Man has lost the courage and the faith without which he cannot be content to be "unseen." He is pitifully dependent on self-observation and self-assertion.
- Thomas Merton, The Inner Experience
As is often the case with many modern maladies, the roots were usually planted long before the effects came to complete and culture-wide fruition. Today’s preoccupation with identities, and with asserting and having those identities recognized, was already obvious to American Trappist monk Thomas Merton in 1959 while writing The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation (a book that he didn’t get around to revising before his death, but that was eventually published in 2003).
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