A monastery strikes me as a place where human children can go to simulate human adulthood. Monks take vows of silence and keep their hoods up and their heads down to create the illusion of isolation and solitude, but it doesn’t compare to the real thing; good idea, bad execution. If you want to be away from the things of man, why not just go? Why be a make-believe hermit when you can just cross the river, climb the hill, pitch a tent, and be the real thing? Pray, chant, self-flagellate, make wine, eat swill and never say a word; you can do it all on your own. When you’re not surrounded by other people or stuck adhering to a goofy belief system, you don’t need a lot of dumb vows.