The Black Mirror

The Black Mirror: An Eastern Orthodox Look at the Dark Side of Technology and Its Best Use: Volume 4, Nitty-Gritty Ascesis, originally published as Hidden Price Tags: Volume 4, Nitty, Gritty Ascesis C.J.S. Hayward C.J.S. Hayward Publications Hidden Price Tags: Volume 4, Nitty, Gritty Ascesis is the fourth volume in a seven-book series about technology's promises and costs. It builds on its predecessors, providing cautionary notes about how to eliminate unnecessary screen time and providing both thought-provoking and controversial condemnations of branding, socially accepted technological habits, and more. Controversial, because the discussions embrace alternative ideas of technology's appropriateness and applications which will go beyond many avid users' perceptions of what those benefits and possibilities could be. Hayward's cosmological and spiritual approach to better understanding technology and its impact on the soul is particularly well-developed and inviting, providing fodder for discussions and discourses among all kinds of spiritual thinkers about broader topics such as addiction, pain and pleasure, and bigger-picture insights. Hayward's passion for his subject translates to discussions which may be identified as some by ""run-on sentences"" because they are laden with facts and emotional attraction: ""I had earlier hoped to wind this down with the classic monastic advice given when one is tempted to escape: ""Persevere in alternating prayer and work, and one can eventually emerge a victor,"" and with an anecdote that one of the times I repented of another layer of this vice I desired, instead of God putting me somewhere else as I sought escape, that a loving God had put me in quite an awesome place without escape, and that in the here and now where God has placed me I am in a very real sense in communion with the stars in the sky and the salt in the sea."" As personal experience and insight dovetail with historical precedent, God's intention, and spiritual reflection, Nitty, Gritty Ascesis becomes both an invitation and a demand, requiring of its readers an attention to deconstructing and revealing not only God's intention, but the foundations of the English language and human desire. The subject broadens to quite politically incorrect passages in Scriptures and the special challenges of interpreting the history of yesterday with the language and mindset of modern times. General-interest readers and religious scholars alike receive a series of in-depth, demanding, and enlightening works on Christian Orthodoxy's connections to efforts to glorify God outside of the murky confusion of human affairs and focuses. What evolves here isn't just a treatise about technology or Orthodoxy, but a well-reasoned and passionate reflection on the processes and meaning of life itself: ""This life is an apprenticeship, and even now, when we may be in situations we do not like, God is asking us to be apprentices, learning to be knights riding the warhorse he gives us even in the situations we might not like. The life of Heaven begins on earth, even in an economic depression."" Followers of Hayward's extensive writings who look for more depth and complexity in his works will find it in Nitty, Gritty Ascesis, which is recommended reading for Christian Orthodoxy members and, especially, for groups interested in wide-ranging material offering a thought-provoking blend of philosophical, spiritual, and social reflection.