"I wonder if a lot of the cultural complexity you refer to 
  seems interesting to people because they have lost so much 
  consciousness of [their] ancestors and the long view 
  afforded by a knowledge of history. If you don’t know 
  history, everything today can seem quite novel. But in the 
  larger context of the story of human history, much of what 
  fascinates, today, is quite redundant."  
  

Great insight on the contrast between how this Monk community lives with the modern world (paying taxes, working with USDA, financial planing), yet pays no attention to the hypermedia of internet and television that so many people are enveloped in.