Kreiner: ‘The Wandering Mind’

 Jamie Kreiner, a history professor at the University of Georgia, says medieval monks were obsessed by distraction as a feature of how our minds work.

Monks fled “the world,” a euphemism for human entanglements, and tried to set up rules of living designed to focus their minds.

The story of their experiments and arguments is fascinating. The anxiety about whether the world’s technology is distracting us from important, creative work sounds familiar.

Kreiner argues there’s a reason for that: “we modern persons are heirs to a set of cultural values surrounding cognition that are very specifically monastic, and, to an extent, specifically Christian.”

I love her book The Wandering Mind. Here’s a sample:

 

Augustine of Hippo said wistfully in his book The Work of Monks that he wished he knew how the apostle Paul had divided up his day. It would have offered monks clear and useful guidance.

But Paul hadn’t done that; monks were on their own. They avidly shared stories about successful monk’s routines — like how writers today want to know how other writers work and maintain their focus.

 

• Source: Jamie Kreiner, The Wandering Mind; New York: Liveright Publishing Corp., 2023, pp. 8 and 54.