This past week, as I was reading some of my favorite people’s blogs, I happened to notice that a couple of them were Orthodox Christians.  I realized that I knew very little about Orthodox Christianity other than that they broke from the Roman Catholic tradition way back in the 1000s.  I was raised in the Evangelical Free Church of America, and if you want to know what that means, go watch the Jesus Camp movie sometime.

I was thinking about Nassim Taleb’s statement that old technology is better than new technology.  Fasting and Prayer is old technology.  How old?  I have no idea, because I still have not managed to snag a copy of Star Ships by Gordon White, but I’d venture to guess that Fasting and Prayer to the spirits is older than Gobekli Tepe.

It is technology which has been lost or altered by much of the mainstream Protestant Christianity sects.  The Muslims have Ramadan, a month of only eating or drinking when it is dark outside, and giving to charity is linked to it.  The Latter Day Saints have Fast Sunday, where they are supposed to skip breakfast and give the money they didn’t spend on breakfast to the poor, um, I mean the Salt Lake City Mall.  The Evangelical Free Church has no official fast days that I know of, but private fasting happens.  The United Methodist Church doesn’t have any fast days either.  The Jews have Yom Kippur.  The Roman Catholics have Ash Wednesday, every Friday, and Lent, but these tend to mean one full meal and two small snacks, or merely no meat, and varies considerably by location.  The Orthodox have a very extensive fasting calendar, in which they are practically vegan for half the year.  They take their fasting very seriously, and unlike some of the Protestants you don’t give up some weird thing for Lent of your choosing, but rather you give up exactly what everybody else in the Orthodox church is giving up for Lent.

Of the pagan or indigenous religions, I know little, because they have the intelligence gained from tens of thousands of years of experience not to tell outsiders the truth.  What little I have gleaned, indicates that fasting was ever a part of their practices as well, whether through vision quests, or through medical practices, or through the simple practices of sacrifice and gifts to the spirits.

Fasting works on quite a number of different levels.  It lowers blood pressure.  There have been people who simply didn’t eat anything for a year and lost a hundred pounds.  It promotes self-discipline to people who mindlessly eat in front of screens.  It provides people with the experience of being hungry so they know what to do during the next famine to make it more comfortable.  It changes people’s relationships with their environment, with their deities, with their spirits, even with their ancestors.  There are people who starve themselves to death, but most won’t.  Most of the traditions around the globe have exemptions from fasting for pregnant or nursing women, and for children.

Keep in mind that food is a local phenomenon.  Giving up all animal products for Lent does not work so well above the Arctic Circle without access to food flown in from the southern lands.  Giving up all animal products for Lent in the practically vegan parts of rice-belt Asia is not much of a sacrifice at all.  What works for you?  What works for your gut microbiology?  Is fasting merely an agricultural phenomenon not practiced by hunter-gatherers?  Did the Ancient Egyptians practice it?  What about the Aztecs and the Mayans?  How does Decentralize All The Things impact the practice of fasting in your particular location?