#MastersofSocialIsolation #7. Evagrius Ponticus, a 4th-cen desert ascetic, wrote a manual of practical counsel for those living in solitude. The desert monks did not so much flee people, but the deadness of a world consumed with the quest for power, wealth, and passing pleasure.

In the desert they could learn to uproot their own acquisitive ego and find their true selves. But in doing so they were subject to various “demons of sadness,” of which the most difficult was “acedia,” or the “noonday demon.”

“He presses his attack upon the monk about the 4th hour and besieges the soul until the 8th hour. First of all he makes it seem that the sun barely moves, if at all, and that the day is 50 hours long. Then he constrains the monk to look constantly out the windows, ...

... to walk outside the cell, to gaze carefully at the sun to determine how far it stands from the 9th hour, to look now this way and now that to see if perhaps one of the brethren appears from his cell...He depicts life stretching out for a long period of time, and ...

...leaves no leaf unturned to induce the monk to forsake his cell and drop out of the fight.” Not just desert monks but writers, artists, parents, and many others are familiar with this demon. Evagrius is compassionate: