Girl in the Hammock, Winslow Homer, 1873 / Wikipedia
The intellectual life is available to all because it only requires a willingness and an ability to get deeply and profoundly lost in thought. So argues Zena Hitz, a writer, tutor at St. John’s College, and founder of the nonprofit Catherine Project, which aims to bring the study and discussion of great literature to those of all backgrounds. Hitz authored Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life, which examines the pleasure and fulfillment that come from pursuing intellectual pursuits born out of one’s own self-directed curiosity. In this interview with Renovatio’s digital editor, Faatimah Knight, she discusses the ways the intellectual life manifests in academia, in service to others, and in the habits of students and religious devotees. The conversation is edited for clarity and length.
Faatimah Knight: I really enjoyed your book Lost in Thought. From the first Bible verse I was invested: “For wisdom is better than rubies; and all that you may desire cannot compare with her,” Proverbs 8:11. Define what you mean by “an intellectual life”: Is it simply our private thoughts sparked by our observations of the world, by reading, by conversing with others? What are the ingredients that make up an intellectual life—and why is it important to have such a life?
Zena Hitz: As you already suggested in your question, I think about intellectual life as an aspect of any life. There is such a thing as an intellectual vocation—that is, a special call to think more intensely or to teach or to study. The type of intellectual life I’m interested in is an aspect of any ordinary life.
It’s recognizable in forms that most people can see—reading, thinking, conversation, reflection, interest in the natural world, mathematical thinking. What all those human activities have in common is the exercise of the mind on reality, on what is. That sounds very general, which is why I like to use examples that people can connect to real life. Pursuing the intellectual life is not necessarily directed toward a particular goal, like building a house or fixing a car or developing one’s career so one’s life is financially sustainable, but is something we do just because it’s one way to grow as human beings. It’s the way we develop, the way we change and are being changed by what we encounter. This type of intellectual life is a way of being more human, of growing in our humanity. That’s at least a start for the conversation.
FK: The idea of becoming more of yourself, more human, is fascinating in the context of the religious characters in your book. One criticism that religion gets is that it makes people less human, that it disconnects people from their humanity. When we dig into the stories of Mary and Abraham, there’s this sense of these individuals living really big lives and tapping into all aspects of their humanity. Not the base aspects, which maybe is the modern criticism, but some of the more powerful aspects of what it means to be a human being.
ZH: I think that’s right—it’s one of the things that’s distorted contemporary perceptions of religion and it’s partly the fault of some of our religious culture, but some of it maybe not. Religion is essentially ascetical. You restrict some of your activities for the sake of others. Everyone understands that playing sports has to be ascetical—you have to make sacrifices, make choices, give up something for the sake of becoming better at something else. People understand the importance of discipline and direction in sports, but they don’t see it the same way in moral or intellectual life.
As far as I’m concerned, the restrictions on a life of faith, the ways in which you can’t do everything that you might be inclined to do, are a prerequisite for entry into the realm of much greater freedom and flourishing. We could all do better at communicating that aspect of a life of faith: You close yourself off like an athlete or an artist or anyone who cares about anything deeply. You close yourself off for the sake of some greater growth or development or freedom or connection.
To the extent that my book has a religious aspect, it’s to look at what asceticism makes possible rather than at what good people don’t do. It’s to hold out the attractive pieces of religion rather than the restrictive part.
FK: A Gallup poll shows Americans read nineteen books a year in 1999 and thirteen books a year in 2021, the second year of the pandemic, when people were still home. The number of books read by college graduates has also declined over the past twenty years. While reading isn’t the only indication of intellectual life, what do you make of the fact that we have easier access to books than ever before but are reading less?
ZH: I find it very alarming. But I also find it understandable: I’m a professional reader and teacher of reading, and I struggle more and more to read a book, especially one that requires some concentration. A main objective for people who are concerned about education is to find a way to reseed reading in the culture.
The way to do that is through the formation of communities. A couple of years ago I founded a nonprofit called the Catherine Project. We hold Zoom tutorials and reading groups based on books that would be quite difficult to read on your own. That bit of social support seems crucial to undertaking reading in the kind of environment we live in.
Although reading is not the only way to learn, the decline in reading is a sign that our ability to concentrate in general is diminishing, and every type of learning requires concentration and focus.
FK: We live in a world of increasing distractibility—more shows streaming, multiple social media platforms, twenty-four-hour news, all instantly available on phones that have become bodily appendages. It’s been said that stillness and silence can breed discomfort, and our instinct is to distract ourselves in order to avoid a problem, anxiety, or fear. The seventeenth-century Catholic philosopher Blaise Pascal said, “All of man’s problems arise from an inability to sit quietly in a room.” How do we begin to cultivate the ability to sit quietly in a room, or even to take a walk by ourselves in the park or on the beach?
ZH: I try to make this case in the book: There’s a part of our nature that longs for distraction. We like to be comfortable. We have an autopilot that chooses the lesser challenge over the greater challenge. This is why we need ascetical practices, discipline, and a community life with structure to do the best things we can do. What’s been going on for, say, the past ten to fifteen years, is a dramatic increase in the degree to which that weakness in our nature is being exploited for profit. Huge industries, whole sectors of economies, are dedicated to preying on our attention and focus.
The first step to counteract this is to be aware of that fact: our desire for convenience can easily bleed into general passivity and the capacity to be manipulated and to have our attention bought and sold in ways that are harmful.
If Pascal, who was a deeply contemplative person and a great mathematician and scientist as well as a beautiful thinker and philosopher, said that in the seventeenth century, it was because he knew from experience how hard it was to sit in an empty room. This is something everyone struggles with. Which is why we need community support.
In the Jewish tradition of Shabbat, people don’t use any devices one day a week. What a source of strength that everyone does this every week! That’s an old tradition in a particular religion, but any of us can devise with our friends, our families, and our smaller communities ways to break free of our devices, to spend more time with ourselves. The more we see how much healthier we are, the easier it becomes.
I’m a bit extreme. For instance, I have a new office on campus, and I didn’t put any computers in it. I’ve never owned a smartphone. As a result, for most of the day, I have no access to any computer, and the quality of my life has gone up astronomically.
FK: I think you’ll be a hero to a lot of people when they hear that you don’t have a smartphone and there’s no computer in your office! But something is going on that seems outside of our conscious control. We engage in these entertainment practices that don’t leave us feeling all that entertained or all that happy. What do you make of that? Why do we keep indulging in something that, in the end, does not deliver what we seek?
ZH: Honestly, individuals often have specific problems that they’re avoiding. I don’t want to understate this. It takes an enormous amount of courage to actually sit and wait to see what you’re avoiding thinking about: aging parents, illness, long-term loneliness, work that’s not fulfilling, a lack of connection with different generations, and so on. Even once an issue is recognized, it might feel overwhelming to overcome. I find it overwhelming myself.
I lived in a religious community for a while whose founder was a woman named Catherine Doherty, and one of her sayings was, “If you feel lonely, go and talk to the loneliest person in the room.” You can always imagine someone lonelier; think about the widower, the person in the nursing home. This is part of why leaving the computer out of the office works; on campus, there’s a constant demand for serving others. People want to talk to me all the time. I give myself over to whatever their demands are, and that is what health looks like: service. That’s very countercultural, and it’s very difficult for us to break out of our old habits.
A lot of large-scale forces have conspired against living that way, but we have to trust the old ways, the wisdom of the elders, and continually reach toward an alternate way of life.
FK: Let me ask you about leisure and work. Are they unavoidably intertwined? In The War on Normal People, Andrew Yang claims that automation is coming. We saw a big push toward that during COVID, and it will only continue in that direction until jobs are taken over on a massive scale. If people have a future without jobs, are we prepared for a life of leisure and intellectual pursuits?
ZH: One of the things in the book that doesn’t come off as clearly as I might like is that I actually believe in work—I’m not anti-work. I do think that we work for the sake of leisure, and we can get those things out of balance. Our conception of work is distorted, just like our conception of leisure is distorted; we think of leisure as binging Netflix or what have you, pure distraction instead of doing something in which we’re really focused and alive.
We’re losing the connection between work and service. Work, as I understand it, whether paid or unpaid, is serving others, acting for the good of one’s neighbor, producing some good for our community.
We don’t think of it that way, in part because the people who do that in the most obvious ways are at the bottom of the social hierarchy. People who clean our public bathrooms or pick up the trash or cook and serve food—they are not the most highly regarded people in our culture, even though what they are doing is serving their neighbors and providing things that we all need.
On the other hand, there’s a whole industry of work that ultimately doesn’t make sense. It’s rooted in marketing techniques and fake metrics and PowerPoint presentations for corporate boards, and it’s empty. It doesn’t have any real human content. I find the prospect of a world where we don’t work—where we don’t serve one another—very dystopian. We would lose fundamental aspects of our humanity and—as is already happening—diminish ourselves through self-medication, drug use, distraction, anything to avoid recognizing our plight.
This is just me dreaming, but I would like to see people organize themselves so that they are always serving one another regardless of what the economy is doing. It’s in that context where real leisure can start to take shape because the best leisure is that in which, while you’re working, you’re being fed with material for reflection.
