The New Monk Bookroom

Berman’s solution to this cultural crisis is what he calls “the monastic option”, referring back to the monks who did not fit into the disintegrating Roman culture. “What the Roman culture had discarded these monks treated as valuable: what the culture found worthwhile they perceived as stupid or destructive.” In their monasteries they copied the b9oks that represented the highest cultural achievement of the treasures of Greco-Roman civilization, material that six hundred years later was crucial to the dawn of a new European culture. 

Berman sees the potential for that process today in the person of “new monks” who do not live in monasteries and copy books but embody in their own lives the knowledge and values in need of preservation, handing these on from person to person in an underground “guerilla” resistance to the seduction of the corporate consumer culture. This way of life may attract only a minute percentage of the American population, Berman says, but drawing on Chaos Theory he reminds us that at times of transition, when cultures are in disequilibrium individual action can have a much larger impact on historical development than would normally obtain. The activity of new monks could ” inadvertently push the system, as it disintegrates, in a new direction”. 

Berman’s description of the new monk closely parallels our own experienced self-description–nomadic, literally and figuratively, highly individualistic but seeking genuine community, non-hierarchical, non-institutional, thoughtful, reflective free spirits. He sees us as a kind of “aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky” who are to be found in all nations and all classes and among whom ” there is a secret understanding when they meet.”The job of preservation and transmission of the deepest human values at the present time, Berman believes, will consist in creating “zones of intelligence” in a private local way and then deliberately keeping them out of the public eye. Some sort of transmission must go on without any form of institutionalization which can be co-opted. Berman caveats here need to be noted and seen as a challenge to our ingenuity.This assessment of our moment and place in history is the gift of an eagle eye view over time and space which can inform and inspire us as well as guide and caution us as we make our way through the complex jungle of our daily life. Berman sees his book as a sort of guidebook for the nomadic monk of our time.  The book helps orient ourselves in the stream of the history of monasticism for which “New Monks” as eco-spiritual pioneers are opening a new chapter.  

                                    –SW