The Hermit Life

    

     And what is strangest of all, most unnatural of all, is that the finger hasn't got the slightest desire to be on the hand, to be with the others;.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

     As compelling as the life of an idyllic ascetic could be, within the context of universal benevolism,,,,,, at least to some,,,, with its pared sensitive tranquility and extended chance for contemplation, if many followed the hermit life there would be no Catepillar Shoes or Me pods. What a pity. A life in the same skivies doesn't make for a good business man or consumer. The world would go hungry in a few years without greed,,, but then again it may just go hungry in a few years with greed at the helm.  "Sell your belongings to the poor and follow Him in order to receive treasure in heaven." That was the spiritual summons in the spotty netherworld of early christianity. So after a billion "I'm gonna live like a hermit crab" garage sales what's left since all the factories are closed and nothing new is being made. What's left is beautiful perfect denial.
      "Go forth my son, alone into to the desert or to the mountain top and contemplate the human condition. If you write a great play about it all the better,, and if it makes money,, well,, remember me." So off you go into the wood and after long periods upon your lonely perch you vacillate between desperation and enlightenment. The devil appears one hazy afternoon when the air is prevalent with doubt and you are weak due to the lack of nutrition and water. He arrives in a medeval zoot suit and clean spats to tempt you and show you the way back to the real citadel,, to Prada and 2" thick steaks,,, do you give in, or is "the life" just too compelling in its honesty and simplicity? Depends on wether you are Caligula or Francis of Assisi.    
     The purer hermit life is meant to quell the fire of "me, myself, and I" as the one true path to spiritual enlightenment. Methinks what's the matter with that? A person walks about, or sits on a mountaintop allowing minimal experience within a minimal existence to maximize their attention towards knowing the truth,, and if not the truth to at least what really matters, at the very least virtue. Hermits did often chose heights to achieve their scraggly best. Was arrogance or rarefied air the reason? I think what I am describing, wether it is something ancient or from more modern times may vary for each hermit. Some seek truth in physical isolation from the golden calf,, others seek personal peace through solitude. Everthing depends on what you bring to hermitude in the first place. 
     There are hermits in every culture. Many achieved fame and their model for living has been cherished. Oddly many ascetics have been admired by those given over to the material world. Perhaps that is their penance for indulgence. Some hermits didn't isolate themselves by placing themselves outside the social realm,, but placing themselves above it. In the Byzantine Empire, for example  there were a group of urban hermits called Stylites,,, who were like an ancient form of the Move, except on pedestals. The Move were an urban group who met their doom by fire in urban Philadelphia in 1982. Instead of turning to the wilderness, and isolation the Stylites formed "a world apart perched on a pole",,, in order perhaps to be seen from a greater distance. These young men built pillars,  in the middle of towns, and then ascended them never to come down. A distorted image of Jesus on the cross prosyletising comes to me. The competition for sympathetic ears and helpers must have been fierce,, for this species of hermit requires others to serve their bodily functions, a little like a Sadhu who, because of his or her stationary spiritual life also needs perks from the faithful. 

   Sadhu

 
Flattened Stylites


     For that matter catholic priests and Mullahs too need help from their community to maintain commune with God and keep up a holy aura. The community is almost always willing to oblige. I imagine the Stylites, like "fixed shephards" admonished and exhorted their passing flocks from their pole-pit to the audience below. This story about Stylites reminds me of Julia Butterfy Hill, who once driven by money and aquisition, abandoned that life and  spent two years in a redwood tree to protect it from loggers. Some hermits are very passionate about causes. Perhaps it comes with the territory or in Stylite times the pole was easier choice than the shovel to make a living. People brought you food and disposed of your shit. It's the recipe for a king. "Pepe get the fuck up here and flush my shit." I imagine, though, many sitting in a cramped space died early of thrombosis.

     The reputed and venerated skull of Mary Magdelene in France.
     
      Hermits can group up and still be hermits. Just to name a few there are Carmelites, Jesuits,  Benedictines, Jainists, and Bhuddist monks who negate individualism giving themselves over to prayer and contemplation. Or they may go off alone into the wilderness like Johnny Appleseed, with a pot for a hat, who spilled his seed on the ground only to gain fame as an organic folk hero. And then there is Diogenes, who lived in a tub in Greece, and whose stern arrogance pleased Alexander The Great. 
Diogenes

    The list of Hermits is fascinating because many who have lived "outside" the group have had a social impact yet when isolation meanders without bounds or discipline they produce horror. A good hermit must love and know something.
     This is a very short list of hermits and ascetics:
     Hildegard Von Bingen, Diogenes, Robinson Crusoe, St. Anthony, St Augustine, St. Paul, Jesus, Socrates, Emily Dickinson, Marcel Proust, Arthur Schopenhauer, Sir Issac Newton, Gautama Buddha, Bobby Fischer, John the Baptist, Mahatma Gandhi, Henry Davis Thoreau, Glen Gould, J.D. Salinger, Muhammad, and even Mary Magdelene. Then there is Ted Kaczynski, Jeffrey Dahmer.  

True literature can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics.

Yevgeny Zamyatin