Religious Substitutes For God

It is self-evident that no one who indulges their desires is a free person. In doing so they have renounced their freedom and become a slave of their impulses. It is through their appetites that they serve those who gratify their desires. In fact, doing so takes on the form of a ritual, convincing people that this is exactly what it means to be alive. Nothing today is so insidious in this effect than social media, people deluding themselves that they are real when compulsions reduce them to being inhuman.

Do everything you can to avoid the noise and the business of people. Keep as far away as you can from the places where they gather to cheat and insult one another, to exploit one another, to laugh at one another, or to mock one another with their false gestures of friendship. Be glad if you can keep beyond the reach of their radios. Do not bother with their unearthly songs. Do not read their advertisements.

- Thomas Merton