Author: Darrell Yardley

This author has written 112 articles

The Secular Hermit

Serenity, Simplicity, Self-Sufficiency, and Eco-Centricity

I have decided at this late stage of my life to live an eredite lifestyle. Actually, maybe this is more like where I find myself at this time in my life, and I quite like it.

I have been pulling further and further away from the culture and society in which I grew up and lived all these 73 years. This process actually has been ongoing for several decades, but has accelerated the last few years. For the first time in my adult life I find myself living alone and single. This process has been further augmented by my closing down my counseling practice. I am now in “retired” status mode with regards to my LPC (licenced professional counselor). I guess I am “emeritus” here as I am an Emeritus Professor of Zoology from Clemson University?

Classically hermits were religiously oriented, e.g. The Desert Fathers and Mothers of fourth century Egypt, Thomas Merton, John the Baptist, etc. They went to the deserts, forrests, mountains, etc., to be away from society and people and to get closer to God. But then there was Henry David Thoreau his two years on Walden Pond (Walden) Thoreau was not exactly religious but talked a lot about God and nature. Walden was mainly his relating his life experiment in individualism, a classic protest against government interference, and a life of simplicity and being close to nature. I’m not going that far but in that direction.Thought a lot about it. Daydreamed for over a couple of decades off and on about building a Tiny House and living in the Chihuahuan Desert area in Big Bend area in Texas. Hence my two books, WindWalker and Guru, that took place in or in part in that area.*

I am not “religious.” I am, however, spiritual. Spirituality, I define as cultivating serenity and personal growth–a very secular definition. No religion per se involved. In my Guru book, I write about secular spirituality (pp 138-139). Of how you can be spiritual without being religious.

The second title above is a subtitle. The whole of the first two together represents the working title of my current book project. I started out with a working title of, Buddha on a Bike. This will probably become the introductory chapter now. Many of my blog posts will become components of this project. As I surveyed the hermit literature, it is replete with all kinds of God/religious stuff but sorely lacking in a secular perspective. This deficit is where my book is directed. It will not be directed per se at hermits, but rather to folks that wish to cultivate serenity, simplicity, self-reliance, and eco-centricity in their lives. Eco-centricity, coming from an ecological frame of reference in our perspectives and actions, I discuss in more detail in an earlier post.

As hermits go, they can take all kinds of forms. I am located in a small South Carolina town, close to my family: adult children (3), grandchildren (5), and one great grandchild. I interact and communicate with them daily usually. We have family dinners and celebrations. I can pick up the phone, email, or text, any one of them, sometimes just to chat. I take daily walks down the street to my daughters and visit with my two-year old granddaughter. She has her Granddaddy wrapped around her finger. So, I’m not all that isolated.

Part of this process has been my selling my truck, switching to a bicycle-only lifestyle (at least as a trial), downsizing, simplifying, and decluttering. The last three are in progress. I am going through my house, office, and shops taking a Maria Kondo (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up) approach MOL. Not quite that OCD, but trying to really evaluate stuff. I plan on having a big yard sell with much of it. Some, I’m selling on Craig’s List or FB Market. The rest I’ll donate to one of the area thrift shops.

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Buddha Bike Update: Vulnerability

I’ve been biking it entirely now for two weeks as of Tuesday. How is that going?

The biking part per se is going fine. It is one thing to do the planning in your head, finding solutions on how to get places, what to do when this or that happens, etc. Reality hits when you are actually doing it! The two things that are really troublesome are my increased feelings of anxiety-driven vulnerability and the challenging reality of trying to do this in rural, small town South Carolina when you don’t have a backup car or truck. The latter is also an aspect of vulnerability. On the positive side, I am doing it, which is commendable.

Early Sunday morning I took an exploratory ride into Easley, only some seven miles northeast of here down SC Hwy 93. Thanks to Google Maps’ bicycle app I discovered a back road way into Easley that starts just down the street from me. I had never been down the street, as in my truck I usually turned off before I got to it or shot right past it to pick up Hwy 93 to go into Easley in my truck. The back country road was a wonderful winding, scenic country road that ends just where Hwy 93 comes into Easely. It was Sunday morning and so the traffic on Hwy 93 once I got to Easley was minimal. There no good way to get around getting on 93 once you’re in Easley unless you go over to Hwy 123, which is four lane but heavy traffic. Hwy 123 is the main thoroughfare between Clemson and Greenville. Not to be attempted on a bike except as a suicide mission. It’s 65 mph, heavy traffic, and no shoulders.

Early that morning I had had a strange dream that was in part in anticipation of this planned bike ride. In the dream I was standing atop a high dam over a lake below. I was much younger, a kid, say junior high. There was several kids my own age on the dam with me. I watched as several of them jumped off the high dam into the crystal clear lake water below. The water looked very peaceful and calm. It was like being in the clear waters of the tropics or Florida Keys. I watched as the boys who jumped came back up to the surface and excitedly begin clambering back up to the top of the dam. I wanted to make the jump and was trying to gather my courage to do so when I awoke. I love dreams. Dreams can tell you so much about what’s going on in your subconscious.

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Our Eusocial DNA

Part III in the “Process Theology, Revisited” series…

Perhaps a more appropriate title to this series would be, Process Atheology, as there is no “theo-” in my proposed “-ology.”

As for the other two posts in this series, this topic is also covered in Guru (Chapter 5, pp 68-72), along with cultural evolution, and based hugely on E. O. Wilson’s, The Social Conquest of Earth (2012), but not from the standpoint of Process Theology.

Humans are eusocial organism and characterized by altruistic (self-sacrificing) behavior, a character of eusocial species. Below are excerpts from my Guru (Chapter 5, pp 68-72) on eusocial species and evolution. Basically, we have two kinds of DNA from this perspective, our selfish DNA (see Dawson’s The Selfish Gene) and unselfish (eusocial) DNA. It is this unselfish DNA that offers a second solution to how a non-personal universe could “call” (think motivate or select for) humans’ (and other eusocial species’) altruistic behaviors. A personal Big Guy/Gal (a.k.a. personal God) up there telling us to be good and nice is an unnecessary hypothesis.

Below is from my Guru book explaining in a little more detail. I’ve edited it a little. Again, I am out on my vision quest and this is day two of the four day quest:

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Dissipation-Driven Adaptive Spirituality

Part II in my Process Theology, Revisited series–

Again, this hypothesis was originally presented in my Guru book, pp 108-118, in chapter 8 based on Jeremy England’s Dissipation-Driven Adaptation. Below is my discussion in those pages about what I termed, Dissipation-Driven Adaptive Spirituality.

Here I will jump to my main point that applies to my concern about Process Theology’s “God calling,”and how I address this concern from a secular, non-theistic paradigm? By “non-theistic” I mean without being based on a personal god, i.e. a god that is a person, place, or thing, but instead on laws and processes of nature, namely physics in this case. Instead of a God calling, on the driving force of the universe–energy dissipation–not some personal god out there doing a “calling” for humans to be “good.” Energy dissipation is the driving force not only of the universe but of spirituality too.

Here are text excerpts from that chapter, reproduced with the author’s permission. It is a rather lengthy presentation, first going over background. It introduces spiritual fitness, which I haven’t covered in a previous post. Spiritual fitness, analogous to Darwinian fitness, basically equals inner peace x personal growth, again as discussed in Guru. Charles is the guru on the mountain in the book. As presented, Charles’ hypothesis is a type of unified field theory of spirituality.

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