:
In a cultural desert, the mind begins to burrow deep within itself – just as, in an actual desert, a human body seeks shelter among the rocks. Perhaps in this harshly deracinated environment you will be driven to meditate upon the transcendent, a practice that has become dreadfully unfashionable in the present era, lacking as it does the requisite aestheticism.
Source: New Statesman
Image by srboisvert, licensed under Creative Commons.
