Old Wisdom, New Distractions: New and Notable Books

As the mores of daily life in the twenty-first century change every month or two with the advent of the next digital novelty, lots of books on how to live well and nobly have appeared. Here are a few of them.

Thomas More was imprisoned on April 17, 1534, for refusing the Oath of Succession. A year later, on July 6, he was taken to Tower Hill for execution by beheading, a merciful alternative to the original sentence of hanging, drawing, and quartering. During those months, while in prison in the Tower, More wrote letters reflecting upon his decision and offering wisdom and counsel, mostly to his daughter, who visited him and helped preserve these writings. Hillsdale scholar Stephen Smith assembles them and related letters by others in The Last Riddle: Advice on Living and Dying Well from the Imprisoned Saint Thomas More, adding commentary and notes, as well as a section of instructions and prayers that More composed while in his cell. 

More states that he “condemned not the conscience of them that swore” (that is, obeyed the king). In another letter, he promises that if “causes” are disclosed to him and “conscience should think itself satisfied,” he would happily swear the oath himself. He insists, “The king’s true faithful subject I am and will be, and daily I pray for him and for all his.” He voices a bottom line in the face of condemnation: “I do nobody harm, I say none harm, I think none harm, but wish everybody good. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I long not to live.” From the hand of one of the great minds of the Renaissance, this collection is a map of how to manage worldly powers.

“We are born for combat.” That’s the premise of First Line of Defense: The Catholic Man’s Call to Heroism, by Douglas Barry and Daniel O’Connor. The authors speak openly of enemies in our midst, of courage in war, of the insidious work of demons and the devil. The effects of evil are everywhere, the authors say: “Across the globe, historically unimaginable rates of abortion, divorce, addiction, suicide, and pornography dissemination run riot.” The devil distracts us with sports, politics, social media, and other habits that take priority over worship. It is up to courageous men to stop the slide (“The devil is banking on your cowardice”). That includes training for physical attacks and a regimen to keep the body fit and strong. Men must submit to the teachings of the Church, too (“Toughness Is a Sacramental Life” is the title of one section). They must not fear to enter the fray, the authors insist, because the devil has designs on them and their families whether they like it or not. A rousing call to upright defense of the faith.

People over fifty years of age remember Darryl Strawberry as one of the great power hitters of the eighties and nineties. They probably don’t know that Strawberry surrendered himself to God twenty-five years ago and took up the call of traveling preacher. He tells the story of his faith in Another Life: Discovering the Healing Power of Purpose on My Long Journey from Player to Preacher, cowritten with Jerome Preisler. Talent, fame, and money put him on “a crazy fast-lane lifestyle,” he admits, and it’s not hard to imagine. During his years with the Mets (before he joined the Yankees), he hit 252 home runs, still a franchise record. The 1986 team won 108 games. He was 6 feet 6 inches tall, lean and menacing in the batter’s box, a perennial All-Star. Now, he visits prisons and tours death row, where he ministers to the condemned. One reason he relates to them is that he “was once prisoner number T17169 at Gainesville Correctional in Florida.” Also, he openly tells the men behind bars that he studied the Bible and was transformed. It’s a smooth and entertaining read, nicely anecdotal, an encounter with a sports giant who’s become a humble, likable, and faithful servant of God.

The great anxiety over the advance of AI is the prospect of dehumanization. One example of that possibility is the replacement of real friends with robot friends. Philosopher Valerie Tiberius takes up that trend in Artificially Yours: Real Friendship in a World of Chatbots. She was appalled, she admits, when around 2022 she read news stories about people forming intimate attachments to chatbots. But the advent of bots is complicated. There are certain types of interactions with such machines that may enhance human experience. 

Tiberius quotes Aristotle, who says that the best friendships are “made up of men who are good and alike in virtue.” That rules out chatbots. But she wonders: Doesn’t this overidealize friendship? Friends are imperfect beings. They can be selfish and unreliable, and we react to them sometimes in our own selfish ways. Bots can’t be selfish, though, and we can’t manipulate them. Because of this, they can teach us in a kindly way not to be egocentric. If we are shaped by people around us, a bot that is free of sin and vanity may, in fact, better help us find our best self. I’m inclined to call this a benign face put on a loss of human contact, but Tiberius’s thoughts are nicely suggestive and deserve a read.