The last post here, I shared that I was interested in investigating Orthodox Christianity further. So far, it has been an overwhelmingly positive experience. In this post, I relate one way in which Orthodox Christianity (as opposed to other varieties I've been involved with, Protestant groups) has thus far presented itself as a sustainable, robust, working system.

Of Arch Linux and Orthodoxy

The road that led me to do a more serious investigation of Orthodox Christianity is something as follows,

• I was aware that Orthodoxy existed from investigating Protestant conceptions of the afterlife (heaven/hell), but put these issues on the back-burner to take a break from religion and pursue normal career stuff
• After four years or so of wandering around in academia, trying to figure out what to do with my life, I quit and got normal work doing tech/nerd stuff (web programing).
• I joined the Xah Lee discord chat server (still active there) to have people to chat with about tech/programing and well as general topics.
• One Internet friend I tended to disagree with on a lot of things, continued to blame many of the world's ills on Russia

Note, on my web page on Russian I mention this:

Russian often gets a bad reputation in the United States (e.g. "Russian collusion"; in contrast, have you heard about "Japanese collusion"?!). One of the reasons I'm motivated to study Russian is that many people I tend to disagree with on matters of opinion often have an... instinctive dislike for Russian.

...so I looked into some things on Russia to learn just why this fellow might have such strong feelings against Russia. I had overall positive feelings about Russia at this point because I enjoyed reading Dostoevsky and Tolstoy as an undergraduate and always liked the sound/look of the Russian language and Cyrillic script.

Naturally, an investigation into Russia in current times will lead to many mentions of the Orthodox church.

Another Internet friend recommended me Jay Dyer's content, which I linked on my previous blog post. Jay does long-form, in-depth analyses of lots of issues including theological topics. Jay's content led me to go investigate Orthodoxy in real life as well as through chatting with friends I met outside the Internet.

So, being a professional nerd (programer) led me to an online chat group, in which a guy kept on blaming the Russians. This led me to look into Russia which led me to look into Orthodoxy. Other friends helped link me to various stuff, share books, etc. Note, much of this searching was done without Google.

Linux

Now it is time to talk about Linux, and in particular my experience with Arch Linux. The main way I see using Linux and Orthodox Christianity is as follows: both give a path for how to not do wrong in a particular domain (i.e. have a working, functional system in Arch Linux; living a life free of sin in Christianity). Beyond this, the user (you) is free to celebrate the life you've been given through choosing any number of paths.

Of course there is a big difference of scope here (Arch Linux falls under life; it is certainly possible to sin in a Christian sense while using Arch Linux, lol). But some interesting parallels do hold, which I will expound on below.

Learning stuff

Another person I've linked a bunch is Luke Smith. Luke Smith unironically has a Christian tech channel. His more interesting stuff to me are his discussions in his Not Related! podcast where he's talked about stuff like rationality, the scientific method, statistics, and history of the US. One thing that Luke got me into was setting up Arch Linux; I have basically transcribed one of his videos into my own Arch Linux installation tutorial.

To learn about using computers/tech, Luke has emphasized many points I agree with,

• Read the manual/documentation
• Ask questions, see what has been done already
• Don't get caught up in fervor about your new shiny this-or-that; be critical of how newer or flashier solutions (e.g. GUI wrapper for some command line tool) may not be an improvement
• Be humble and learn

Through Luke's content, I came to develop a lot of the views I have on technology and society. One topic he has touched some on is how to learn to use Linux—or in internet slang, "git gud". ¹

Anyone who uses Arch frequently will know of the Arch Wiki, a resource that is so useful that even non-Arch users will frequently use it to help them troubleshoot issues.

To learn how to do things in Linux, one could try to read all the man (manual) pages for various tools. In earlier decades, it was quite possible to get a basic sense of what was going on this way. But practically speaking, you don't want to redo all the work of other people that have already put in hours and hours troubleshooting issues.

And so, I was pleasantly surprised to find a very well-sourced, readable Orthodox Wiki. Just as someone might consult the Arch Wiki to find out information on some cryptic command, one would use the Orthodox Wiki to learn about teachings on some particular issue, the history of a particular parish, etc.

Christians (e.g. the Church Fathers) have worked through lots of problems—many very deep ones, e.g. metaphysical questions—over many centuries. I've been very impressed by the depth and breadth of knowledge transfer from generation to generation in the Orthodox world.

Going forward

Here, I document my journey in hopes that it may be useful to others. It is already interesting for me to look back on my old blog posts during this whole COVID thing.

Thanks to all my readers who have been following this blog, whether sporadically or reading every post.

tbh covid has been pretty fortuitous to me; e.g. it has given me this opportunity to pause from running around, and think not just about career stuff for my own life, but to look forward into what kind of life/community I would like to give future generations.