Global Dialogues

Many years ago, my father, an Orthodox priest, gave a sermon in which he cautioned that for those of us living in the West, comfort was the greatest spiritual danger. Our sense of security (whether economic or otherwise) tended to blind us to the suffering of others as well as to the workings of the devil on our own souls. “I am comfortable, therefore secure, therefore powerful, therefore invulnerable, whether in this world or next.” 

How different things are today, as the world we knew at the turn of the millennium is long gone and the planet spinning ever more out of control, rendering us increasingly uncomfortable and confronting our powerlessness. What can I, as an individual, do about climate change, the war in Gaza, the threat of AI destroying millions of jobs and plunging us into some as-yet-unclear dystopian armageddon scenario? What can we as a community of human beings do to “make it stop”? 

 As an individual, I’ve thought a lot about small acts of defiance, for example refusing to watch TikTok and generally adopting an “AI vegan” lifestyle (I’ve never used ChatGPT). As a mother, I’ve focused on making sure my child reads books, and that he doesn’t, until the last possible minute, know anything about social media: all this in the interests of preserving his soul and mind as those of an autonomous individual capable of making his own decisions about a world understood through tactile, and therefore real, means. In short, I seek to give him the power to cut through the noise. From the point of view of “the community,” Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation should be bedside reading for any of us seeking to empower our children, and ourselves, to confront both the immediate challenges and those around the corner.

There is more to it, of course. As an Orthodox Christian, when asked to write on this topic I immediately thought of the words of a Byzantine-era prayer that remains central to the daily prayer cycle, namely the Troparion of the Cross. It begins, “Save o Lord thy People,” and ends, “and by the power of Thy Cross, preserve Thy Commonwealth.” “Thy People”—that’s us, all 8.2 billion powerless souls currently inhabiting the planet. In September each year, the Orthodox Church celebrates the Exaltation of the Cross—the day when, according to tradition, the Empress Helen’s efforts to locate the True Cross in Jerusalem met with success. One of the day’s celebratory hymns contains the following words: “Guarded by the Cross, we resist the enemy, unafraid of [climate change / AI / as yet unknown horror]’s deception … for the proud one is cast down and destroyed on the tree by the power of the crucified Christ.” We are not alone in this fight, as the supreme powerlessness of the Crucified God paradoxically gives us the power to hold on, to hope, to believe in survival and ultimately renewal.

Irina du Quenoy is a research fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs.