Above all, one or two senior monks should be assigned to go around the monastery during the hours the brothers are free for reading and see to it that there is no slothful brother who spends his time in idleness and gossip and neglects his reading; such a one is harmful not only to himself but also a distraction to others. If, God forbid, such a person is discovered, he should be corrected a first and second time; if he does not amend, he should be subjected to the correction of the Rule in such a way that the others are afraid.
— Danièle Cybulskie, How to Live Like a Monk: Medieval Wisdom for Modern Life
She’s quoting from the Rule of Saint Benedict. Benedict is writing in the sixth century, and he already needs what amounts to a monastery hall monitor. The brothers have designated reading time; nevertheless, somebody is going to wander off, find another monk, and start shooting the shit. A couple of things interest me here. First, it seems that even medieval monks had the same problem of not wanting to read books when they thought they should be reading books. Instead of TikTok, they were distracted by MonkTalk. And two, it seems that Benedict wasn’t having any of this “Oh, but the repetitive acoustic environment of the Divine Office has altered my attentional architecture and now I can’t read Scripture any more.” There will be no self-exculpating memoirs coming out of this monastery, by God. Looks like all we need to do is subject Nicholas Carr and James Marriott to “the correction of the Rule” and we’ll put an end to this nonsense. You’ll shoulder the burden of agency and like it.
Benedict does recognize incapacity. Immediately afterward he says that if someone genuinely “will not or cannot” study or read, give him suitable work instead. Brother Æthelred discovers that lectio divina has become strangely difficult. His attention wanders. The text no longer grips him. Perhaps the very medium of manuscript culture has depleted his capacity for sustained engagement. Then someone hands him a hoe. Remarkably, by Vespers he has rediscovered Augustine. Nothing like some manual labor in the fields to make your ADHD resolve itself!
But when the difficulty is I am supposed to read and instead I keep screwing around, Benedict keeps it brief and bitter: You are not reading. You should be reading. Stop doing that other thing and read. If you persist, consequences follow. There is no intermediate 280-page volume called The Shallows of Monte Cassino: What Plainsong Is Doing to Our Brains. What I like about the passage is that Benedict doesn’t sentimentalize either option. Reading is work; manual labor is work. The question is not which activity perfectly matches your present inclination but which obligation you are going to discharge. “I don’t feel capable of reading today” doesn’t open a door into indefinite self-analysis. That’s fine; here is another useful thing to be done.