Jack Dorsey Is Experimenting With Asceticism

Oh, no… how sad! pic.twitter.com/d55x7JqfFC

— Orwell & Goode (@OrwellNGoode) April 17, 2019

Who would have ever thought?

I might actually have a lot in common with people like Jack Dorsey:

“Twitter founder and CEO and billionaire Jack Dorsey has more money than he could ever need — but he’s not acting like it. Unlike the self-made wealthy folk of years gone by, Dorsey and a growing number of top-earning tech entrepreneurs aren’t swilling vintage champagne and banqueting in their free time. Instead, they’re practicing an extreme form of self-denial that has me both troubled and puzzled.

Dorsey recently appeared on the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast to explain his monkish lifestyle in more detail than the 240 character blasts he’s known for sending out to the less biologically enlightened universe. He says he eats only one meal a day in the week and doesn’t let any foodstuff pass his lips at the weekend. He also starts every day with an ice bath. “Nothing has given me more mental confidence than being able to go straight from room temperature into the cold,” he says. And, rain or shine, he walks the five miles from his home to his office. It’s all part of his ever-evolving quest to keep his brain functioning at maverick CEO level. And, I suppose, outlive anyone silly enough to think that eating regular, balanced meals is sensible. …

It’s also curious, and a little chilling, that this rewrite of the tech elite lifestyle has come about at a time when powerful influencers and innovators are seeing their inventions harnessed by terrible people who do and say terrible things. In Dorsey’s case, he’s created a platform that has allowed populists, alt-right types, and Russian bots to spread their messages to vast new audiences, creating more chaos than he could possibly have imagined. …

Stoicism is different. It asks that its followers dispense with all the sparkle, deliciousness, and fluff, and get back to humble basics. It’s a sort of reverse elitism that could also, potentially, blame-proof a tech billionaire’s legacy. “I may have invented Twitter,” Dorsey might say. “But I walk to work and vacationed at spiritual retreats that look like refugee camps!”

Dorsey getting his monk on publicly is winning him as many detractors as fans. Still, if the negativity gets too much, at least he can come home and relax in a nice cold bath. …”

I also have these “monkish habits.”

Just a few weeks ago, I had a lot of the commentators worrying about my mental health, which is understandable because I really wasn’t writing as clearly then as I am now. Unfortunately, I gained a lot of weight back while trying to elect Blompf as president from 2015-2016, and I have spent the last year using a combination of low-carb dieting, weight lifting and intermittent fasting to get back in excellent physical shape. A well known side effect of fasting is spiritual and mental clarity.

Keto Savage from Arkansas is one of my favorite YouTube channels:

This experience of becoming so much physically stronger over the past year has inspired me to include health and fitness as the eighth plank of the 3.0 movement.

Here is Jack’s routine which is actually quite interesting:

When he is not contributing $1,000 to the Andrew Yang presidential campaign, Jack Dorsey is doing things like meditating, walking in the sun while listening to podcasts, taking ice baths, retreating to the wilderness. It might seem a bit weird unless you have done some of these same things.

I’ve chosen to live in the wilderness of the Alabama Black Belt which is one of the poorest parts of the United States. Why have I chosen to do this with my life? It is because I am not a materialist. Ever since I read Epicurus in college and wrapped my mind around the concept of ataraxia, I have been satisfied with a very Spartan standard of living. I like being closer to home. I like being around my family. I feel like I have deep cultural roots in South Alabama which is why I stay here.

Aristotle wrote about how to achieve eudaimonia in his Ethics. You can do this by practicing the virtues … things like temperance, kindness, honesty, courage and so forth. Of course, Aristotle wasn’t an egalitarian. He says in the book that the brutes are incapable of doing this and reaching this state. Neither Aristotle, Plato, Epicurus, the Stoics, St. Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux or St. Thomas Aquinas had anything at all to say about the moral virtues and vices of modern day political correctness.

What would any of these people have thought about the paladins of Woke Twitter? What would Luther or Calvin had said about them? What would Voltaire or Nietzsche have said about them? Can’t we just laugh at these people who spend their entire day mounted on their moral high horse and being mad on Twitter, but who actually know virtually nothing at all about what is morality?

I’ve been charged by them with the heresy of “racism.”

I don’t believe their antiquated, politically correct nonsense about how “race is a social construct.”

My DNA test results are constantly being updated by Ancestry.com:

67% British
11% Irish
8% German-French
8% Italian/Greek
3% Scandinavian
3% Eastern European

I’m 100% European. I have zero non-White ancestry. In fact, anyone who takes the test can see not only whether they are European or African these days, but they can also see all kinds of other things like where their ancestors came from in Europe down to the specific towns and places in England as well as who you are most genetically similar to since crossing the Atlantic to the New World.

I don’t “hate” anyone because of their ethnicity. I’m just not dumb. Everyone who is educated about these issues also knows full well the political correctness hasn’t caught up with science.

Anyway, let’s continue talking about how we become spiritually stronger because our ancestors like St. Benedict or St. Bernard of Clairvaux or Luther had a lot to say about this. John Calvin also had a lot to say about it. He believed that God reaches out and touches you.

MY FAVORITE CATHOLIC MONK

I really liked reading Bernard and the other Cistercian writers last year. These guys were the “athletes of Christ.” They took the otherwordliness, self denial and self discipline of traditional Christian morality to what would today be unimaginable extremes like renouncing the world and locking themselves in cells and maintaining a rigorous routine of physical exercise and spiritual discipline.

There is a place called Cîteaux Abbey in Burgundy in France. These guys went there and carved a community of monks out of the wilderness in the late 11th century because traditional Benedictine monasticism was too lax for them. As I read these guys, I was intrigued and inspired by the structure, discipline and the happiness of their lives and have incorporated a bit of it in my own life although I just can’t go FULL ascetic as I am a happily married man and a father.

I spend a lot of my time outdoors in the sun now and just working on shit outside improving my place because it makes me feel better for some reason getting that sunlight and exercise. I also carved this huge walking trail through the woods here. I like to walk through it while listening to music and podcasts and scoping out what is going on every day on Jack’s website.

Aristotle believed you had to practice the virtues to become morally disciplined. I applied the virtue of temperance to both my diet as well as my harsh writing here on this site. Similarly, the church used to be an institution where you practiced your faith. The Cistercian monks at Cîteaux Abbey practiced their more intense form of piety by praying at all times throughout the day and night and by doing physical labor to glorify God and to provide a minimal subsistence for themselves.

The modern liberal … what does he offer? You’re free … just do whatever the hell you want. It really isn’t a good answer. It doesn’t offer anyone things like structure, purpose and discipline in their lives nor does it offer them a common narrative of belonging to a community that has a past, present and a future. Fortunately, we’ve been “liberated” from that pre-modern way of thinking!

MY FAVORITE PROTESTANT MONK

joking/not joking about miserable scolds on Woke Twitter. CLICK LOL

I hope that Jack Dorsey continues with his weird monastic habits. He is clearly on a spiritual quest. Let’s hope he grasps his way to the Christianity of his European ancestors!

UPDATE: A reader notes that 70.6% of Americans are Christians.

Note: We’ve already got him on the Yang Gang so that’s a start.