Acedia Archives - Bob on Books

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The Weekly Wrap: July 26-August 1

More AI Transgressions and Accusations

I wish we could be done with talking about AI, at least as it has to do with the world of books and publishing. But this week brought more disturbing stories. Booksellers, including antiquarian booksellers receiving requests from AI companies to purchase old books. What is driving it is that with all the AI-slop in publishing, AI companies are looking for “slop-free” books to train its AI. Also, because of some court rulings deciding that “bought books” used to train AI may fall under “fair use” rather than copyright provisions, going this route is more attractive to avoid litigation.

But what happens to the books? The bindings are cut off, the pages are scanned and then the books are pulped. I suspect this is what inspired this Yahoo News article title: “AI Book Burning? Companies Are Destroying Millions of Books to Feed Chatbots.”

Book publicist Kathleen Schmidt highlighted another problem. Writers are running into problems with “false-positive” AI scans of their works. And because AI scrapes so many of these writers, it may become increasingly difficult to distinguish human versus AI authored works. It makes me wonder if publishers might give up at some time. Schmidt’s article is so important I’ve featured it below.

Of course, this may all be small potatoes compared to the reality of AI going rogue. “OpenAI blamed a hacking event on its AI models going rogue. Here’s what to know” chronicles how AI programs “went rogue” and hacked into companies. Do I hear shades of HAL?

I don’t know how to put the genie back into the bottle. But here’s what I’d like to see. Publishers say a hard “no” to AI works. Amazon says a hard “no” and stops allowing people to upload ten “self-published” books a week to their site. All booksellers and libraries reserve their shelves for human generated works. And those who submit AI works dishonestly are banned from publishing for at least ten years. And put in place protections to prevent rare and important works from being destroyed.

Five Articles Worth Reading

“Who Is Emma M. Lion, and Why Can’t Readers Get Enough of Her?” is the title of a profile of Beth Brower. Her self-published “diaries” of Victorian Emma M. Lion have been a hit. I found this fascinating simply for the fact that it is off the beaten path of what I read.

People have argued for some time of the importance of The Bible simply for cultural literacy. In “The Bible Belongs in the Classroom,” Adam Kirsch is the latest to make this case. But I think he might be saying more than he even intends when he concludes, “But if reading snippets of the Bible in class inspires any students to keep exploring, they might well end up shocked that this is a book their teachers and parents encouraged them to read.”

Kathleen Schmidt’s article on “AI Accusations and Book Publishing” underscored for me the growing distrust of author submissions that has resulted from AI generated text and the threat this is to both aspiring and established writers.

Then one of the more fascinating reviews I came across this week was of The Disease of Boredom: From Ancient Philosophy to Modern Psychology by Josefa Ros Velasco. In “The Noonday Devil,” Valerie Stivers discusses acedia and the centuries of Christian thought about this “deadly sin.”

“Read the Novels and Forget Everything Else” explores the life of Patrick O’Brian who wrote novels, particularly the Aubrey-Maturin sea stories that were better than he was. I loved these books, both for the descriptions of sailing tall ships and for the deep relationship between Aubrey and Maturin.

Quote of the Week

Emily Brontë, born July 24, 1818 gives this blunt definition of honesty:

“Honest people don’t hide their deeds.”

Miscellaneous Musings

I’m curious whether the Odyssey will result in any long-term interest in the classics. I suspect more will come from those in the home-school and classical education movements.

I’m a good way into Ann Patchett’s Whistler. I’ve read a number of her works and have felt that as she matures, so do her characters in their outlook and choices. I wonder if others have felt this.

Finally, I’ve been wondering what I was reading in 1976. The only book which immediately comes to mind is Os Guinness In Two Minds, a fascinating book about doubt, still one of the best in my mind. He wrote so many other significant books, including The Call.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: The Month in Reviews: July 2026

Tuesday: Don Everts, Oscar and the Mystery of the Glowing Orbs

Wednesday: Amar D. Peterman, Becoming Neighbors

Thursday: Cherryl Hunt, Nicholas J. Moore, and Timothy J. Murray, New Testament Ethics

Friday: Ann Patchett, Whistler

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for July 26-August 1.

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page.

Acedia and Its Discontents, R. J. Snell. Kettering, OH: Angelico Press, 2015.

Summary: This is an exploration of the vice usually known as sloth, often thought of as laziness. The author argues that acedia is a contempt of all relationships and a destructive embrace of autonomous unchecked freedom rather than the love of God and the good work to which God calls us.

R. J. Snell has given us a both literate and theologically acute exposition of the nature of acedia, the vice commonly known as sloth but in fact is anything but what we would consider laziness. He argues that what was once considered a vice to be overcome has been transformed into an obsession with a kind of radical freedom jettisoning relationship with God, others, and creation in pursuit of an “empire of desire.” In the extreme, acedia takes the form of Judge Holden in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian who detests all except the exercise of his own will.

Snell begins his argument about subverting this “empire” by dealing with our nature, as creatures “from the dirt” and “for the dirt.” We are made by God from the earth and made for it, as gifts to that creation. We are called to work that respects the integrity things, to respect the integrity of the emergent properties of the earth’s systems (or building soil), and works in the proper direction, filling the temple of God.

Instead of living in these ways, the choice of acedia is a choice of boredom where nothing is esteemed of beauty and goodness and wonder. We hate our God-given tasks and the place and the people we are set in the midst of, except where these fulfill our desires. Instead of seeing the beauty of all things, the world becomes “bleached out” objects. In an excursus on contraception, Snell explores the bleached out character of sex without fertility. As one considers the growing incidence of sexual assault and sexual objectification, one begins to see the point of acedia as an empire of desire.

Resistance to this empire comes through the embrace of sabbath, a rhythm of work and rest and feasting that is the acceptance of the gift of God. And it comes in the embrace of smallness, the ordinary, everyday acts of faithfulness. Monks struggling with acedia dealt with it through the work of the cell–prayer, and the rhythms of monastic life. It is in living out our particular tasks in our particular place that we are shaped in a life of virtue. So it was with Jesus, learning under a carpenter and practicing that work until the final years of his mission.

As I read Snell’s account of acedia it seems the case he makes seems extreme except for the fact that what I think he unearths is a fundamental orientation that we may often mask by social conventions where we might consider ourselves more virtuous than we are. And the resistance he proposes seems at once so ordinary, and yet so contrary to our modern life. Keep sabbath, embrace the ordinary, accept God-given limits as real freedom. Not what we often want to hear, and yet the doorway to truth, goodness, beauty, and the bracing love of life for which we most deeply long.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”