Thoughts Like Hobos

The Wind that Shakes the Office Building

2008-05-27T17:44:00.000-04:00

Here's a physical challenge for you:

Grab a pencil and a piece of paper. Go ahead I'll wait.

Great. Now draw two triangles, one on top the other. The first triangle should have one corner pointed straight up. The second should have one corner pointed straight down. Shade in what you've drawn.

If asked, you'd probably say that you just drew a star, and you'd be right. But you wouldn't be totally right, because you haven't just drawn a star. While putting pencil to paper, you've actually created two things: a star and the space that isn't the star. The un-star. The non-star.

You have no choice but to do so, but we rarely think about the act of drawing something as the act of drawing two things. We rarely think about the negative space that is created by changing a blank piece of paper with a few pencil marks. But there it is. You've created a delineation. An image that's nothing but star, and its recursive image thats everything but star.

In art, the two images are called the figure (the star) and the ground (the empty space).

Now the mental challenge: think back to the last time you had to make a decision. It can be as simple as ordering water at a restaurant or as complex and meaningful as asking your girlfriend to marry you. The action that you took, and every action you've ever taken in fact, is just like putting the pencil to that paper. You've created something intentionally and created something else unintentionally, but unavoidably.

Unfortunately, real life isn't as simple as a blank sheet of paper. There are way too many moving parts. So when you make a decision, you might not just be creating two things, but three or four or nineteen hundred. It's difficult to imagine. Which is precisely why we tend not to think in those terms.

Let's say for example that you choose to head West to LA (to make yourself a star). In that instant, you are defining yourself and defining the environment you're in at the same time. You remove yourself from a place - which changes it. You add yourself to a new city - which changes it. And if you're ego wasn't large enough by then, realize that your actions directly define the world around you based on your presence.

You have no choice but to do two things at once. The most important thing to remember is that while you believe you are creating something beautiful, you may also be creating something negative at the same time. The only way to do that, is to not think only of the star you're creating as the artwork - but to focus on the entire sheet of paper. Start to see every action as drawing that star, and the world around you - your entire life - as the sheet of paper, and you'll be on the right track.

Now stop doodling, and go outside. There's a ton of cool stuff to do out there.

A Kite With No Wind

2008-05-19T12:23:00.001-04:00

Outside, the mild rain is building its way up to a downpour. Thin nylon and cardboard caps are getting soaked steadily as several hundred graduates are piled on top of each other waiting for a keynote speaker to finish so they can hear their name being called. On the face, it seems like the worst possible cost/benefit analysis - three hours in the rain for twenty seconds worth of excitement. No matter the pompous nature of the event, or what anyone else says, there's a good chance that you and your parents are there just to hear your name and watch you walk across the stage with your diploma in hand.

Inside, a group of parents, friends and siblings who keep nodding off are watching the ceremony on closed circuit television. Everyone is just slightly damp, and there's not enough seats for everyone, but it's warm and the sound quality is pretty solid. From my spot standing in the corner, I can barely make out what's happening on the screen because of the angle I'm at, but I imagine it's a stuff white guy trying to look impressive and talking about the road of life. Open doors. New paths. Exciting times. He folds the last page of his speech and thanks the audience, and as he moves away from the microphone a strange thing happens: The people in my room start clapping.

They start clapping with abandon.

People are applauding a screen. They are applauding the flattened image of a man being displayed in a remote location. They are clapping at the sound waves coming through speakers several hundred feet away from the man's actual voice. At once, this seems both natural and unusual.

After all, what is the purpose of clapping? I venture to say that it's to show appreciation to a performer. Thus, it seems that, to be meaningful, a speaker should be able to hear the applause. If a speaker isn't aware of his applause, does it even matter to him?

I caught a glimpse of this feeling a while back when a friend and I were asked to perform a slam poetry piece for another friend's video project. Instead of delivering the words to a small crowd of coffee shop kids, the rumble of espresso machines and shuffling feet in the background, the occasional clap or holler coming from the sides - we were speaking into a camera on a sound stage. It was empty. It felt alien, like there was a lack of energy. What was worse was, I couldn't tell if we'd done well or done terribly because there were no boos or claps. There was just silence - no feedback. I imagine that if the man on the stage hadn't had a live audience, he wouldn't have felt nearly as comfortable as he did. And still, I'm guessing he doesn't even realize that there were more crowds clapping for him far off in the distance.

There's another side to clapping though - it's for the audience. In theater, the curtain call is really important because it allows the audience to give thanks to the performer. It's a two-way street. We get to show how much we liked something, and the performer gets that ego-shining praise. We all win. We all feel good about ourselves.

So what happens when the performer doesn't get the benefit of the applause?

Despite the speaker not being able to hear the applause (and, thus, it not really mattering), the audience still clapped because it was a natural response. We clap when speakers are done. Whether they are there or not. We feel good about ourselves, somehow engaged in the process of the performance, it reminds us that we're there.

I spent the entire graduation not clapping. I didn't even clap for my friend when she crossed the stage. It was arbitrary anyway. Her knowledge of the clapping, to me, was all that mattered, and since she couldn't know one way or the other, I chose not to. Plus, I'll admit it seemed silly to me to clap at a screen - an object that is part of the performance, but not actively engaged in it. I would have been applauding an inanimate object.

There are organizations out there that will swindle you out of your money. They are charity organizations that thrive on getting small and large donations utilizing a selling point of emotion while only delivering a fraction of your dollar to the people they claim to help.

A person calls, tells you they need money for children with cancer, and you gladly give $100. That $100 is split up so that $5.00 is given to the research, and $95.00 is given to the call center and the company for operating costs. It's criminal.

But I think of it in exactly the same terms as clapping at a screen. Applauding an image that isn't there.

The audience applauding feels incredible about itself because it's doing something good, something that comes naturally. But what they are doing doesn't really matter on the other end. We hide the fact that what we're doing doesn't matter so that we can enjoy and revel in the task of responding and appreciating the performer. If the solicitor told you that almost none of your money would actually go to charity, you wouldn't give any, so it's important that you believe what you're doing is good. That you're being a saint. And that's what the company is selling you - an easy chance to be a saint.

The audience applauding an image is engaged in an automated response that is rendered hollow by the technology we have. It really does not matter whether they clap or not. Not to anyone it should matter to - namely the speaker.

We will have to confront the oddities and ethical questions that technology brings along. We'll also get to note the weird behavior we see when people are faced with technology and don't have a socially normal response to give it (some people clapped, others awkwardly looked around before clapping and some refused to clap altogether). But now, we have to confront the ethical questions about doing the right thing in a meaningful way. It feels great to give money to charity, but if the money isn't being put to use, you're not doing anything meaningfully or actively good. You just think you are.

How many things in your life seem ethical and meaningful until you investigate further? We live in a time now where doing the right thing is becoming easier and easier. You can pick up Ethos Water at Starbuck's and pretend to be helping water conservation in third world countries. You can give your credit card number to someone who calls you and pretend to fund Leukemia research. You can add a facebook application that says you're reducing carbon emissions.

It all feels really good, but in the end, are you just applauding yourself or can the speaker hear you?

I challenge you to be heard.

This Weakness

2008-05-15T11:11:00.000-04:00

Just picture it.

You're lying on a beach, a light sweat struggling to form on your skin as the same breeze that's pushing a sailboat on the horizon along brushes over you.

You're inundated with an erupting crowd, standing at the free-throw line about to sink two buckets to bring your team within striking distance of the win. The net swishes once, twice. Your heart keeps pounding.

You're sitting relaxed in an office with a woman asking you questions, and you're nailing all of them. You know by the time you shake her hand and walk out, she'll be convinced that hiring you is the best option for her company.

Visualization is powerful. Within ourselves, we have a unique power to place our bodies in a different situation than the one we're presently in. We can even trick ourselves into having sense experiences that we're not having - that's how strong our imaginations are. You can smell the salt-sea air, you can hear the flash of cameras, you can hear the woman's voice.

Apparently it's also a strong tool for achieving goals. When you have a goal in mind, you're supposed to visualize yourself achieving it. Somehow, by seeing yourself doing it either 1) You believe that it is possible (or inevitable even) or 2) You become familiar with the sensual experience of achieving that goal which makes it easier to confront.

It's not uncommon to imagine what a job interview will be like. Or what taking a test will feel like. Almost every guy I know has practiced what he'll say to ask a girl out before actually getting in the same room with her. All of this gives us the most information possible so that we can go through with striving for a goal.

I wonder if we do this with ethics, though.

It seems obvious to want to see yourself achieving goals. It's a physical action, so the imagination can take over with ease. But what about envisioning yourself as the best possible ethical version of you? Do we walk through scenarios where we'll have to make a moral decision and choose the right path?

I'll take the most vivid example. Say, for a moment, that your moral code requires that you emulate another historical figure because that historical figure is the embodiment of perfection. Since emulating that person, and thus, acting ethically, is a goal (albeit an occasionally inactive one) it seems like someone would benefit from sitting down, closing their eyes, and imagining reaching that goal.

I see this breaking down into two parts - one easy and one more abstract. The first would be an active goal, like imagining yourself confronted with a lost wallet, finding the person's contact information, and returning it. By envisioning this, you should be able to recognize the situation and "repeat your actions" so to speak if and when the situation occurs in real life. You will have practiced being ethical in the imaginary world as a means to be ethical in the real one.

The second is more difficult, and that stems from imagining yourself as "being like" something or someone. Since the act of being is passive and active, imagining this is a little harder. But that, to me, seems to make it even more desirable to try to imagine. If it's more difficult a thing to imagine, wouldn't it follow that it would also be more difficult a thing to achieve in the real world? Taking the time to imagine such a thing could only help in truly emulating, truly being like an ethical figure that's worthy of striving for.

As for me, I'm headed back to the beach.

Who Isn't on First?

2008-05-08T14:46:00.000-04:00

For whatever reason, the trick of implanting writing devices into a story makes it better. We believe that a story is more intelligent, has more depth, or has some great meaning when the writer uses - what are essentially - tricks.

Take a minute and think of three or four of your favorite movies or books. At some point in the story, there's a solid chance that the main character - the lovable rogue bucking the system, proving that heart wins out over money, handsomely wooing the young object of his love - there's a solid chance that a puppy or kitten shows him affection.

This is one of my favorite tricks. You denote which character the audience is supposed to love by having an innocent being - like a dog or cat or baby - show him a lot of love. Usually, the owner will note how unusual it is for their normally distant (or fussy) pet (or child) to be so sweet to a stranger. This let's us know that the main character is 1) naturally lovable 2) unique and 3) probably has bacon in his pocket.

This is one of my favorite tricks because of how easy it is and how prevalent in literature it is. It also works in reverse. You can easily show an audience your bad guy by having a really lovable pet growl and snarl at him. Or bite him in the trousers. Because that's telling and hilarious at the same time. Especially if he's wearing heart-covered boxers.

This got me thinking about the important we place on symbols and signifiers, the common ones anyway. I soon realized that I could make a heroic statement about almost any inanimate object.

The key here is that inanimate objects have no real ethical value - they don't commit acts of moral sin or acts of moral heroism. They can't, because they aren't living or cogent or active. But we can make it seem that way.

Some inanimate objects deserving of medals:

The Shoe: Steadfast and supportive, the shoe is always there when I need it. Reliable to a fault, it selflessly protects me from the elements - things that might harm me like rain puddles and errant nails. Even if I lose my temper and throw my shoe across the room, it never faults, never attacks me back, and always stays right where I leave it to be used again the next day.

The Computer Speaker - Without the incredibly versatile speaker, life would be a much more silent, dismal place. It fills the room with just the right amount of glorious music for me to enjoy without irritating the neighbors, and it even lets me know what actors are saying in movies. It, too, can be thrown across the room without retaliation.

The Fancy Feather Boa That My Friend Wore To This One Halloween Party - More than just a costume accessory, the boa became an icon for the night. It embodied the idea of the party, and idea that we could change ourselves for just one evening and grow into the realm of possibilities. That boa was soft and gentle, always willing to be close by in case it needed to comfort you. What's more, it was unselfish with its talents, allowing that comfort to be used by anyone who wanted to partake. Plus, it looked great.

It seems obvious that most good things we can say about inanimate objects involve inaction or defense. Since they can't do anything on their own, we have to bring them to life ourselves or notice the traits that they possess as something more than what they are.

But it's not hard. We essentially give human traits to these objects and they become more than objects - they become symbols or metaphors. We have to put that meaning into them, though. They don't come with it already installed. Thus, we could place almost any meaning into almost any object.

Obviously, the next step is to note that we can do that with humans as well. We can shape the meaning of our existence in almost any way. We can define ourselves beyond our usefulness or our skills our traits. We can inject meaning and symbolism into who we are or who are friends are or into the villains into our lives. This notion has a ton of implications about the roles we end up playing in life.

Of course, the obvious exception to the rule is The Brave Little Toaster - an inanimate object that actually is brave and little and, I think, is going on a journey to find its mother or something.

Which reminds me: call your mother. It's almost mother's day.

The Deeds are Left to Purchase

2008-05-05T17:13:00.000-04:00

Is opportunity as good as having an actual experience?

I sat down and really thought about whether or not I'd be alright if I heard the news that the Mona Lisa had been burned. On the universal sentiment of great art being destroyed and the collective humanity lessened, sure, I'd feel sad. But on a personal level, I realized I didn't actually care.

I suppose that makes me heartless, but the key is a matter of experience. I will most likely never see the Mona Lisa. Therefore, I have no vested personal interest in whether it exists in the future or solely in the past. I'm sure there are plenty of manifest qualities about the Mona Lisa - perhaps my life is affected in some way that I can't directly connect, but affected nonetheless. On the whole, though, my life is unchanged whether the Mona Lisa is still in the Louvre available for viewing or reduced to ash.

My position comes from my not equating opportunity with experience. I can see a logical argument to contradict my personal feelings by saying that the "possibility of seeing the Mona Lisa" is as good or almost as important as "seeing the Mona Lisa". For example, let's say we were talking about economic growth instead of art. Isn't the opportunity to make as much money as possible better than not having the opportunity at all?

This, of course, is the American Dream.

Some quick problems with the dream of opportunity:

1) In order to equate possibility with the experience, I would also have to equate opportunity with failure. After all, without a guarantee of success - which opportunity doesn't have - it is as likely that I will succeed as that I will fail. Thus, there's no inherent value to opportunity that makes it as significant as experience.

2) There's reasonable doubt to claim that opportunity (or possibility) does not exist. It certainly doesn't follow from common sense, but there is also nothing in the way of proof that shows that possibility or true free will exist. In fact, there is also equally strong evidence that the world is predetermined (a thought that follows well with religion and with something like monism).

Of course there is a gut response to opportunity. It's obvious to me that living in the United States is better than living in Communist Russia. At least the chance exists to create a good life for myself. So then, what does opportunity really mean?

I suppose I'm starting to form "opportunity" into two types: Soft Opportunity and Hard Opportunity.

Soft Opportunity can come from the mere existence of an object or goal - The Mona Lisa exists, therefore I could go see it.

Hard Opportunity speaks to the mechanics of actually being able to do something - The Mona Lisa exists, I have the funds for air travel, the museum where its housed will be open, I can withstand the lines, I have eyesight, therefore I could go see it.

The reason I feel compelled to delineate between the two is because opportunity on its own means very little. Or, at least, there is a difference between real opportunity and perceived opportunity. I would argue, quite liberally, that the American Dream doesn't actually exist for many citizens. The fact that they live in the United States does nothing to make that "opportunity to make life good" exist in any real form in their lives. Because there are other factors that go into whether an opportunity can be utilized beyond the opportunities existence.

Therefore, since I (at the current moment and at no perceivable time in the future) have the funds to travel to France - it matters very little to me whether the Mona Lisa exists or has been sprayed with acid.

I'm getting back into how things affect us in the micro and macro, and this seems like an extreme view to take, but I still have to question what role a painting I will never see plays in my life. Still thinking, is the key phrase.

Red Sky in the Morning

2008-05-01T15:34:00.001-04:00

The reason that there's a calm before a storm is because the way in which a storm draws energy from the air. When I was younger, the best surfing always happened during hurricane season in the gulf. The sky would be lit, the waves would be clean and monstrous, and there wouldn't be a raindrop in sight.

That's because all the rain was being called elsewhere. A swirling mass of energy (mostly electricity) was pulling all the moisture out of the air from miles and miles away. The magnetic attraction of the electron molecules was strong enough to force surrounding energy to leave its current state and head for where the collective was. That's also why the eye of a hurricane is so calm - all the energy moves so quickly in a circular motion that a focal point, a pivot point is created so that the motion throws all matter and energy outward from the center, leaving the center completely still.

I haven't had a thought in weeks. Not a real one anyway. Everything I write seems to be just a little forced, and that's because I haven't really been thinking. When I am, the flow takes over and everything fits together (even if it's all one big run-on sentence). Lately, everything is just rehashed versions of previous thoughts.

So I'm wondering if my brain is on a little vacation. A spring slump. Maybe it's needed elsewhere or maybe I haven't really had anything to think about. Maybe it's because I've been paying too much attention to the Presidential race, and there hasn't been any real substantive news in a while.

There's two feelings that come with this sort of thing, and I think we've all experienced them:

1) Boredom - it seems like we should be thinking and learning and growing and doing, but something internal just isn't working right. So we sit. And sitting around seems to be all we're up for.

2) Listlessness - the feeling, an itch, that we're wasting time and need to get moving because there's a world out there to save.

Is there a way to combat these feelings? Or do we have to wait for some natural changeover to happen inside us so we can get on with progression?

So far I haven't found a cure for not thinking. It bothers me though. I'm so used to analyzing and delving deeper into everything - I'm even analyzing the fact that I haven't been analyzing everything.

I take it as a natural flow of events - there has to be some down time for everything. So maybe I should just embrace the lack of mental stimulation and watch more television, sit around doing nothing for a while, find some zen in the whole situation.

But I only get this way, usually, for one reason. And it's a major one.

It means something big is on the horizon. I can't quite make it out, but I know it's there.

The Different Sin

2008-04-25T11:07:00.000-04:00

This is going to be fairly adult, so if you're younger than 100, you should probably leave the room. As some of you may know, this is also a personal topic for me.

We're at a turning point in our history. It's been growing for some time, but has finally reached a dull roar so loud that both sides of the argument cannot be ignored for much longer. Fairly soon, a tipping point will come and a decision will have to be made. For some, it is an almost unforgivable sin (more on that in a bit) and for others, it is a natural way of life. Thus, complete social and ethical discordance.

Homosexuality is viewed as a different type of sin altogether. Of course, God doesn't see it that way (since he views all sin equally) and I don't (because I don't believe it's unethical). This statement, to me, seems at the heart of why people cannot reconcile its existence in life or in our culture. It leads to this question: why is homosexuality viewed so differently?

I have several theories.

1) People view homosexuality as a "constant sin" - one that is always being committed if an individual simply by living. Concordantly, other sings are only committed from time to time and exist only within that moment. Once the sin is absolved, it disappears, and the person lives sin-free until the next act of ethical attrition. Thus, homosexuality is seen as a way of life - a choice that is mutually exclusive from living a religiously sanctioned life. Thus, it is far different, more concrete than lying occasionally.

2) Homosexuality is a sin of the Old Testament (in Xtianity). It is not a part of the Ten Commandments (also OT) and not mentioned after the New Covenant. It is listed as an abomination, though, and must be against the Lord's way. Treating like the Big Ten is difficult to figure out since it exists in a complete different context of the Bible. It is also not given a specific mode of absolution like other sins.

3) Homosexuality was first viewed as a social ill. Many people see homosexuality as immoral, gross, disgusting or sinful before they ever pick up a Bible. They are taught this in a social strata (granted, one that may be bolstered by the Biblical view). A person finds a dislike for homosexuality and supports that view with scripture instead of learning through scripture that it is wrong and applying that world view to reality.

And now, some responses (to myself.)

1) All sin is constant sin. We're getting into territory of action and thought here - as sin begins in the heart (or the mind) and is often acted upon. Homosexuality seems constant because it is a lifestyle, but so is lying, cheating, stealing. As humans, we are wretched waste that isn't deserving of grace - we are conditioned to be self-interested, to ensure our own survival, and that comes into conflict with every moral structure there is. We are programmed to want to lie if we have to, to steal resources if needed, and we often act on those urges, but mostly they live inside us. If we are not respecting our parents, or have had a falling out with them and failed to reconcile it, we are living in constant sin. If we walk through life with amassing wealth or power as a goal, we are living in constant sin. It is easy to see why the act of lying is seen as a one-shot while being homosexual is a constant state. But it is only because we view lying as a single act - "you committed the act of lying" v. "you are a homosexual". One is passive, the other active. We should, perhaps, view lying as a constant state - "you are a liar." v. "you engaged in homosexual sex".

There is a problem with intentions. The argument is that homosexuals aren't actively trying to stop sinning (as, apparently, that's necessary to be a follower). Unfortunately, speaking to intention is a difficult moral road I'm hesitant to walk down. I don't know what's in the heart of a liar - whether he's actively trying to stop lying all the time. Or any sinner for that matter. Some sins are more secretive, though, harder to see. Homosexuality happens to be easy to spot, and is judged because of it.

By scripture, we are all sinners even if we aren't constantly sinning. I see a good argument for viewing lying much in the same way most people in society view homosexuality.

2. Not knowing how to respond to homosexuality is a major problem, because it appears that people treat it as if the New Covenant never happened. Drawing ethics from the Old Testament is a dangerous game for several reasons. First, it's completely culturally obsolete. The laws are too specific to matter in our world now (most of them anyway). Secondly, homosexuality is cherry-picked because it is still culturally relevant. The Old Testament also explains the best way to go about trading slaves, stoning people to death if they eat pork and parading women who adulterate into the town square to be publicly ridiculed. We see no cultural relevance in these (even though adultery and that sinful, sinful pork still exist). Homosexuality isn't substantively mentioned in the New Testament, so arguing against it religiously because very tricky business.

3. This leads directly into my third concept - I argue that people have a problem with homosexuality and look to the Bible to support their belief. This, religiously, seems backward from how moral education works. We do not decide on what's wrong and choose scripture to support our idea. We look to scripture to tell us what is wrong and how to deal with it. It also seems foolish to take an arbitrary human construct and bolster it with scripture. If tomorrow, we culturally decided that all people who eat seafood with scales on it shouldn't be allowed to marry - we'd be able to find scriptural support. I go into hyperbole here, but only because it seems absurd to punish someone for doing such a thing even though there was a time in history when humans (with the same foibles as you and me) punished people for just that crime. An analogy: If existence is a building, the Bible is meant to be the cornerstone, not a decoration. It is meant to guide life, not give strength to how you already view it. I'm not sure what a critical reading of the book would yield, but it is clearly not cut and dry when it comes to homosexuality. Ancient Jews were, but they were also down with slavery.

That also leads me into a question of whether we can ethically outgrow certain parts of the Bible, but I'll leave that for another time. Maybe another time in twenty years or so.

I believe for these reasons that we treat the sin of homosexuality as different than all other sins. In fact, I see no sin that is treated quite like it, reviled with such vitriol that entire social movements are wagered against the people that practice it. How wonderful a place this world might be if half the effort and hatred put into stopping this apparent social ill was put into ending lying or murder.

I think the sun might come out right around then.

Workin' in a Coal Mine

2008-04-25T11:04:00.000-04:00

What is it that we don't know?

There's this old story that may or may not be true about an old woman who lived in the same house all her life, opting not to leave it at all for the last decade. Oddly enough, she lived to be 103, so the local newspaper would send reporters to her to get quotes and ask about how to live that long. She became a fluff piece, a feel good news story or blurb that comes at the tail end of a nightly broadcast. What was the secret of her longevity? Of course she didn't know. She just lived healthy and smiled a lot. But among the horde of local reporters that came to see her over the few years she lived pass 100, one finally asked her if there was anything she regretted.

She said that she'd never been sailing.

I always thought the answer was sort of mysterious and romantic. Mostly because as the reported delved on, it was revealed that she hadn't really done anything in her life at all. She'd never really left her city, never moved, stuck to a fairly regular routine and knew very little about the outside world or its consequences. That she would pick sailing as a dream seemed naive and genius at the same time.

As I was thinking about this story yesterday, it dawned on me that the woman represents two fears in life. She represents the unknown - being unaware of a large amount of what life has to offer, it was unclear as to why she had never experienced simple things like sailing or what it might have been like for her to do so. She represents death - as much as reporters tried to paint her as a picture of solid living and health, the truth was that she was a morbid curiosity. People were fascinated less in that she'd lived that long, and more with the fact that she hadn't died. When framed that way, it becomes clear that the focus was on her old age as an anomaly, reminding us that we're not going to make it nearly as far as she did.

Death is the ultimate unknown. We are afraid of it because it means non-existence. And all we've ever known is existence. We're not sure how to not exist.

But ultimately, death is a necessary thing, a part of life, and it's easy to celebrate the concept in the macro. But when it applies to us or our friends, it's desperately depressing. We try to deny that it will happen to us, we look beyond death for some kind of solace, or we accept it as a fact and try to find some humanity in it.

I tend to find it life affirming. What better proof of there that we are actually alive then the existence of an opposite state? "I think therefore I am" should be replaced by "I die therefore I am". It guarantees that we exist.

Nothing affects us so deeply that we know nothing about. It's about loss, peace, pain, disappearance, forgiveness, release, memory, family, friends, anger, laughter, despair.

It is all these things - a funeral is as much about a mother laying flowers on a child's casket as it is about a friend smiling through tears as he remembers the time his friend did a back flip off a balcony in front of the whole school. It's as much about pain as it is not feeling anymore pain. It's as much a part of life as life itself.

Some cultures celebrate death and revere it. Some religions worship it.

The most frequent question I get involving atheism is whether I am afraid of death. I can't say that I am. I don't understand death, and it's certainly been unkind to me so far, but I believe people mean my own death. Although I fear losing the people I love, I don't mind the idea of death for me because I see it as an ending. I also realize there was a time that I existed where I had no consciousness and that there was a time before I existed that I have know experience with.

In that sense, I'm no more afraid of death than I am of the 1960s.

I know that life is to be feared more than death. I fear ending up like that old woman who has never sailed (and never got to) more than I do not existing. Life, after all, is the longest thing I'll ever do.

To Serve Man

2008-04-22T11:21:00.000-04:00

I think how you read a cookbook can be very telling.

For some people, it is a guidebook - giving them a host of possible temperatures and measurements that they use as a starting point only to end up adding paprika and subtracting squash, heating the oven to 375 degrees instead of 350 just to try to get it a bit more crispy. It's cooking as jazz improvisation. For others, it's about adhering strictly to the numbers and letters. It's about exactitude. Cooking as classical piano solo. Striving for perfection by following the rules as closely as possible.

I fail to see any real qualitative way to say which is better, but if ethics were applied, it's conceivable that there is a "best way" to cook. A correct way.

I suppose the main difference I see in the two methods is that the first, playing fast and loose, focuses on the cooking experience itself. It runs the risk of making a bad product, but the process is liberating and artful. The second method focuses on the time-tested result. Following steps A, B and C will yield a perfect meal every time. The process itself is strict and tiresome, but devoted.

Can you already see where I'm going with this?

I wonder if any religious text can or should be viewed as a guidebook or as a rulebook. I'm assuming that you can't view one as both at the same time. I'm also assuming that no religious text is inerrant - (I feel fairly safe in that assumption since Genesis contains two different creation accounts and, by definition, nothing self-contradictory can be inerrant. There are also examples for every major religious text).

My question is an important one I think, because I feel like we never question the way in which we use our religious texts. If they are to be the force of morality in our world, exactly how are they to act as such?

The Bible can be seen as a guidebook - that is, a general method of heading in the right direction - because it is extremely vague. It speaks of lofty ideals without detail and offers an incredible amount of subjective material, the proof of which is easy to see with hundreds of sects with differing opinions have sprung up since the first Pope existed. We disagree on the meaning of the Bible. Ergo, even if it is infallible, it is still subject to one's ability to interpret it.

The Bible can also be seen as a rulebook - that is, an exact prescription for living a moral life based on guidelines - because it has, well, rules. It speaks of exact scenarios and gives a reasoned method for dealing with them in the way that the Eternal Being would want you to. Breaking the rules also has a specific means of reconciliation.

I like to see it as a guidebook (perhaps because I like listening to classical but I like playing jazz) because of one major issue. I fail to see how a document can claim to be a rulebook if it doesn't cover every possible ethical scenario. To be fair, I fail to see how any book can live up to this measure, but a cookbook doesn't need to include every recipe in order to be a cookbook. A book purporting to be the ultimate in how to live an ethical life should include unquestioning rules for living.

Since the Bible is of the past, it fails that criteria. For example, it gives down-to-the-letter instructions for sacrificing a goat, but says nothing about how one should conduct herself while using the Internet. As a rulebook it lacks these specific instructions.

Imagine the Bible as a computer that answers your questions. If it were to claim it could give the right answer for every ethical situation, as a religious text should be able to provide, it would be sorely lacking. I might ask it, " Bible, if someone disrespects me in a public internet forum, what is the right way to contact them to rectify the situation - through email or by phone?" The computer might respond, "Answer not found."

But what's so critical about having exact answers for every possible scenario? Because the Good Life (as ethics dictates) is about the best way to live in even the small details. Theoretically, there is a correct or best way to brush your teeth. I don't require anything that strict, but I do see a need for more direct answers for modern day ethical problems. As we drift further and further into the future, the time of the Bible will begin to look more and more alien. Harder to relate to. Thus, when used strictly as a rulebook, it will become almost complete obsolete. For example, no one will need to know the proper way of bartering for a slave, but the Bible will still be there, offering up its silent advice on the matter despite the lack of anyone asking.

As a guide, it works marvelously. That's why I almost think the entire book could be erased, leaving only the word, "Love".

It would represent what the book is (as a noun) and a command of what you should do in life (as a verb). I imagine, it would also include a sweet saxophone solo.

It's about focus - following a rulebook is about doing the right things in order to reach a certain goal while following a guidebook is about taking a winding path to reach the same goal, not knowing sometimes if the path you're on is correct, but finding comfort in knowing that at least you're headed in the right direction.

Or maybe I've just never been one for being told what to do. Sorry Miss Manners.

The Continuation of Last Night

2008-04-17T17:34:00.002-04:00

Is there a difference between using a calculator to solve an equation and using your brain?

As a quick experiment, I want you to try to find the sum of 19, 27, 48 and 291 only using your brain. It took me eleven seconds to figure that out. With a calculator, it took me three. I'm not sure anyone would argue that a calculator isn't a helpful tool. As an extension of our own intelligence, it speeds up the process. It is not our brain, but it is still a tool that the brain can use in order to help itself function quicker, more efficiently, and to store more memory.

After all, a calculator is pretty harmless. We've been using them for decades - I've never been to school without one - so we feel comfortable using them. Computers are in the same realm. They are powerful machines that work beyond our brains. Now, not only can I find out the answer to a complex garble of equations in an instant, I can also find out who won the 1956 World Series and what a 'geoduck' is fairly quickly.

With computers, we are entering a broad age of instant knowledge. It's not such the case (yet) that we can download instructions on how to fly a plane directly into our brain, but we have a massive stockpile of information at our fingertips. And not many seem that freaked out, yet.

But let's change the question a bit:

What if the calculator you're using was in your mind?

Is there something wrong with taking a tool like a calculator and implanting it directly into the brain? Barring any physiological problems, it seems like there is little difference between punching keys with your fingers to add four numbers and simply thinking out the answer at a greater speed.

If the objection is that we would be artificially enhancing our bodies, I would counter by saying we already do that with tools. Man can run only as fast as 23 miles per hour, but we can travel much faster in a car. We lack the ability to fly physically, but we can do so by boarding a plane. I'm not exactly sure when Bishop Berkeley was born, but I can find out really quickly by using the internet. 1685, by the way.

I would also contend that I now know when Bishop Berkeley was born. I'm just housing the information on the internet, not in my brain. This may go a little far, since I could also argue that I "know" everything that's on the internet. Instead of being able to access it directly, I have to get to a computer to "remember" what I "know", but the information is almost as at my fingertips than as if it were stored in some memory cell in my brain somewhere.

I suppose the main problem is one of infiltration. We like our tools to be external. I can always throw my calculator in the drawer and forget about it, but I wouldn't be able to if it were hardwired into my brain. Although, I doubt most people with pace makers, with stints, with artificial heart valves or with cochlear implants mind having technology directly implanted into their bodies.

So what, if any, is the ethical problem with incorporating technology into our brains?

AC/DC

2008-04-16T23:57:00.001-04:00

I'm a negative person.

I don't mean that in the bad way. Although, I've noticed that it can head in bad directions when it's not really monitored well. And part of me doesn't think I can turn it off. It's just that - I have the talent of seeing problems with things that most people can't see until they use hindsight. I point out potentially harmful situations, hurdles and roadblocks for plans and goals. I also see little reason to offer solutions since I'm not just pointing out the obvious. But, living completely in the negative on someone else's plans (or even your own) has its down side.

I have to wonder if it's so simple to place people into the two distinct camps. We do it in our storytelling - good v. evil is the most common theme out there. In the two basic story modes (Two Dogs, One Bone and The Hero's Journey) you have conflict that arises from a genuinely good person being pitted against a genuinely bad one.

Luckily, I think that we're starting to move away from how simple that is and to see stories with complex characters - good people that have bad traits and vice versa. Of course, from this thought, I'll segue into the most natural location: foreign policy.

If we really are inundated and influenced by media, it's a good thing that the types of stories we have are evolving. If we start seeing our characters as multi-dimensional, can we start seeing ourselves that way? Our friends? Our enemies?

Up to this point, our national history has reflected our stories in that inexorable way that art infiltrates life. Our wars are fought with evil enemies - Nazis, Communists, Terrorists. We find genuinely bad people to fight in order to play the genuinely good role. I imagine in some small part, this view of the world has been bolstered or encouraged by our art - our movies mostly. Millions of young people pile into a movie theater to see a Middle Eastern man play a terrorist hijacking a plane. They see incredible racial stereotypes and cultural discontinuities. They see these for one reason, and I think it has little to do with racism and more to do with the structure of our stories. There's no room for dynamic characters - only room for flat ones, people that represent something.

So we never learn about the terrorist's struggle back home, his family life, his remarkable traits, the better angels of his nature. Likewise, we never see the dashing hero's faults and flaws.

If this art has affected our racial opinions or our ideas about foreign countries, then it seems logical that the complication of that art will lead to better cultural understanding. Seeing more diverse people playing deeper, more rounded characters might give us sympathy to a different lifestyle. And it can extend to our personal experiences and to our dealings with other major countries.

Likewise, the proliferation of the internet, specifically its ability to connect us to other people can do nothing but shape our minds in a more global way. The thought here is that if someone can chat with another person in China, their view of the Chinese becomes more humanistic. It's not necessarily more real, or less racist, but it becomes more complex and more human.

Some contact will reinforce stereotypes, but in the broader sense of the worst consequences of foreign policy - having a friend in Iran makes it harder for me to want to bomb that country. For fear of her safety or because I have personal knowledge that good people are there.

Complex art and intricate characters make us think. And I still don't know of situations where thinking more is a bad thing.

Here's to getting to know one another.

Accidental Sin

2008-04-14T15:29:00.000-04:00

Two stories:

Yesterday, Richard Kelly walked into a store and robbed it. He threatened the store clerk and the patrons with a gun, asked for the money in the register, and sped off into the night with dollar bills flying loose from his brown paper bag.

When he was caught, he was charged with assault with a deadly weapon and armed robbery. But it just so happened that there was a young woman in the store at the time with an infant, so he was also charged with child endangerment - a crime that falls under the realm of child abuse - adding a particularly heinous dimension to his act and a few more years onto his jail time.

Last week, a group of high schoolers decided to ramp up their torment of a fellow classmate by beating her up, throwing her in a car and taking her to a house where they continued to verbally abuse her. After the young girl complained to police, the group was brought in and charged with assault and battery. But one small word added to their indictment - when the young girl was placed into the car, she asked to be let go, and one of her assailants said, "No", and pushed her back into the vehicle. Because of that small word and that act, the charge of kidnapping was added to the list.

I try to imagine the mindset of these people before they commit their crimes. We so often try to look at crime as some extenuating circumstance, a random act that came about from passion or from a failure to think things through logically. We forget how many crimes are done with forethought. With planning.

So I think of Richard Kelly in his apartment, cleaning his gun and going over his plans just one more time in his head. He knows when he'll strike, the route he'll take, and what he plans to say to the store clerk in order to speed the process up as fast as possible. He might have been methodical about this or might have been completely haphazard.

But it was only by chance that a woman was there with her child. This is something he could not and did not take into consideration, and it's something that destroyed any chance of leniency from a jury and will most likely add several years onto his sentence.

Isn't it always the crimes we don't mean to commit that get us in the end?

For the high schoolers, their deed was incredible. It's truly disgusting. They must have gotten together to plan it, probably a ring leader egging the others on, convincing them it was a good idea to jump this young girl. But something happened in the heat of the moment that they didn't plan on and didn't know could exacerbate an already growing list of violent crimes. Kidnapping. Unlawful imprisonment. In fact, if the district attorney felt like throwing the kitchen sink at them, he could at least try for a few counts of obstruction of justice since they threatened the young girl with more violence if she told the cops. I imagine doing so took a great amount of courage.

There's a third story here. One that you and I have. A time in our lives when we planned something, meant to do something or say something, but we failed to plan for that random occurrence that either kept it from being effective or made matters worse. I doubt even of us have had the occasion to plan a crime - except for me - but we certainly commit crimes on a daily basis. Whether it's as simple as not fulfilling a promise or saying the wrong thing to a friend. Maybe not calling your mother on mother's day or waiting until the last minute to file taxes. Maybe it's speeding or drinking one more beer than we really should have. Nothing that's going to throw us into a cement cell somewhere, but an act that we won't feel good about the next morning.

And it's usually something small that makes it worse. Something we didn't plan for.

I imagine we all have stories like that.

This Fragile Piece of Paper

2008-04-11T09:39:00.000-04:00

Where do the ideals of freedom come from?

We have that sweet little document resting in a bulletproof case at the Archives that tells us that we have rights. Freedoms. Of course, those rights and freedoms exist without the document. The document itself just points it all out for us in ink.

So where do the rights come from? Where do they stem from?

Growing up in the United States, we seem to think of this issue as an undebatable. We don't even question them. It makes sense. Why question something that's so advantageous for us? I'm guessing the only reason is because I like throwing everything into question.

The concept of things we owe has been floating around, and it naturally comes to - what are we owed without earning it? And why?

One has to wonder if their has to be a Creator in order for these rights to be bestowed upon us. It makes sense - for something to be given, there must be an entity to give it.

In fact, I find it difficult to find a strong argument for human rights without a Creator. One is even mentioned in the document that points out our rights.

One argument, I think, is to say that the rights aren't a natural birthright, but a manifestation of how we've evolved as humans. We've come to a certain point in our history where we believe we deserve these rights, and simply because we believe (and therefore demand them) we deserve them. A self-fulfilling manifesto of sorts.

Of course, it's not the case that these basic human rights have to be granted. There are cases all of over the world where people aren't given these rights. What's more, it's only one mindset - there are people that don't think they way Americans do, don't think that there are basic human freedoms granted to us simply because we're born and exist.

I don't think the argument comes close to fully explaining the existence of human rights, but I don't see a problem in calling into question whether they really exist outside the human social construct or if they are intractable and unalienable rights like our country's founding document claims.

And if they do exist outside of us, what are they exactly, and what are their limits? And why are we owed them?

Upfront Costs

2008-04-08T10:45:00.000-04:00

Alexander Pruss has a great question in mind.

"Suppose I have a transtemporal communicator. In the morning I come across a note from the future: "Alex: Send George a check for $100 per the promise of February 16, 2043. Best wishes, Alex". Maybe I really would be bound?"

I reprint it here without its preceding context because I feel like it stands alone fairly well. A simple question without a simple answer. Essentially, if you had the ability to communicate with your future self, are you bound to the promises that your future self makes?

I've spoken before about change - specifically finding it odd that I can't remember what my goals were at 18 years old and the absurdity of sticking to an ideal made at that age. So, unsurprisingly, I am of the camp that you're not bound to the promises made by a future-you.

My reasoning: because it's a different person.

We are constantly changing. Cell death and growth, hairstyles, desires. Even our DNA is being re-written from time to time by retro-viruses. Nothing is sacred apparently. But apart from physical changes and mental changes that occur so slowly that we don't really notice - there is a drastic, noticeable difference between who were are today and who were were a year ago, who we'll be in ten years, and who will be lying on our death bed.

From our perspective, time always lurches forward, but one has to question whether it exists at all or whether it's really "moving in one direction". And if the directionality of it is actually neutral, you'd be just as bound to fulfill a promise you made in the future as one that you made in the past.

I propose this complication, though:

Since we change so much throughout the course of a lifetime, it's possible that the Scott Of the Future (SOF) might become immoral! He might join a gang, a cult, start selling drugs, become a contract killer, or a Republican. Who knows what life events could set SOF down this path, but it's possible.

So let's say that Scott of the Future calls me on the time-phone and tells me that he (we, us, I?) owes $1,000 to a local gang leader who will use the money to buy weapons that he'll then use to murder several rival gang members. Am I ethically bound to the promises I make? Or to the general ethics of not funding murder?

Pruss's original post with the question is here. He uses the situation to question the asymmetry or symmetry of time, and I'm afraid I'm looking at it more morally. Go figure.

I suppose there are a ton of good questions that arise from being able to communicate with your future-self - could you avoid disasters? change the course of time with information? - but I think an important one just to wonder what it would be like to sit down with yourself at 50 to see the person you've become.

What would you tell yourself? What if you got to meet yourself at 16? How hard would you slap some sense into them? Would it be like meeting a stranger?

I feel like this fits perfectly into my recent mindset of questioning what we are owed. What we should expect to get out of life and out of our friends. What we owe ourselves is just an interesting twist on that idea. But it's an important one. And one I haven't quite figured out yet.

Commision for Breathing

2008-04-07T18:03:00.001-04:00

The most frequent question I get regarding couch surfing is whether I get paid or not. After all, I let a stranger crash on my couch for a few nights - I'm bound to be earning something, right?

The answer is yes and no.

I'd love to paint a shining picture of philanthropy where rainbow-colored puppies follow me and my surfer around DC, checking out national monuments and getting free ice cream. That's just a bit off. Of course I don't get any money for hosting, but I'd be lying if I said there were only intrinsic perks. From time to time, I'll have dinner paid for or something of that nature - my cover charge, a round of drinks. The key is that I don't walk into the situation expecting it, and I've learned something because of it.

You should keep your expectations low.

That may sound negative, but I think it's a wonderful thing. Life is uncontrollable, so having specific expectations about what someone will be like or what someone will do really hampers the actuality of a relationship. It places shackles on a person before you even meet. Once you spend a solid amount of time with them, it's easy to get impressions and create expectations then, but I find that I struggle with placing them on people ahead of time. It makes things a lot easier to deny how complex a person is.

I started thinking about the concept of being paid when it comes to other things in life. As a basic law of physics, there's a reaction to every action - and that's where payment comes from at its core. An action it taken, and it is given its due. Some people call this karma - watching it supposedly ebb and flow in the long term, but I prefer to think of it more simply than that. Or maybe more complex - I see bad deeds rewarded positively and negatively, and I see good deeds rewarded the same way. Karma dictates that the bad comes to the bad and the good comes to the good.

So if we get paid, I have to wonder how much say we have in our own life salary and what type of compensation we should be asking for. If you could be paid anything for living your life - monetary, realistic, animal, vegetable, mineral, abstract concept - what would it be? What should it be?

Let's Stifle it Down

2008-04-07T18:02:00.001-04:00

Life wouldn't be this difficult if there weren't any people around. I've had these thoughts all my life about what the world would be like without anyone else on the planet to keep me company. I don't think I get as depressed about it as I'm supposed to.

I look at all of these books and films about some guy being the last man on earth and the perils he goes through.

Probably the best Twilight Zone episode of all time involves a man that only wants to read, but his job and his wife keep him from his passion. When an atomic bomb goes off and he survives, he wanders the destroyed city until he finds a library. With the rest of time on his hands to read all the books in a library, he settles down to live passionately. Until his glasses break, rendering him blind.

His last words - There was time now.

It's a great message. One that continually comes up, and should on a daily basis. Why waste another minute not living passionately? Doing what you love?

The answer: people.

They get in the way. Let's face it. They constantly destroy plans, want without compromise, create rules and social structures that deny freedom and art, insist that you do things their way, scoff at you when you tell them how you really feel, what you really dream of, what you'd like to sculpt yourself into.

People are the worst.

And yet without them, without some semblance of structure that they bring, the dynamic array of options they present - life would be much blander. After all, who would write all those books for us to read? Who would stay up until four in the morning with us talking about nothing at all? What would really shape our personalities and our philosophies?

It makes me wonder - even knowing that people are a powerful concept - if there's anything else in life that's so detestable, yet so sublime and necessary. Is there something that causes us such dissatisfaction from time to time that we still desperately need? Is there something that almost always lets us down that we can't live without?

Despite my romanticism of living alone on the planet, I find myself addicted to people. Or maybe I'm just addicted to frustration. And traffic.

The First of April

2008-04-07T17:58:00.000-04:00

You'd imagine this would be my favorite holiday, but it really isn't. I've already rallied enough against the idea of holidays in the first place - I don't think I'd need to rail too much more on the concept of playing a joke on someone when they know it's coming.

My friends and I really never played April Fools jokes on each other - I think it's because we spent the other 364 days of the year harassing each other. And because we're lazy. I did pull one on my parents a few years ago that continues to be my favorite small-investment prank so far.

My senior year of college, I called my parents on April One while I was out with some friends eating lunch. My mother answered, and I told her that she should get my father in on the conversation as well. I then proceeded to tell them that because of some struggling I was doing with an exit-course, I wasn't going to be able to graduate on time. I wouldn't walk the stage in May. I had done everything I could with this class, but I had just gotten word that it was a mathematical impossibility for me pass it.

Graduation, like I'm sure for most, was a giant deal. My grandparents were coming into town from Arkansas along with my second-cousins (who had partially, and graciously funded my books while I was studying), and now all of that was ruined because I couldn't keep my head above water in a class within my major.

My favorite part was the level-headedness of my mother's response. I think sometimes that pranks are simple practice tests for bad news, litmus tests for how someone reacts to the unfortunate. My mother passed. She told me that all we could do was talk to the professor, look into taking the course over the summer and walking in August. The worst case scenario would be having to take it in the fall and walking in December. Of course, all of this was a major deal because of the investment that college is. I doubt seriously that my parents would feel any iota of shame if their son had spent an extra semester in school or 5 or 6 extra even. But it costs a lot. And we were hyper-aware of that.

I figured that was enough torture, so I told them both it was a joke. A great April Fools joke. They were obviously relieved.

I can think of nothing better to spend my time on than humor. It's a great psychological study. It shows what we fear, what we hope for, what shocks us. It's a study in humanity without fences. When someone is laughing, they are completely vulnerable. You can't hide yourself or put up a wall against something funny - whether you're on the giving or receiving end of the joke.

If you want to know who someone is, prepare them to laugh.

Fascination

2008-03-25T09:46:00.000-04:00

How we see things is crucial.

Over the weekend, I got to spend time with a really old friend of mine that I care about very deeply. She, her brother, and her friend came and surfed my couch, and then I hung out with them at her grandparents house in Virginia where I became the couch surfer. In the usual rounds of catching up and getting to know new friends, she kept wanting to take pictures. I, of course, made fun of her for it and mentioned that I hated being in pictures.

On a side note, I'm not sure why I see a need to make fun of something like taking pictures. I think it's a really great thing. I suppose I just need to find something about everyone that I can tease them about. What that says about me, I'm not sure.

Somewhere along the way, I mentioned that I see everyday life as a story, people as characters, conversations as dialog. I can never really turn that off or step back from viewing the world as it would be written down. I think, perhaps, that's why I read so deeply into everything or see meaning in things that should simply be commonplace. She responded that she saw the world through a camera lens. Everyday events became snapshots, memories were captured in frames.

It got me thinking about the way everyone views the world. I mean this literally - not about our viewpoints or opinions - but on how we mechanically see things. What colors the way we are able to see the world? Is it our art? Or language? Will a painter think of life as a blank canvas the way I see it as a scene from a book? Will a business man see the world as opportunity costs and efficiency scales?

Moving beyond occupation, do our core beliefs structure the world differently for all of us? I imagine that our motives and aspirations can clog up the works.

While living in Los Angeles, I noted that a lot of the people were interested in making connections that would benefit themselves in some way, but the manner in which they went about it was always focused on people. Here in DC, it seems like those niceties are thrown out the window in favor for blatant business card swapping. People meet people to use them for personal gain. Maybe some people in DC view other humans as purely business connections - devoid of any real humanity beyond helping them advance in their careers.

Certainly, there are some men and women out there that see members of the opposite gender as targets instead of people. There are many ways that we flatten the image of a person down to a concept or goal. I'm sure we do the same for most everything in life.

I would say that we need to start seeing people as people - but I'm not even sure what that means exactly.

The only thing I'm capable of doing at this point is questioning how I see the world and why. What mechanical things influence my eyesight, what goals I have that blur my standard vision.

2008: A New Odyssey

2008-03-25T09:45:00.002-04:00

Yesterday a man that was very close to me passed away. So it goes. He was very close to me although I never met him and he never met me. I find that fascinating, although it's nothing really new, that a person that lives across the world can have such an impact on another person without ever speaking to them or seeing them.

Arthur C. Clarke was one of the pioneers of science fiction as we know it. He was a man of endless humanity that had an incredible gift for writing. Most are probably at least familiar with 2001: A Space Odyssey, but he wrote over 30 novels and a large amount of essays concerning mankind and technology. Like any great sci-fi writer, his interest was in people and the things they create. He's also one of the reasons you can talk on a cell phone or watch satellite television. The man was a genius, but he had a great sense of self and of humor. After failing to patent his telecommunications technology, he wrote a short essay entitled, "How I lost a billion dollars in my spare time".

Most people see the entire genre of science fiction as geeky escapism. People that were born too early - people that long for a generation where flying cars and jet packs exist. But at it's core, it's fundamentally philosophical. It asks the key questions about life as we know it now while predicting how life might be as we will know it. If done well, it forces the reader to ask hard questions about his or her life and the way in which they live. It also challenges people to look beyond the ordinary. One of Clarke's famous rules of discovery was, "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."

I think that's an incredible mantra to live by - not just with technology, but with our human spirit, our talents, our love. It challenges us to reach beyond what we are to see what we might become.

On an interesting note, technology proliferation doubles every 11 years or so. Computers are faster, have more memory. To prove how constantly amazing we are, I'll leave you with this developing story: technology now exists that allows for voiceless communication.

At a recent expo, a company called Audeo exhibited a band that is worn around the neck. This band receives the muscular impulses of the vocal box and transmits them through a bluetooth capable cell phone. Thus, the person wearing it doesn't have to speak, they only have to think of what they are going to say and allow the brain to shift their vocal chords - the band creates the sound and sends it to the listener.

The program only knows a few hundred words right now, but that will change. It will progress, and soon, you could be having a conversation with someone on the other side of the world without even speaking. You could ride public transit or be in the car with friends and speak privately to someone else without others hearing your side of the conversation. I'm not sure that it has profound meaning for our society, but it's incredibly cool and could potentially be helpful.

I think Clarke would have been proud.

The future was three years ago.

Slacker Hell

2008-03-25T09:45:00.001-04:00

The mid-90s was a great era for movies from a slacker generation that wanted to define itself by being as messed up as possible, but still worthy of love. Thus, many of them ended with two or three people huddled together crying, speaking in lilting voices about how they were terrible and vile and different and rebels, but everything was gonna be okay.

This sort of sentiment doesn't really exist in movies that much anymore, although it pops up from time to time in indie films. Of course, the mainstream version of this is the rag-tag bunch of misfits that ends up prevailing against the wealthier, more organized little league team. Proof that individuality is more important than status.

However, I'm starting to wonder if that sort of thing is alright in real life.

From time to time I see situations cropped up where members of my generation throw up their hands and accept that certain things about their lives are messed up. While I understand that outside forces are impossible to control, it seems odd to completely acquiesce when things aren't easy. Let alone to embrace troubles or issues as "being individualistic". You've shaved your head, won't speak to your parents and are thinking about moving in with your 50-year-old manager, but things are okay, because you're an individual. And you can't break the cycle.

Does that mean that we're all damaged goods?

Some of you might not relate to this, but I imagine we've all had things in our lives that profoundly changed us for better or worse - things that galvanized and adulterated us into maturity. Things that were, in the 90s way of putting things, really messed up, man. But from time to time we'll have to question how deeply those events affected us. Let's put me on the couch really quickly.

My brother was diagnosed with a fatal illness when I was 7. From then on, my parents devoted a large amount of time caring for him which left me without a lot of parental attention. I ambled through middle school, becoming suicidal at one point because I had exactly zero friends, failed at mostly everything in my life and was ridiculed openly when I succeeded. I decided to survive because it would have destroyed my family - especially my mother - to add to their plate. In high school, my pendulum swung to the other side, renouncing my religion, experimenting with drugs and acting like a general pompous ass to the opposite gender.During those years I skated, went to punk shows, played in a band and got high a decent bit of the time - I also did this while being an able student, holding down several jobs, acting as Senior Class President and being generally liked by teachers and parents alike. During my senior year, my brother died, and my close friends felt like I never dealt with it directly. These were my formative years.

I agree that there is nothing that bad in my history - especially compared to others' - but even still, I never feel like my life is careening out of control or that I don't have a decent handle with dealing with my past.

A friend of mine told me that she never speaks with her ex-boyfriends. I asked her whether she felt like that was healthy or if they still had an impact on her life because she hadn't reconciled comfortably with them. She didn't really know.

On one hand, the films of the 1990s are rubbish - a group of people that will be cradling each other once a week when the next person's nervous breakdown comes, never really dealing with their issues, always seeking consolation in their uniqueness while masking how alone that makes them.

On the other hand, it makes a strident point - that no matter how low life brings you, you deserve love.

And even though I think we should all be working toward a sense of comfortable normalcy (whatever that may be for each of us), I still see being huddled in a corner, crying, surrounded by our friends as a fundamental right that we can take advantage of from time to time. Just don't be too counter culture about it or it'll end up on film.

And Everything's Gonna Be Alright

2008-03-25T09:43:00.000-04:00

When Bob Dylan took the stage for the first time with electric guitars, he was booed. The crowd screamed that he'd abandoned his folk roots. They thought he'd sold out. The same thing happens all over the music business, which seems especially keen on the concept. I've often wondered what makes for the right environment for a large group to so quickly resort to selling out (or believing someone else has). A large amount of money at stake. An amount of fame. Certainly the film industry has these things. Actors, though, don't have something that musicians have - a feel of autonomy, a feel of rebellion. Musicians are individuals trying to tell a story despite a world that wants to be mainstreamed. Actors are part of a vast machine, a network that creates a film to entertain and to return profits. In short, actors can't sell out, because they don't have any credibility to sell. Musicians, for some reason, seem like they do. They come from a garage and struggle desperately to make it to the top - only when they get there, men in suits are trying to change them in order to make more money. And we romanticize this.

The truth is far less admirable.

The idea of selling out focuses on someone with core values that decides to abandon them in hopes of money or fame. Mostly just the money though. It's assumed that someone with a unique voice and message would stifle it in order to fall in line with what works, what's boring and tested, and what makes loads of cash.

That's probably why I've never really believed that it exists.

For me, a person who thinks pragmatically, the concept of selling out seems absurd. It's an arbitrary human construct, usually used by elitists to argue a point that no one really cares about. In order to buy into it, you have to think several things:

1) That making money is a bad thing. Basic economics tells us that making money does not prevent others from having money, it just makes more money. I can see nothing wrong with this.

2) That making money somehow negates artistic intent. This may have stronger merit as an argument if the artist significantly changes himself/herself for the sole purpose of becoming more accessible. However, it's difficult to gauge intentions - with Dylan, he was trying out a new sound, and no one now would call him a sell out.

3) You have to believe that art is not subjective.

3b) Since art is not subjective, you also must believe that what you like is the best.

We're getting into strange territory here, but it's often true that people value something so subjective as factually based. Music is the perhaps the king of all arts with regards to this because it's so easily accessible. Everyone can become an expert on it almost immediately. So people tend to think that their opinion is fact. You will never find more heated arguments about something that can't be proven correct or incorrect as you will when you claim not to like someone's favorite band.

As many times as I've said proudly that The Beatles are the greatest band in history, I know that it's just not even provable. It's subjective. Someone who thinks Bob Dylan or Glen Miller Orchestra or Slipknot is the best band ever has just as much merit to their personal opinion as I do. You can argue who has sold more albums, influenced other bands, who's sold out more shows - all factual, numbers-based things with clear winners - but "the best" is an opinion. And opinions can't be facts.

So why is corporate art not considered true art? Why are artists that seek large amounts of money deemed sell outs? Or artists that give in to a corporate scheme not legitimized?

Because elitists are wrong. To believe that art cannot be profitable or simply beautiful or merely entertaining is to limit art in a way that's unsettling. It also makes me wonder whether elitists aren't selling out - just in a different way. Not to money, but to an image. I have to question whether certain people like certain obscure bands because they make good music or because listening to them provides the listener with a false sense of superiority. Do they listen to the bands because of their art or because another elitist told them that liking them means you have good taste?

All of this to say - selling out is moving into a different world, away from art. It's moving into the realm of ideas. People are talking about those who work with others as selling out. A politician tries to reach across the aisle to work on compromise and she's suddenly a sell out, because someone willing to fix problems and seek a common ground solution isn't fully dedicated to the cause. Giving an inch means your willing to forfeit just a little of your zealotry in order to seek progress. Because sides are so polarized that you only have two options for opinions. Trying to see the other side of an argument is heresy. Trying to work with the enemy is grounds for crucifixion.

And image is more important than practicality.

How you're seen is so much more viable than the things you accomplish. If you're not trying to appear that way all the time, if your focus changes or your goals shift - you're a sell out.

Childlike

2008-03-18T12:21:00.001-04:00

I think this is going too far.

I couldn't tell you why I'm so opinionated about defining things, but I fear that it's a major liability in our culture. The two-part problem is that we believe we are allowed to define things (including ourselves) and that we clearly do not have the capability to do it accurately.

It's become a cliche for almost any actor in Hollywood or famous entity to talk about defining themselves, wanting to be the sole master of entering their name and status into the cultural dictionary for people to read, but not to interpret. That's fine. I try to be sympathetic toward actors and their concepts - especially after working in production and watching them get treated like puppets.

Unfortunately, I feel like this idea has spread over into the mainstream the same way that "self-esteem" did and it is having a hard time fitting in with what actual reality is like. There is an exactitude to definitions. As flexible as the language is, there are limitations to every word as to what it is and isn't. That's, basically, the entire reason for definitions in the first place - to set boundaries and make communication easier.

So in way, we don't get to define much. I can't approach a tree and decide that it's not a tree. There's a force outside of me that is untouchable, that I can't tamper with. My calling a tree a ferret, does not make it a ferret. It makes me an idiot.

But don't we tend to try to define ourselves on a daily basis? Try to nail down exactly who we are as we project onto other people? I feel like I do from time to time, and I've seen others do it. I imagine it's because it's easier than changing. Twisting a word is easier than twisting yourself.

For example, a friend of mine told me that she enjoys kissing guys and girls but "would never define herself as bisexual". And there the two-part problem lies. My friend thinks she can define herself but doesn't have the capability to do so. My question for her was, "Then what would you call yourself?"

I've often decried the fear of being defined. It is one of my largest fears, the idea that I could be placed inside a box, inside a handy set of words that defines the totality of my being. It's pretty frightening. What if all that you are could be summed up in a sentence? A few words?

This is why I hate moving. It is the worst activity that humans have to undertake. First, there is the physical demand of lifting, carrying and depositing your heavy boxes and furniture into a truck and then repeating the process once you arrive at your new place. Second, you have to inventory your life. You are forced to mentally box yourself up, all that you have, into nice packages. I think we can see how small our lives are when we box everything up and place it in the center of our living room. Staring at your belongings crammed neatly into a rental truck makes you wonder if that's all there is to you, to life. And, damn, it's still so heavy. A burden.

So we avoid defining ourselves clearly. We want to keep it nebulous just in case someone comes close to pinning us down. Especially when it comes down to things that make us ashamed. I drink every night, but I would never define myself as an alcoholic. I'm spiritual, but I wouldn't define myself as religious. I've hurt others, but I would never define myself as a bad person. I kiss girls, but I wouldn't define myself as a lesbian.

Those labels are ready-made. They are outside of us. And, even if we are allowed to define ourselves, it wouldn't be through words, it would be through actions. And others aren't prohibited from weighing in, either.

I tend to think that things are never as complicated as we make them out to be. Relationships are one of those things - and it's become easier to be vague about them. There's strangers, acquaintances, friends, close friends, family, and dating relationships. And the lines aren't all that blurry. If we look up these terms in the dictionary, they don't have a question mark or the phrase 'to be determined' next to them. But we all like to blur the lines. At least I do. Are we dating? Sort of. We're friends, but we like each other. And we go out. But we're not really "dating". It's complicated.

All this talk about words is starting to make me think that they're the ones tripping us up. Instead of worrying so much about what the right definition is for ourselves, for our relationships, we should just focus on what we're doing. And own up to it. There's a certain amount of denial that defining yourself entails - it's a situation where we don't fully embrace who we are. We try to supplant who we are with words, with caveats, with exceptions to the rule. I guess my big question is this:

What's so wrong with embracing who you are?

I mean, I would define myself as someone who has embraced who he is, but it's complicated.

Stealing from Klosterman 8

2008-03-18T12:17:00.000-04:00

Q:

You begin watching a new television series, and you immediately find yourself strongly relating to one of the supporting characters. You've never before experienced a TV character that seems so similar to yourself; this fictional person dresses, behaves and talks exactly like you. And - slowly, over the course of several episodes - the similarity grows spooky; on two separate occasions, the character recounts personal anecdotes that happened in your real life. The actor portraying this character begins mimicking your mannerisms. In at least three different episodes, the character's dialog quotes things that you have said (verbatim) during casual conversation.

You become convinced that this is neither coincidence nor mental illness: somehow, this character is being actively based on your life. The show's writers generally depict the "you" character in a positive manner, but - as far as you can tell - you don't know anyone involved in the show's production or creation. It's totally inexplicable.

You have two friends who also watch this show. One of them is certain that your theory is correct and that (somehow) the character is, in fact, based on your life. She tells you to get a lawyer. The second friend concedes that many of the similarities are amazing, but that the whole notion is ridiculous, impossible, and egocentric. He tells you to see a therapist.

How do you respond to this situation? Do you do anything?

A:

This happens to me on a daily basis actually, and so far, I haven't done anything about it. I'm not sure why there would be any reason to. I know it would be really freaky, and it might even be mildly concerning, but it's not like bodily harm is going to come to me. I'm not sure how I could even get any money out the situation - maybe I'm reading to realistically into this situation, but how would I prove in a court of law that the character had done things or said things exactly as I already had? Against high-priced copyright attorneys? I don't think so.

Now, it would be over the line if they started predicting the future for the character - moved beyond things that I had done and started doing things that I, then, mimicked in real life. Art imitating life is safe. Life imitating art can be dangerous - especially if the character got some terrible, but hilarious, sit-com disease. I would be concerned that those things would happen.

Instead of seeing differences in actions and character, I would see things to come, and the self-fulfilling prophecy would turn me into that character. A subtle turn. Then, the show might sue me. And I'd lose. Big time. Against high-priced attorneys.

Or what if the character had all of my traits, plus one really annoying one? Like a nasty laugh or the refusal to remove shoes when laying on a couch? Are they trying to tell me something? Seriously, you'd tell me if there was something in my teeth, right?

Now I'm paranoid.

Onus

2008-02-26T12:27:00.001-05:00

Despite my best intentions, I've become a planner.

I wasn't always this way. Growing up, the day could just as easily been spent on the beach or in the library. Waking up, I never really knew what was in store for me, and I tended to just go with the flow. This was the sort of mentality that you had to have growing up in a beach town. Especially one where the surf report could make or break your afternoon.

Meanwhile, I was steadily being pumped full of potential. I've always thought that if you start out with more than a speck of talent, the people around you will fill you up with the idea of brilliance so fast that you have choice but to become capable. Destined for big things. People start with a small amount of potential, and the rest is artificially implanted.

Along the way, I got an ego. A big one. A particularly dangerous one because it was based on my ability to figure people out quickly. I could read them, know their goals, fears and methods in a short amount of time. I say particularly dangerous because it allowed me the means to manipulate people.

I've looked for a lighter phrase than that. I can't find one.

It seems that just by knowing how to get certain reactions out of people, you instantly become sinister. Even the most well-meaning thing is diluted by the fact that you don't have to wonder whether the person can be persuaded. You know exactly what to say and do to make them jump to your side. Having that knowledge means that you lack a certain innocence about the whole process.

It occurred to me that there's something I haven't heard talked about ever in regards to ethics: living without an agenda.

My adolescent surfer brain loves the idea - no plans, no rules, etc. There's certainly freedom in it. But the harder part of it would be to enter into every relationship with zero expectations. This is something I struggle with, especially with girls, but it's something that I've recently come to admire so strongly that I almost have no other choice but to adhere to it. I'm being naturally drawn to it. I'm reverting back to my teenage self where meeting someone new meant I could either have a new friend or not, and the outcome didn't make me break a sweat. I wasn't caught up in impressing or looking into the future of this person. I was a blank slate ready to be written on, and if the person chose not to pick up the pen, I was no worse off for it.

During college, I was devastated if people didn't pick up the pen. I questioned what was wrong with me, why I wasn't getting affirmation, why life was so terrible and cruel. See, the flip-side to being able to read people is being wrong about them. And it happens enough to shake your confidence. Without expectations, there's nothing to throw you off your game.

Because there is no game.

Your not playing with another person. Instead, you're just standing with them alone in a field tossing the ball around and chatting about how nice the sunset looks. And it's pretty much impossible to be disappointed by a sunset.

It's also much easier to wait for someone to show you what to expect from them than to place the burden on them with a handshake.

The Sextant

2008-02-26T12:26:00.001-05:00

I'm willing to admit that I've never been that great at navigating.

For one, I usually write down the directions to a place in the vaguest possible way, using symbols and abbreviating street names. Forget about even jotting down the miles between each turn. It seems so frivolous to me - to know exactly how far down the next street you're looking for is.

And yet without knowing how far you have to go, you're just looking around trying to spot your destination - not really keeping your eyes on the road.

I remember in my third or fourth week in Los Angeles, I wanted to go to Pink's Hot Dogs to try one of their historic, iconic dogs. The place has been open before the invention of agriculture and catered (and still does) to the big stars of the day. Since I was still in tourist mode, I really wanted to soak in LA culture - and this is just another part of it.

So I set out from my place with some poorly written directions and headed out. I hit La Brea just off 3rd and started making my way through traffic north toward Hollywood Blvd. Pink's is a smaller building, sort of hard to see, but their sign is large and memorable. Still, I didn't see it. I had been driving for several blocks and I felt totally lost. I still didn't know the city well, my directions were lousy and it should have been just up ahead on the left. I should have been, I thought, always just on the next block. But it wasn't, and I was starting to get worried that I had gone too far.

It may seem like worry is an odd reaction to not seeing a hot dog stand, but if you've ever driven in LA, you understand that having to turn around or find an alternate way to get to where you're going, especially when you've only been there a month, is like being asked to parallel park a monster truck into a teacup.

The worry spread. It grew and locked in on my whole body until I was convinced that I had passed it - that I had gone too far. The feeling was so real, and I had so convinced myself that it was true, that I made the decision to turn around. I just needed the right street and a little access to pull around and head back down La Brea.

And then I spotted it. Just a block ahead on the left.

This is a really common story in my life. Maybe because I write terrible directions, maybe because it's just human nature, but it seems that at the very moment I give up hope, I find what I'm looking for.

Jolly Old

2008-02-26T12:25:00.001-05:00

"If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will destroy you."

Throughout college I groaned whenever people would talk about finding themselves. I remember a particularly aggravating instance in a coffee shop known as Common Grounds, where this guy Jeff told me that he really felt like he was finding out who he was because of college. He really felt this connection to his classes, he was being challenged and he thought that his real personality was shining through finally. He blathered on and on about this for sometime while I feigned interest and wondered why all coffee shops have to be named using a caffeinated play on words.

You may find me unfeeling about this brand of self-revelation, but it's because I just don't buy it. I don't buy the concept that who we are is something decided outside of us. That who we are is some sort of present, offered up on a silver platter for us to either accept or deny. If the real me is deep inside waiting to be found, who is the person that's doing the searching?

Maybe I'm splitting hairs about a cliche - of course what my friend really means is that he's exploring worldly options and figuring out what sort of things attract him the most. He's really finding the world, not finding himself. Jeff was a philosopher major though, so every week he had found a new version of himself - attempting to find the middle path in January and then striving to become an ubermensch in April.

I had another illuminating conversation with a close friend of mine about changing focus in life - the idea that what you find important might not be that important. I suggested he shift his focus a bit if he was unhappy, and responded that he didn't think it was in his nature. As if who he was was an inescapable fact, never to be changed. His nature was a ball and chain, some albatross slung around his neck for him to endure.

The problem is, I can't really prove them wrong.

I suppose it's because it's an uphill battle against what we're naturally inclined to do. A certain way of life is just easier for us to handle, even when it comes with pain and baggage. But should inertia be the only reason we remain the way we are?

The quote I listed above is from a wise man who has been quoted all over the place. I'm not sure why, but this quote concomitantly gives me hope and irritates me. It speaks of an infinite optimism, that if we just look inside ourselves, what we live for will bring us great joy. But the part about what's inside me bothers me. Maybe it speaks to a larger problem I have with religion, a lack of control, the idea that who I am is predetermined. It also seems to mix metaphors - telling me to work against my nature and to seek my true one. To battle uphill to find what comes easiest to me.

Depending on how you believe, the author of the quote is either Jesus Christ or his nephew Thomas pretending that it was Jesus Christ in a futile attempt to be featured in The Bible.

The quote does have a great impact, I think, though. In either case, it's a matter of what we produce that destroys us. It doesn't speak at all about what we bottle up inside. It seems to claim that, no matter what, we cannot help but produce things. They can be a dirty look at someone who we know spoke ill of us, a lack of action when an old lady needs help across the street, a kind word for a friend with a problem, or a phone call home to your mother because you know she misses you. Whether we act or do not, we produce something. We communicate what we're really about. What's inside of us.

I just hope that I have more control of shaping what that is.

Shining Right Above You

2008-02-26T12:23:00.000-05:00

Here's the thing: people aren't going to like you.

Most of our lives are going to be spent battling uphill to make sure that people enjoy us or to maintain connections with people that do. For some reason or another, most people I meet have their default set at distrust. Maybe it's because we've all been hurt too many times before or maybe we're afraid of laying ourselves bare for another human. It might even be that a relationship might sound like too much work to endure. But we have to.

Most art in my mind is a process of being embedded with other people and retreating to collect your thoughts on it all. There's a long list of artists who have said this in much clearer or more poetic ways. I think that it rings true with artists because they are so in tune with judging society. It's their job to reflect what's going on, and in order to do that, one must keep one's eyes open at all times.

Sometimes I find myself thinking in plot lines and dialog.

One thing I struggle with is being on the wrong side of it, though. Apologizing has never been my strong suit, but then again, who is really good at it? As you can probably tell, I screwed up recently, which is why the idea of being out of favor is on my mind. But it's led me to an even greater question about friendship.

How many fights have you had with your friends? I can only remember a few. It speaks to the even flow of my relationships with certain people. We seem to get along without effort. I'm not sure what that says about them. After all, we're supposed to define ourselves by struggle. Don't we grow in our relationships after a fight? Isn't reconciliation a sign of maturity? And in order to have that, you have to have something to reconcile.

The greater question on my mind now is how deep that struggle should be.

The first night I met my friend James, he and I clicked instantly. We've been that way ever since. I honestly can't remember a real fight we've had. I can't remember a single time that one of us slighted the other. Our friendship has been effortless. We've driven to see each other, kept in phone conversations, and I've bothered him while he's in law school classes, but it's never been what I consider work to remain his friend.

The summer after junior year of college, I was sitting on the beach having my first fight ever with my best friend Anand. We were in Corpus during a break, seeing each other for the first time in semesters and decided to watch Closer. We saw the movie with different eyes, but it wasn't that we disagreed with each other that mattered. It was how we spoke to each other. We didn't give each other any room to breathe, any leverage in the argument. We cooled off and decided to drive to the beach with some beer and cigarettes - a perfect remedy.

Only, we didn't really talk until the fight started. That tension that rests between two people was keeping our tongues hostage. I don't remember anything about the fight itself, except afterward I was worried that we weren't friends anymore. It seems childish now (we never really lose that childish view of getting friends) but we'd never fought before. I wanted to know what it meant. I wanted to know if we'd changed irrevocably. I wanted to feel like we were perfect again, but I knew that we'd crossed a certain threshold and couldn't go back.

He took a drag and said calmly, "No, we'll be alright."

There was something in the reassurance of his voice. He was so confident that it didn't matter. We had grown in different directions, but he knew, somehow, that things were going to be fine. I imagine he'd seen the future of us playing checkers on a porch in our late 120s, he spoke so plainly.

And I believed him.

I bring all this up not to be auto-biographical, but because I think they are all common moments to us, to friends. Some friendships are easy, some are hard. Nothing groundbreaking there.

But when do you know when to give up? When is it just too much work to earn the privilege of calling yourself 'friend'?

Stealing from Klosterman 7

2008-02-26T12:22:00.000-05:00

Q:

You are offered a Brain Pill. If you swallow this pill, you will become 10 percent more intelligent than you currently are; you will be more adept at reading comprehension, logic, and critical thinking. However, to all other people you know (and to all future people you meet), you will seem 20 percent less intelligent. In other words, you will immediately become smarter, but the rest of the world will perceive you as dumber (and there is now way you can ever alter the universality of this perception).

Do you take this pill?

Short answer: Yes.

1) I'd be able to do things faster and comprehend more. I might even be able to learn another language finally - something I've struggled with for a long time. My math skills would increase, I'd be able to read more books a year, and hopefully I'd be able to write with more precision.

2) If people thought I was dumber, I wouldn't have to deal with the pressure of potential as much.

3) Downside? I'd probably be a lot sadder. Ignorance is bliss and all that.

Stealing from Klosterman 6

2008-02-26T12:21:00.000-05:00

Q:

You have been wrongly accused of a horrific crime: Due to a bizarre collision of unfortunate circumstances and insane coincidences, it appears that you have murdered a prominent U.S. senator, his beautiful young wife, and both of their infant children. Now, you did not do this, but you are indicted and brought to trial.

Predictably, the criminal proceedings are a national sensation (on par with the 1994 O.J. Simpson trial). It's on television constantly, and it's the lead story in most newspapers for almost a year. The prosecuting attorney is a charming genius; sadly, your defense team lacks creativity and panache. To make matters worse, the jury is a collection of easily confused sheep. You are found guilty and sentenced to four consecutive life terms with virtually no hope for parole (and - since there were no procedural mistakes during the proceedings - an appeal is hopeless).

This being the case, you are (obviously) disappointed.

However, as you leave the courtroom (and in the days immediately following the verdict), something becomes clear; the "court of public opinion" has overwhelmingly found you innocent. Over 95 percent of the country believes you are not guilty. Noted media personalities have declared this scenario "the ultimate legal tragedy." So you are going to spend the rest of your life amidst the general population of a maximum-security prison...but you are innocent, and everyone seems to know this.

Does this knowledge make you feel (a) better, (b) no different, or (c) worse?

Wow. It's tough to get into the mindset of this situation because it's so tragic. Especially to think of it happening to yourself. I also can't even begin to imagine my mindset throughout the whole process. I'd be distraught beyong belief, as I'm sure anyone else would be.

I think if the court of public opinion's verdict didn't change my sentence in any meaningful way, it would be tough to consider a factor. I think it would make me happy that a large amount of people considered me innocent. It wouldn't frustrate me - I think the blunt force of being found guilty of a horrific multiple-homocide and faced with an eternity behind bars would have hardened me beyond frustration.

If people did think of me as innocent, I might be able to communicate more with the outside world. I might even be able to write a book about the whole ordeal and sell it. Or continue to write books and get them published. Now that I think about it, I might be able to live out a fairly decent life (sans the constant workout yard fights I would get into) as a writer. In today's culture of tragedy and survivorism, people worship those who have been put through the ringer. People who have been put through things that they can't imagine. Stuff that shouldn't happen to anyone. And this would definitely qualify. I could find a publisher in no time - because I wouldn't be a normal criminal. I'd be innocent, and everyone loves to hear the story of an innocent man.

New York Times best seller list here I come.

Thanks prison!

Stealing from Klosterman 5

2008-02-13T11:42:00.000-05:00

Q:

You work in an office, performing a job you find satisfying (and which compensates you adequately). The company that employs you is suddenly purchased by an eccentric millionare who plans to immediately raise each person's salary by 5 percent and extend an extra week of vacation to all full-time employees.

However, this new owner intends to enforce a somewhat radical dress code: every day, men will have to wear tuxedos, tails, and top hats (during the summer months, male employees will be allowed to wear gray three-piece suits on "casual Fridays"). Women must exclusively work in formal wear, preferably ball gowns or prom dresses. Each employee will be given an annual $500 stipend to purchase necessary garments, but that money can only be spent on work-related clothing.

The new regime starts in three months.

Do you seek employment elsewhere?

I decided to tackle this one right before to bed because it's easy.

Of course, I don't seek employment elsewhere. Not only that, but I think I have a good idea about how I'll be running my company after it starts up.

Only I'll get to wear a monocle because I'll be the boss.

Stealing from Klosterman 4

2008-02-12T16:46:00.000-05:00

Q:

At the age of thirty, you suffer a blow to the skull. The head trauma leaves you with a rare form of partial amnesia -- though you are otherwise fine, you're completely missing five years from your life. You have no memory of anything that happened between the ages of twenty-three and twenty-eight. That period of your life is completely gone; you have no recollection of anything that occurred during that five-year gap.

You are told by friends and family that -- when you were twenty-five -- you (supposedly) became close friends with someone you met on the street. You possess numerous photos of you and this person, and everyone in your life insists that this individual was your best friend for over two years. You were (allegedly) inseparable. In fact, you find several old letters and e-mails from this person that vaguely indicate you may have even shared a brief romantic relationship. But something happened between you and this individual when you were twenty-seven, and the friendship abruptly ended (and apparently - you never told anyone what caused this schism, so it remains a mystery to all). The friend moved away soon after the incident, wholly disappearing from your day-to-day life. But you have no memory of any of this. Within the context of your own mind, this person never even existed. There is tangible proof that you deeply loved this friend, but -- whenever you look at their photograph -- all you see is a stranger.

Six weeks after your accident, you are informed that this person has suddenly died.

How sad do you feel?

This is the sort of situation that acts as a base for a romantic comedy or love drama. I think I love that about it. My first inclination is that I'd not really feel sad at all. I'd feel just about as sad as I would if I heard that a cousin of an acquaintance's friend had died. It's sad in a universal way, but there's no real personal connection. The photos and letters would be like getting to know a plot line from a television show. Seeing myself as a character. I imagine part of having five years of my life erased from my memory would be a lot like that.

Five years is a serious amount of time. In re-reading my thought emails from less than a year ago, I'm surprised at where my head was at. Five years ago, I was 18 years old, and I was in my second semester at Baylor. Where were you? How much would you have changed between now and then?

It would be difficult to see myself during that time as "me".

It's tough to even figure out what seeing someone else in my life would be like.

And now to reveal my insanity.

If I read through the letters, saw the photos, talked to friends about my relationship, I'd start to see myself and that close friend as characters the same I would any characters from a book or movie. And since it's me, I'd already relate to and love the main character, and most likely, my friend.

So I'd be about as sad about that friend dying as I would finding out that Edward Bloom from Big Fish was dead or Superman had passed. That is actually sadder than you'd imagine.

Of course we all know that Superman actually settled down with Lois Lane and changed his name in order to avoid the pitfalls of super hero life in "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?".

But I digress.

Stealing from Klosterman 3

2008-02-11T17:36:00.000-05:00

Q:

Assume everything about your musical tastes was reversed overnight. Everything you once loved, you now hate; everything you once hated, you now love. For example, if your favorite band has always been R.E.M., they will suddenly sound awful to you; they will become the band you dislike the most. By the same token, if you've never been remotely interested in the word of Yes and Jethro Tull, those two groups will instantly seem fascinating. If you generally dislike jazz today, you'll generally like jazz tomorrow. If you currently consider the first album by Veruca Salt to be slightly above average, you will abruptly fint it to be slightly below average. Everything will become its opposite, but everything will remain in balance (and the rest of your personality will remain unchanged). So - in all likelihood - you won't love music any less (or any more) than you do right now. There will still be artists you love and who make you happy; they will merely be all the artists you currently find unlistenable.

Now, I conceded that this transformation would make you unhappy.

But explain why.

This transformation would make me unhappy because of a fundamental flaw in the question. It's unreasonable to assume that you could change something so intrinsic without affecting "the rest of my personality". Part of the way that I see myself comes from my musical taste. It is a major part of my self-reflection.

And that's the point being made here. Why do we consider something like artistic taste to have such a high impact on how we see ourselves? After all, art is subjective, but we have trouble operating at that level. There's nothing to suggest that art isn't completely subjective, but as soon as someone says something contrary to our taste, we'll defend it with honor. Some of us, anyway. Others don't mind too much. Oddly enough, this instinct transcends artistic taste. Consider someone who collects records and listens to indie music (like me) and someone who only listens to Top 40 radio plays and has a Maroon 5 poster on his/her (probably her) wall. Make fun of The Mars Volta, and my first instinct is to defend them. But make fun of The Backstreet Boys, and our second person would have the same reaction.

Because we're defending ourselves by defending our tastes.

But if all art is subjective, it shouldn't matter. Part of us knows this and still gets defensive about it because art reflects who we are. We want to portray a certain personality by showcasing who we enjoy listening to.

That's why switching our tastes around would make us unhappy. It would, theoretically, change our self-perception from what it is now to its complete opposite. And who would like that?

I'm trying to come to terms with the subjectivity of it all. To try and rise above the idea of defending bands I like in favor for being neutral and just enjoying.

But even in doing that, I recognize that it's shaping my self-perception. I'm trading elitism for an even stronger version.

And, you know, Jethro Tull really isn't that bad.

Stealing from Klosterman 2

2008-02-07T15:25:00.000-05:00

Q: Think of someone who is your friend (do not select your best friend, but make sure the person is someone you would classify as "considerably more than an acquaintance").

This friend is going to be attacked by a grizzly bear.

Now, this person will survive this bear attack; that is guaranteed. There is a 100 percent chance that your friend will live. However, the extent of his/her injuries is unknown; he might receive nothing but a few superficial scratches, but he also might lose a thumb (or multiple limbs). He might recover completely in twenty-four hours with nothing but a great story, or he might spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

Somehow, you have the ability to stop this attack from happening. You can magically save your friend from the bear. But his (or her) salvation will come at a peculiar price: if you choose to stop the bear, it will always rain. For the rest of your life, wherever you go, it will be raining. Sometimes it will pour and sometimes it will drizzle - but it will never not be raining. But it won't rain over the totality of the earth, nor will the hydrological cycle be disrupted; these storm clouds will be isolated, and they will focus entirely on your specific whereabouts. You will never see the sun again.

Do you stop the bear and accept a lifetime of rain?

This is, like most trade-off questions, nearly impossible to answer. It pits empathy against self-interest. It also pits a physically harmful conclusion for a friend against an emotionally impacting conclusion for yourself. If the roles were reversed, I'm not sure anyone would choose rain for their friend. The 'correct' answer is to be selfless, to claim that you'd be fine enduring a mostly shallow cost to stop a potentially horrific outcome.

I'm not sure I could live with rain, though.

Since I don't travel as much as I'd like, it would mean it would always be raining on DC. I can't imagine this phenomenon happening without people taking notice. I go to the same office five days a week. It would always be raining over the White House during the week. Logistically, I would be able to deal with constant rain. I would figure out how to live after a while. Always having an umbrella, etc. I don't think the rain is really what matters here - what matters is never seeing the sun. I assume I'd get incurably depressed at a certain point. Which would probably make my writing much better and more prolific.

I chose my friend Marco (just the first person that came to mind), and I can specifically see him turning the experience of a bear attack into something really unique in life. Some people, I could see it destroying them, but even if Marco was in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, he would greet it well.

So it's a toss up between the possibility of him being wheelchair-bound for life, injured to an incredible to degree or the inevitability that I'll have rain on me forever, guaranteed. The possible versus the inevitable.

I choose my friend to be mauled by a bear. That's right. I took the selfish route. Statistically, he could come out unharmed while I most definitely would not. I base the decision partly on who I chose before knowing what the concept was, and I would probably choose rain for several people in my life, but Marco seems strong enough to handle it.

I would hope he'd choose for me to get mauled, too.

Stealing from Klosterman 1

2008-02-07T15:23:00.000-05:00

I've decided to take on Chuck Klosterman's 12 questions from his book IV. They are all thought-provoking (some more than others, apparently), and I figured that you could think about how you'd answer right alongside mine.

Q: Think about your life.

Think about the greatest thing you have ever done, and think about the worst thing you have ever done. Try to remember what motivated you to do the former, and try to remember what motivated you to do the latter.

How similar are these two motives?

There are too many ways to evaluate the best or worst thing I've ever done. It all depends on the basis for the accomplishment. Human triumph, selflessness, morality, artistic significance?

I can think of two things that might qualify as the best I've ever done, and neither are based on ethics. The first was backpacking through New Mexico. 111 miles in 11 days. This was more of an achievement of humanity and strength against struggle than anything else. It was challenging, but also exhilarating and fun. The only thing that comes close to an ethical dimension is the lessons I learned and executed related to teamwork and helping my friends out along the way. We all helped each other, which helped the group. I suppose there is a degree of selflessness involved in that, but for the most part, I consider this to be the most manly thing I've ever done, not the most ethically triumphant.

The second was pulling a group together to print a magazine version of our newspaper. It is, in my view, an incredible achievement that demanded much harder, smarter work from a group of people that I knew were capable of it. In actually doing it, the group hated me throughout the process, but had an incredible sense of pride and accomplishment afterward which erased most of the animus.

My motivation for doing both of these lay in ego, I think. I wanted to achieve something great on both accounts. To propel myself and the group forward. To make a mark. To challenge myself and others to do something that most don't get to do. There's an intrinsic value there of challenge and an extrinsic one of bragging rights.

The worst thing I've ever done was mostly a crime of ignorance. My junior year of high school, my friend Tim was devastated by a relationship that he undertook - they had dated their entire senior year, and graduation pulled them apart despite caring deeply for one another. Because of this, I swore to myself that my senior year would be about casual dating instead of investing in one person only to see them go off to a different college (the death sentence for any high school relationship). This ideal led me to break the heart of a girl that otherwise would have made an incredible girlfriend. My treatment was mostly done in ignorance, never outright malice (when is it ever though?) but the effects were deep, and I caused her a lot of pain. This had something to do with ego - I was enjoying finally having a status in high school, gaining confidence in myself, and this swung the pendulum from one side of self-esteem to the other side of cockiness. To this day, the only thing in my life I really, honestly, deeply regret is the way I treated that girl that year. I wasn't intentional at all - opting instead for stringing her along without any assurance of my dedication to her. All the while, I should have been getting to know her more completely, focusing my time and energy on her, and treating her like the incredible human being she was.

My motivation for doing so, like I said, is hard to pinpoint because I didn't purposefully injure her. I purposefully rationalized the situation, and I was motivated by an ideal of not settling down (for the ethereal reason of not getting hurt later). I suppose that's the main motivation, not getting hurt. Wanting to be invincible by avoiding a situation that would cause me pain.

These two motivations have elements that are similar and elements that are not at all. One is about challenge and the other is about avoiding challenge. But they both have to do with ego in a way. They both involve me wanting to rise above something - in one case, the status quo of my achievements and in the other, the socially-accepted method of dating. In both cases, I wanted to appear stronger than I actually was. This helped with the former, and hurt another person in the latter.

These motivations are remarkably similar while being polar opposites. Both have elements of fear, but one is about overcoming it and one is about disowning it. They both fed into a perception of me that I wanted others to share. I wanted people to see me a certain way, and I imagine I thought that all of these actions would lead to people thinking of me the way I wanted to be thought of. As extraordinary. Someone who faced the wilderness, pushed the boundaries of where a publication could go, someone relationally unattainable. I would guess that almost all of my underlying reasons for doing anything is to make myself stand out - so that people see me as a unique individual.

Hope you enjoy questioning yourself. I'm borrowing, but I figure that sharing these questions is an excellent way to spread self-awareness. They won't all be this trenchant. Some of them will even come close to looking like a game of Would you Rather - and I know some of you will love that.

Belated Birthday

2008-02-06T17:36:00.001-05:00

I suppose this should be called the Slacker Edition. I haven't really kept up since going on break. Wouldn't you know that when I returned, I would have religion on the brain?

Yesterday I called a friend of mine getting a Masters in design, and she was in the middle of a project. "If God didn't exist, he'd have to be invented" - it's not verbatim, but it's a quote from Voltaire. That was the concept she has for the project, and instead of greeting me by asking how I was, she asked what I would paint if I had that prompt.

After a few minutes shying away from doing it, she questioned my creativity and I spouted out that I would draw an apple falling from a tree. The start of science. When the revolution began for Isaac Newton. If God didn't exist, the falling apple would be his invention. I'm still thinking about that one.

I also wanted to say Merry Christmas for yesterday! January 7th, as we all know, is Christmas Day - for the Eastern Orthodox church. So Merry Christmas to all.

On the last random front, I read an amazing article that ties these two thoughts together. Science and the Birth of Christ. Two important things, I would say.

The question - Is virgin birth possible? The answer: yes. Don't worry though, the statistical impossibility of it all keeps the idea of it being a miracle pretty strongly intact. Read for yourself.

The Science of the Virgin Birth

A lot of thinking - not a lot of answers so far. Perhaps that's what January is for. Beginnings. Not conclusions.

AA

2008-02-06T17:34:00.001-05:00

Most of the finer things in life are the simpler ones, too.

Here's a short list of things I consider necessary to life:

Pizza
Beer
Deep Breaths
Music
Bad Steak Dinners
Really Good Paper
Really Good Pens
Headaches
Unrequited Love
Numbers that Add up
Challenges
The Ocean
Humor
More Beer

I feel like making lists is a good way to express yourself. My friend Sara once did this for a creative writing class, echoing the Top Five Lists from High Fidelity. If you could make a Top Five list from the things in life - best music, best moments, best friends - you'd probably get to know yourself a bit better.

If I had to make a Top Five list from that list above, I'm pretty sure that beer would still be listed twice.

Lying in Pairs

2008-02-04T12:36:00.001-05:00

If you give someone long enough, everyone will surprise you.

I spent last night with my friend Allison from high school. She was spending her last night in DC (the tail end of her internship), and we ended up getting dinner and talking. She's always impressed me as that sort of person that has a good idea of what's going on in the world and has the capability of going along for the ride. And last night, we got to talk one on one for the first time in the history of our relationship.

And she surprised me.

I think the first step is to shed any concepts that you have about people. To suspend your disbelief. We walk into almost all of relationships with baggage, notions of how people treated us in the past, of how this person ought to be. In order to be surprised, you have to be open to it.

Sometimes I think that people that claim to be open minded just have a different opinion. I'm speaking specifically of the counter-culture I've encountered in my life, especially at Baylor. Hippies, vegans, anti-war, anti-Bush, atheists, agnostics, free spirits. Some of them had an incredible nature about them. But a lot seemed to think they were open-minded, when they were just as stubborn as everyone else. Having a different opinion does not make you open minded. This is why when I tell these types of friends that I spent my summer with a bunch of Christians discussing Jesus, they can't fathom it. They challenge themselves on everything except what would truly challenge them.

I feel like we are all this way about people. We love having them defined in our minds. We enjoy them up until the point when they might truly challenge us to rethink who they are. But when you give someone long enough, that moment comes that surprises you - something they have in common with you, or a way they think about something exactly opposite from your mindset. And it's a beautiful thing.

But like most beautiful things, we tend to forget how beautiful it is and focus only on how scary the cliff we have to jump off is. All great things come with challenges, but if we focus on the difficulty of the challenge, we probably won't ever get to take in the prize.

Here's to rethinking everyone we know.

This is not going to be good.

2008-02-04T12:34:00.000-05:00

I've heard that presentation is the key to almost everything. I have, obviously, not taken the advice judging by the slapdash nature of these emails.

I feel like you could give just about anyone bad news as long as you give them worse news before it. There have been several studies that show that we're psychologically tuned to compare recent bits of information, so that if someone really wanted something from us, all they would have to do is present a radically bad option alongside the one they want us to take.

I used to take this advice with my parents during high school.

Bad news, Mom and Dad: I'm smoking crack.

Just kidding.

I'm drinking underage, though.

Phew! At least it's not crack.

I suggest you try it the next time you want anything from anyone. Present one scenario to them that is outrageously unacceptable and then counter your own offer with something far less egregious, but well within your demands.

You can assume that since this email is so bad, the one tomorrow will be just a little bit better, but you'll think it's incredible.

It's all about expectations and presentation.

Feeding Off His Emotions

2008-02-02T14:01:00.000-05:00

I love sitcoms. I don't really have that many shows that I watch regularly, but I've always enjoyed the idea of sitcoms as a mindless escape from reality.

I started wondering if there was something deeper to my appreciation when I set out to write an episode of Scrubs with my writing partner for the normal circuit of teleplay competitions in film festivals. After a lot of thinking about what draws me, in particular, to that format, I realized that it was something incredibly basic about me and about situation comedies.

People are allowed to be themselves.

I've always wanted to live inside a sitcom. I don't imagine I'm the first person. A world of witty comebacks, pranks lovingly pulled on best friends, side characters flowing seamlessly or meaninglessly in and out of life. And I did live in a world like for a time in college - the same close group of friends always spending time with each other, always a battle of wits and clever conversation, pranks were always appreciated, life was full of those subplots that make it interesting,

But behind all the character types and hilarious one-liners, the thing that stood out to me was that people are accepted for being themselves no matter what. This causes fights from time to time, but it's nothing that can't be solved with a little honest humility and the remembrance that friendship is strong and matters.

The stereotypes fulfilled in these shows are always allowed to exist at their pinnacle. I'll take Friends, for example, because it is such a shining example of these stereotypes:

The crazy person (Phoebe) is always allowed to be quirky and odd. They accept her as she is, and everyone loves her. She does really random stuff, and the most anyone ever does is shrug their shoulders and snap off a clever joke.

The nerd (Ross) is allowed to be as nerdy as possible without repercussions except the light jabbing of friends' jokes. He's made fun of for being a nerd, but not brutally - and he's never excluded from hanging out because of it.

The handsome idiot (Joey) is patted on the head for saying dumb things, but a group of college educated - one being a PhD - people continues to hang out with him and help him out.

The sarcastic asshole (Chandler) exists solely to put other people down because he has low self esteem. He does this continually, even annoyingly so, and everyone treats what would otherwise be a psychological cry for help as fodder for an interesting lifestyle. He gets to hang out with his friends despite constantly making fun of them.

The spoiled rich girl (Rachel) has no real depth to her. She isn't the brightest person, but she's attractive and can sometimes hold a conversation. She shows good qualities like compassion, but for the most part hangs out despite being neurotic and worrying more about outfits than character.

The psycho (Monica) is overtly crazy. She is a clean freak, a control freak and still hasn't gotten over self-esteem issues stemming from being overweight in high school. She is frequently over-dramatic which would threaten the balance of any good friendships, yet she still hangs strong.

Essentially, sitcoms are a group of insane people who choose to deal with each other's neuroses because they love each other. They display an intense friendship based on love rather than, necessarily, common interest or clique. They have a love that defies everything.

I feel like this mimics real life in a certain way - albeit more cheerfully. We are all insane in one way or another, but we don't always embrace each other for it. We don't always support each other because of how taxing it might be. Sitcoms, on the other hand, show us that it might not actually be taxing at all to deal with someone's insanity because you love them. And loving them means accepting them for how they are. And when you truly love a person, you don't really think about the tax they place on your life.

The time you spent consoling them after the break up? The hours on the phone listening to them talk crazy about their boss being out to get them? The entire tub of frosting you ate during the Great Frosting Race of 05? It's all time well spent. It's all incredible moments that should be locked in your memory or in celluloid for home viewers to see every week - same time, same channel.

I love sitcoms because I know I'm just an insane person looking to be loved.

Off the Couch

2008-01-30T21:32:00.001-05:00

World Travel.

It's safe to assume that the world is shrinking in most ways. It's easier to contact far off lands instantly with phones and email. But the great thing is that a lot of that mystery is still there. The wonder of a foreign land is still very alive.

Hopefully, I'll be tapping into that wonder very soon. I've gotten involved with a program called CouchSurfing which is exactly what it sounds like. You put up a profile and either request to crash on peoples' couches or make one available for others. I think the idea is really ingenious. And the spirit of it is really benign.

A friend of mine was concerned that I'd be robbed or beaten to death, and of course that's a possibility. But for the most part, you can tell by people's demeanor, their profiles and their references that they are decent. Just interested in seeing the world or the country and not paying too much money for it.

It makes me really want to quit my job and couch surf my way through Europe and the Middle East. I want to seek adventure and not pay for it. We should all be world travelers since we're all world citizens.

Anyone care to join me?

Regulated by Science

2007-12-21T15:43:00.001-05:00

Yesterday's thoughts were scrambled, not well put together. A lot like most of my real thoughts, probably. It did get me thinking more about sources of information as being relevant to the information itself.

There's a theory in Pragmatism that essentially states that a fact cannot be denounced based on the source it comes from. An insane person could say that the Statue of Liberty is in New York, and it wouldn't magically become untrue because the person saying it also claimed that his feet were made of butter.

I feel like some of this was applied to other philosophers, specifically Nietzsche. Whenever I bring up Nietzsche as a strong influence in my own philosophical life, I get the usual reaction that either points out that he renounced everything he said (untrue), that he went insane at the end of his life (true) or that he died of syphilis (also true). Granted, I was going to a Christian University where students seemed to have a noted distaste for the philosopher who claimed that God was dead.

Their reactions were meant, I think, to discredit Nietzsche either to me or to themselves. It gave them a reason not to buy into his logic. After all, why listen to a man who went crazy and died of venereal disease?

Because an idea must be separated from its source. If this were not the case, no great ideas would flourish for very long. Most great thinkers have lives that a clouded by darkness or are colored by those who wrote history as crack-pots. Socrates was a blasphemer. John, who wrote Revelations, was an exile on Patmos when he wrote it. Jesus was considered a false prophet and put to death for his teachings.

The concept of an idea outliving a person is explored in Alan Moore's novel V for Vendetta. V, also a crazy person, speaks in an ego-less manner, preferring to evoke a sense of the ideas he champions (freedom, passion, art) instead of revealing characteristics about himself. The reasoning is that "ideas are bulletproof". You can kill a man. But you cannot kill an idea.

And yet it pains me when I bring up a controversial thinker like Nietzsche only to hear the same regurgitated blather about his personal life. It's a method of protecting one's self from having to think about something that might not agree with you. It's easier to condemn a man, than an idea. We do it all the time - see it all the time. Politicians bring up personal attacks instead of talking about the issues. We fail to listen to criticism based on who says it. We tend to worry more about a person being judgmental than what their judgment is.

It's impossible to take every idea at depth and examine it, so it's natural to have a vetting process. Sometimes I wonder, though, whether this vetting process helps us or hurts us. It certainly makes us feel good. Keeps us away from stray ideas. Makes us listen to positive feedback or negative criticism told lovingly.

Maybe, sometimes, what we need is a challenge. Harsh words. Something we can't turn away from so easily. Maybe what we need is something that wakes us up instead of patting us gently on the back.

Stamp of Approval

2007-12-21T15:36:00.000-05:00

More than once in my life I've been called judgmental.

This stems, I believe, from me judging people.

For the most part, I consider myself a very good judge of people. Not necessarily of character, but of the types of people that I encounter. Using basic psychology and a little observation, it's pretty easy to boil most people down to core elements. And I say most people, because not everyone is so easy to read. It's that other group that gives me trouble though.

I once bragged to a very beautiful woman that I knew exactly what she was like within the first half hour that I met her. This is true for most people I meet. It doesn't take long to figure out people's personalities and motivations. People wear them on their sleeves. People project them in the smallest speech patterns and body languages. I was not entirely honest with this woman, though. I had a lot of her figured out pretty quick. But she was one of those people in life that surprised me. She had more to her than what she was projecting.

I find I'm drawn to people like that. People with a little more hidden behind their smile than most. Dynamic people.

This got me thinking about judgment. For the most part, it has a bad connotation. It's a condemnation to be judgmental. It's a bad thing. We usually think of someone being judgmental who doesn't have all the facts. People with a prejudice. Or we think of them as being high-and-mighty, excused from being judged themselves.

But everyone judges everyone else on a daily basis. It's part of our survival kit. See the guy in the trench coat with the beady eyes following you into the subway car? He could be up to no good. We judge him on based on his appearance. Some people love stories where a character like this threatens with his presence and then ends up helping someone in the end. The moral of the story is to be careful before judging someone.

But judging people is good. That guy with the trenchcoat probably is up to no good. And for the survival of the species, we learn to recognize these visual clues so we don't have to get to know a person before they mug us. We recognize danger so we can avoid it.

And another thing, what about someone who has all the facts and makes a judgment? I think of some judgmental people as blow-hards that proclaim certain truths about others as a means to avoid detection of their own faults, sure. But what about the people who have the back-up for their judgment call? Is it still wrong for them to voice an opinion?

I think it boils down to two things. One, we don't like being defined. We are frightened that it takes away our freedom or means we're boring or easy to figure out. Two, we don't like to be defined negatively. A judgment call usually infers that someone has placed values up against your behavior and you've lost out. They don't approve of something you're doing.

We tend to react harshly and quickly to those kinds of judgments. My question is simple. What if that person being judgmental, is right?

The Engrossing Problem

2007-12-21T15:29:00.000-05:00

I'm starting to realize that my natural tendencies are at odds with what I stand for.

The story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one that pretty much everyone knows. A guy meddling too far into the realm of science ends up creating a monster of himself, unleashing a part of him that is meant to stay hidden for the safety of all concerned. No one pays much attention to the meaning or the warning of the story.

In fact, no one seems to pay much attention to the meaning behind most monster movies. My favorite example would be zombie films. George Romero created the genre in earnest when he made Night of the Living Dead. In it, a group of unaffected people try to fight off the zombie horde that constantly closes in on them. The protagonist, a black man, escapes with his life only to be gunned down by racist rednecks at the end. Most audiences see it as a frightening story filled with great intensity and surprises that make girls leap out of their seats and into their boyfriends' arms.

I see the political message behind it. After all, what are zombies? There's no threat to them - they aren't fast, agile, intelligent. In fact, they are the opposite of what most great monsters are. But the thing that makes them scary is their numbers. They just keep coming. They are frightening because there are just so damned many of them.

Beware of stupid people in large groups.

They represent the herd mentality that is present in us all. The cues we take to follow the crowd and see where it takes us. At the end of the movie, the main character is killed not because of a supernatural threat, but because of a very real one (one incredibly real for when the film was made in the 1960s). The movie was a statement to stop following blindly and to start thinking humanely about people. Of course now, the idea can be applied to anything. We even use the word zombie from time to time to describe cultural phenomena.

For Jekyll and Hyde, the joke is that they are the same person. Scary movies tend to play off of our fears well because they focus on the most well rooted parts of our personalities. We all fear in some way that there's a part of us that's dangerous. A part that should be left in the dark. A part that should never manifest itself outside our minds.

And in some ways, we let it out. Shooting the middle finger at the guy that cut us off. Being short with a coworker because we've had a stressful day. Wanting to punch the ass that spilled beer on us at the party.

The message of the tale is that keeping your primal urges caged is the only safe thing. In the end, Jekyll is destroyed completely and several people are killed. It is a struggle, though, a daily struggle to keep those urges under wraps. I envy people who so effortlessly adhere to a moral structure. They are few and far between, but there are a few people in life who just seem to be free to live how they please because their upbringing instilled so deeply in them a sense of unshakable morals. It is one thing to act morally and another to think morally.

My thoughts tend to be all over the place, which is why they are often at odds with what I stand for. The pain there in doing what it right despite it going against my natural tendency is a palpable one. I can feel it physically sometimes. That's when I try to remember the cautionary tales of what happens when you let those natural tendencies out.

And they don't always work.

The Even Keel

2007-12-17T16:06:00.001-05:00

Why can't we apply the same seriousness of our dating relationships to our friendships?

I guess this isn't everyone - I know it isn't, as I've been talking with a friend of mine about it, and she disagrees. But I do see the pattern in some people, including myself. We tend to put a different kind of stock in our dating relationships than our friendships.

For some people, I've noticed they have the ability to drop a relationship based on friends' opinions. They so value their friendships that they wouldn't do anything to harm them - and they trust their friends' opinions enough to realize they have best interests in mind. I revel at this sort of commitment. In my time on earth, I've so craved female affirmation, that I've forsaken a lot of my friendships for time spent with a significant other. Somehow, I learned this lesson later in the game than I should have.

My last serious relationship stayed balanced because we both were incredibly busy. However, this caused an imbalance of its own - when we did have free time, all we wanted to do was see each other. Thus, we were either working or together. This destroyed a social life to a certain extent.

But I wonder why this need is so strong. Why lose time with half a dozen people that love you in exchange for devotion from one person? There are obvious differences between dating and friendship, but these differences seem to be disproportion ally magnetic. They seem small, but they can have such strong reactions.

This thought isn't very well defined or articulated. Probably because it's still in the incubation phase. I'm just looking for answers at this point. The only thing I can think of so far is that the love that comes from a relationship is a much stronger drug. Maybe one that takes much more upkeep than a friendship. We hold onto it tighter because we imagine that's what it takes.

I love you all. Wouldn't trade you for the world.

Loving Hate

2007-12-17T16:03:00.000-05:00

This might be challenging. It was to me.

The Westboro Baptist Church was founded in 1955 by Fred Phelps. Since then, it has been in and out of the national spotlight for several reasons. They are vehemently anti-gay, anti-Catholic, anti-Islam and there are serious reasons to consider them anti-black and anti-semitic. As such, they are known mostly for picketing the funerals of homosexuals who were murdered or died of AIDS. They picket lesbian and gay weddings. They protest at the funerals of American soldiers who died in Iraq.

All of their actions are founded on strong beliefs in a few Old Testament passages, couples with an unnerving dedication to the closeness of Rapture. They hate America (and several other countries) because they feel the countries enable homosexuality. To them, this sin is above all others and stands as the principle cause of God's alleged hatred of these countries. Including the US.

Westboro could certainly be considered a cult by the broad and narrow definitions. In broad terms, a cult is a dedicated group of people that follow an ethos that stands outside the mainstream. In narrow terms, a cult is a dangerous mechanism of brainwashing, usually dedicated to a strong, central leader that uses dishonest tactics in order to bring others into the fold. The danger also moves beyond spewing hate-speech.

Phelps himself has been arrested for battery several times. His son speaks out against him, claiming that Phelps beat his children and wife in accordance with Old Testament law. His other son, however, is a dedicated follower who set up the first website for Westboro. Currently, the church runs sites including:

GodHatesFags.com
GodHatesAmerica.com

among others.

The list of vile things about this group is far too long to write down. A quick trip over to their wikipedia entry should enlighten if you need more reason to despise them.

They are getting headlines again for releasing several videos of songs they've written. One is a parody of We Are the World cleverly retitled God Hates the World (and it can be v iewed here.) Most people I've talked to consider this the worst of the videos because of the last twenty seconds.

Reading the literature on this group and watching their videos is guaranteed to make blood boil.

I got into a discussion with a friend of mine regarding the group in relation to my fears of religion. This group represents how far the pendulum can swing when religion is involved. For the most part, I realize that religion is a great help to the world. It creates an enlightenment about life that spreads joy and love. But in the wrong hands, it becomes incredibly dangerous - just like anything that elicits that sort of power.

My friend commented that what these people had was not religion, and I agree its a perversion, but its still based in religious belief. Hate them as much as you'd like, but what they believe in is still religious - they believe in God and believe in a certain way of living based on their interpretation of the Bible.

All of this aside, it brought me to the real puzzling question, and I hope it's something that puzzles you as well.

Christ calls on us to love one another. He teaches to feel compassion.

So how does one show compassion to this group?

It's easy to hate them. It's the natural response to the sort of vitriol and holier-than-thou-ness they exude. But hate isn't the correct response according to the teachings of Christ.

After your blood boils over from reading about this group or checking out their videos on youtube, how do you look at them with kindness and love? How do you love this group? How do you spread God's love to them?

Leaving a religious component aside for a moment, I'll say that I have the same question based on my beliefs. As someone that believes in humanity and its endeavors, I find myself concerned with how this group fits into the grand scheme, and how I can show love for them as fellow humans.

It's, for the moment, definitely got me stumped.

The Death of Fun

2007-12-12T16:27:00.000-05:00

Here's to fourth times.

Yesterday was our first snow of the season here in DC. It was incredible. While I was down in the lobby watching everyone mill about as if it was business as usual, I had to resist the urge to run out into the street to play in the snow. And yet everyone seemed like it wasn't an important event, like snow was something that just comes around all the time, nothing special, nothing unique.

My attitude toward snow is based, probably, solely on the fact that yesterday was the fourth time I've ever seen it. It was only really the second time I've seen it in such huge amounts - covering everything in beautiful, lustrous white. So it's a rare thing for me. I've not yet grown so accustomed to it that I can look outside at its beauty and only feel disdain for it ruining my travel schedule or making it difficult to walk.

I realize that I get excited by a lot of things that make me seem childish. I took a quick inventory of what I've considered my goals for the past few years, and several things stuck out:

1) To become wealthy enough to build and maintain a Class C zoo fit for keeping two (2) river otters.

This is my top priority. At some point in my life I want to live comfortably enough to be able to sit in a rocking chair all day and watch the river otters play. As a creature with no real natural enemies and no lack of talent in the food-catching department, otters pretty much just play around all day. They are graceful in the water and hilarious to watch on land - never a dull moment.

2) I'd like a large room in my house that's floor is made out of bedding.

I've decided that the walls should be normal - only the floor of the room should be made out of mattresses. I think this would be really useful on a daily basis and for visitors who come to spend the night. What's that? You don't like sleeping on the couch? Well, just sleep on the floor.

3) I want my life to be filled with new experiences and daily surprises.

In this world, I think the only way to facilitate surprise or excitement is to keep a child-like wonder about everything. It shocks me when people don't get excited about the possibilities of technology or the beauty of nature. This stuff is so crazy, so complex, so incredible that it takes a truly hardened person to pass by it with disdain. I told a colleague of mine who always wears these chic, very attractive black dresses to work that I'd like to see her in a lime green sweatshirt in jeans. When she asked me why, I told her that it would be a different experience. She responded that people wouldn't be able to handle it. And I felt like that was sort of the point.

I can't figure out whether this childishness is going to hurt me in the long run or not. For now, I'm just sort of riding the wave of it all. Maybe my goals should be a bit more conventional - a 401k, a family, pension plan, security.

It seems like I'm fighting against the notion of security, though. I love having a job and an apartment. They make me feel safe and secure. But the trade off is a lack of excitement. You have to sacrifice some of the randomness in life to come into work at 9am every morning. And some days, I just want to burst out of the office doors and jump in a big pile of snow.

Descartes Before the Horse

2007-12-12T16:23:00.000-05:00

Without mystery, I'm not sure what's left.

It takes a lot to remind me of this, though. I'm not sure why, but every so often in my life a huge mystery crops up. I'm frustrated by it. It worries me and destroys my sense of ego - as most of my ego is based on me grasping the world around me in a smug, know-it-all sort of way. But I realize soon enough the excitement of it all. A new puzzle to solve. A new challenge to figure out.

The frustrating part is not knowing whether I'll figure it out or whether my solution to the mystery will work. And of course there's the general uncertainty of having something prevalent in my life that's up in the air. We, as humans, like closure. We like bad guys to lose in movies and good guys to get the girl. We like loose ends being tied up because we get on edge when they don't. We hate open endings because they excite us and we seek comfort. Our primal quest for food, shelter, companionship is a question that demands an answer. We have to have those answers, because without them, we wonder if we'll survive. Perhaps knowing if the hero escapes the deadly trap, captures the villain and marries the girl is a matter of survival for us as well.

In the drama of our own lives, we are terrified by the unknown, by the x factor that crops up in our plans and ruins them. Makes us rethink them. Maybe takes a goal away from us permanently. This is even more frustrating - more so than having a question up in the air, is having it answered in a way that we didn't want. From this point, we usually choose denial or we go through the five stages of grief as if we'd lost something as important as life itself.

We deny, we get angry, we bargain, we get sad, and then, hopefully, we accept.

The question is, do we hate having something in our lives that is a frustrating mystery more than we hate having the answer to that mystery be the one we weren't hoping for? Would we rather be frustrated or disappointed?

The Humbug

2007-12-11T16:56:00.001-05:00

Why don't we trust in rationale?

We've been on this planet for so long, and we still fear the unknown so strongly that we choose to use voodoo and magic instead of trusting in the honesty and completeness of science and common sense. There are still opportunists that prey on the fears and misunderstandings, the wish-fulfillment thinking that pervades some people who have a desperate need for answers and an open pocket book.

Reflexology, Feng Shui, Crystal Power, Shakras, Magic Pills, Weight loss miracles, Telekinesis, ESP, talking with the dead, spoon benders - and the greatest hack, the most despicable opportunists in my book - televangelists.

Benny Hinn, Peter Popoff, Jim Bakker, Oral Roberts and others. Even though these men were publicly exposed as frauds, they continued to thrive and make money off of some of the poorer members of society.

They promises things they can't. They promise healing powers. Peter Popoff, for one, claimed that God was speaking directly to him. He seemed to divinely know the names of members of his audience, their addresses, their afflictions, and he used the intensity of his personality to make people believe he could heal them without medicine. He was exposed as a fake on Johnny Carson's show when debunker James Randi proved that Peter Popoff wasn't hearing the voice of God, but hearing the voice of his wife feeding him information through a tiny ear piece. Information she got from prayer cards and info cards filled out by audience members.

These are the charlatans of our time. Purveyors of a billion dollar industry that strips away the dignity of its followers along with their money. Bakker embezzled from his organization. Oral Roberts claimed he needed 8 million in donations or he'd die - which got his followers cash flowing - Hinn made prophesy after prophesy that didn't come true in the mid-90s. Despite being proven time and time again that they have no magical powers, no direct line to God (anymore than any Christian would claim) they still have followings and still get boatloads of cash. What would Jesus do, right?

The question is not a matter of being disgusted by it all. That's easy. The question is, how can we combat it? Can it be combated? How do we see an end to people taking advantage of others in this way? Why, with all that science has given us, do people still believe that a $30 handkerchief from a television minister can cure Cancer?

How much further must we go before we leave magical thinking behind for real results?

Why I Didn't Post in November

2007-12-11T16:53:00.000-05:00

Happy November.

This month is a very special one for me - for the past several years, I've struggled alongside thousands of others in the pursuit of writing a novel during National Novel Writing Month. Like other celebrated months, it is a reminder of the joy of writing, but it's also an incredible challenge and thorn in the side for anyone who takes it seriously.

It's not a competition, but it has winners. The goal is to create a 50,000 manuscript within one month. That's roughly 1,667 words per day. For visual effect, that's 2 1/4 pages of type, single spaced or the size of a normal paper you'd write for a standard college course. You have to write one of those every day.

It's an excellent trial in a world without much challenge anymore. We have to seek out adventure in a way that many before us didn't. Our lives are so comfortable and yet there is an aching there to achieve something beyond the contentment that the world affords us with little to no effort. It is part of the natural human condition to want to push thresholds and break boundaries. The reason? You know that there is something more to yourself than what you know, and you're dying to find out what all is there. Knowing your limitations is a good thing because it means you've tested them.

Do you have a challenge in your life? Something that exhausts you? Something that you might fail at? I feel like that component is missing from our lives. We love the feeling of achievement, but we hate the challenge of getting there. Is there anything in your life that you would describe as 'daunting'? If not, you should find something as soon as possible.

I love this month because it is aggravating, destructive, maniacal, emotional, frustrating and beautiful. It shows that the process of creation is a terrible and awful process that leads, in the end, to something that didn't exist in the world before you put it there. Let that sink in. The universe was complete at any given moment - and you have the power to add something to it. To give something to people that they didn't have before.

There are challenges ahead. I hope you find them.

Good luck.

A Cliff or a Slippery Slope

2007-12-07T16:37:00.000-05:00

I really hate doing this.

A Baylor professor - specifically, a Baylor professor teaching at the Seminary school - recently wrote an article for the Baylor newspaper detailing how Atheism lacked a moral grounding. His ultimate conclusion was that atheists could be good people in spite of their belief and not because of it. It did not help his cause that his arguments were grounded in ignorance. It also did not help his cause that he opened the piece by saying he felt sorry for atheists.

Feel free to read the piece for yourself here, but be warned it's essentially a roll call of typical shallow points that have no real base in reality. It seems odd to write that in such lofty terms, but I can't stress enough how intellectually lazy this guy is. Perhaps if you've had these same thoughts about Atheism, I can help to enlighten you.

If you don't want to read it, I'll (poorly) sum up his main two points:
1) Atheism defaults to the Law of Nature - survival of the fittest - and cannot explain why humans should care for one another.
2) Atheism defaults to nihilism wherein there is no meaningfulness attached to life.

I cannot stress enough how patently wrong these statements are.

For starters, Atheism does not equate with Christianity, it equates with Theism. The easy way out would be to say that Atheism is not meant to be a moral structure, it is only a belief structure the way Theism is. Indeed, Christianity is a particular flavor of Theism which goes beyond saying there is a God to giving It creative powers, moods, expectations, a personality and a Book that It's written outlining how humans are supposed to live.

But Atheism does have some moral manifestations based solely on the belief that there is no God. The most prevalent is personal responsibility. Without a figure looming above, the onus is placed securely on the person's shoulders to exercise humanity. This is an incredibly moral imperative. But it's also a blank slate. Since there is no Book of answers on how to be human, the person must do the hard work of figuring out what that means.

Of course it does not always work. There are plenty of atheists out there who refuse or complicate that responsibility and end up utilizing its freedom without understanding or practicing its ethos. In the world's least surprising turn of events, some Christians don't either.

To directly confront the two points made in the article -

1) There is no "law of nature". There are laws of nature. Tying Atheism to Survival of the Fittest is one of the more laughable claims I've seen made. Atheism can explain easily why people should care for other people - because this life is all we and others have. To look pale in the face of your fellow man and deny that person's existence is something best left to the judgmental. Atheism in its purest form is non-judgmental because it doesn't seek to be. Without the threat of an afterlife, we have a responsibility to make this life as shining and brilliant as possible. We seek to make it better not just for ourselves, but for others. (And when has anyone really made life better for themselves without helping out others?) I could go on if needed.

2) Just because Atheism does not feature a parent-figure handing down a "meaning" of life does not make it nihilism. I find beauty and wonder in all things of this world. To use the basis of not having an afterlife again, I would say that my meaning of life stems from enjoying it to the fullest. Also, it's incredibly depressing to think that there's no meaning to life without God simply for the distinct possibility that one might not exist. I'm life affirming, and the meaning of this incredibly universe for me is not contingent on something that can never be known. To believe that there is no meaning to life without God seems to be the status of a man trapped by his belief - with no other alternative but to believe in God. I'm not sure what kind of belief that really is.

I know I haven't spoken much about my beliefs, and you might have questions. I'm open to all of them.

I also feel moved to thank you all for being in my life. I fear that without you, I would have a far grimmer view of Christians. You're shining examples of what Christ's love can do when it shines through. Know that.

Gotta get back to the grind. I've got a lot more of my meaningless existence to endure.

Picket Fences

2007-12-07T16:36:00.000-05:00

Imagine you're the ruler of a small country. You're benevolent, for the most part, everyone seems to be doing alright, and your government is a prosperous one.

But you've recently enacted a policy that has many of your people up in arms.

Would you listen to a protest?

The recent activity here in DC regarding the IMF and World Bank has people taking to the streets, and I'm wondering if it's completely fruitless. If it's all in vain. The central question that I'm wondering today is whether or not protests work.

It seems like there's a decent amount of examples on both sides, but it's clear when a protest fails. When a protest "works", it might not actually be the reason that an issue was resolved. Perhaps there were back door dealings, meetings, changes of heart. Maybe the protest was taking place after the government decided to change its stance.

There's a lot of money put into these things as well. A lot of time and effort by organizers. Is all of that just a wash? Would you even care to listen to a mob of strangers if you were running things?

This is our revolution, neutered.

Since we can't pick up arms against our government anymore - like we did in 1776 and off and on over the next 100 years - it seems like protesting is our way of walking up to the current power, pointing a finger at them, and yelling, "Bang!". It seems just as effective, too.

Have you ever protested anything? Or thought about it? Or been angry enough to?

Most of our founding political philosophers felt that the need for government came directly from a need to quell emotional responses. Instead of fire and passion, government should be built by reasoning and contemplation. Of course, Jefferson also claimed that a free society fed on "the blood of tyrants and patriots alike". The patriots he referred to being revolutionaries with weapons. I guess an even more overarching question (as I'm thinking about this) is one of how we change society.

How does one in the modern age go about affecting change on such a broad scale? If the world isn't turning out the way we think it should, are we powerless to stop it?

A Better Human Trap

2007-12-05T15:01:00.000-05:00

Most of us have willingly gotten into a machine that could end our lives. It's steel and metal and travels at incredible speeds. It's surrounded by others just like it on the road, driven by varying degrees of talent. It is a calculable danger that we take almost every day of our lives. There are countless others just like it. But we trust in people.

So much of our lives is dependent on authority. We live a mass continuum of teachers and students, each playing the role for someone else. This is a major part of our lives that we pay no attention to.

You couldn't live your life without expertise. The room you sleep in, the things you have outfitted your living space with were made by someone with expertise in building things. The city you live in was created by a city planner and architects. Same goes for the roads, the buildings around you, the transit system, your car. These things would not be possible without authorities on the subject. If you attend classes, you willfully subject yourself to an expert, an authority figure with credentials to prove her knowledge.

The food you eat, the clothes you wear, the entire world you live in is due to experts. We have these things down to a science. Not perfection, just high-level understanding.

And for the most part, we never give these things a second thought. We bow down to authority fairly easily. We take what experts say at face value a lot of the time. The trout population in Lake Wimmons has grown over the past decade, you say, Mr. Scientist? Sounds about right.

We do this because we have no way of finding these things out empirically for ourselves. When the government tells us they have evidence that another country is working toward nuclear capabilities, we can't storm off and do our own research. Plus, we have an expert role to play in our lives. Being an expert has nothing to do with PhDs or lofty posts. Maybe you're an expert on relationships, on faith, perhaps you're an incredible listener or friend. These are their own expertises.

You are an authority on something.

I think the lack of questioning authority on a daily basis is encouraging. I think it shows not really a trust in people - since you don't know the specific team of people who put your car together - but a faith in humanity as a whole. It shows that we trust the system in place, we trust the idea of someone knowing things that we don't and agree to let them know those things for us. In a way, it's a collective brain that we're dealing with. I am fine not to know certain things because other people know them for me, and I can usually get the information if I need it. But I usually won't. I don't know how to build a car to make it safe, but I know other people do, and I benefit from it without even ever meeting the person.

It is trust without knowledge.

Stubborn Old Wounds

2007-12-03T12:28:00.000-05:00

Continuing with the question of the meaning of life, I started wondering if religious people have already found it.

By all definitions, practitioners have. They live their life according to an ethos that they consider to be the Truth about reality and the correct way to govern life. I think that's one thing that's always felt off to me about practicing religion - there's a certain sense of being a finished product.

I realize that for some that sort of thing could put them on the defensive - we all want to feel like we're growing. Getting better. Moving forward. But realistically speaking, someone who practices a religion has already gotten life figured out.

Perhaps the meaning of life needs to be split up into two separate categories. One is an all-encompassing answer to why we're all here. And the other is a question of what your particular life is supposed to mean.

There's a tension in saying that you've got it all figured out. I mean, we all have to live by some directive. We've all got life figured out to the point that we can live it effectively. But the question of what one person is here for - that's something that could take an entire lifetime. It's something to grow in. Something to get better at. Something to move forward with.

A wise person once suggested that I read Lewis's On Obstinacy and Belief. I did. It was great. There's one particular section that seems to speak to the meaning of life - at least the meaning as interpreted by a believer.

Lewis describes the faith of someone in trouble - a dog stuck in a trap is one example - and the belief that although the person saving him is sometimes giving messages contradictory to common sense - i.e. you have to put your foot farther into the trap in order to get it out - the savior really does know best. According to Lewis, humans must live like that dog in the trap, assuming that the creator knows all things and has information that we don't. This is an illustration of the trust that must exist in the creator's plan.

So the meaning of life is essentially one of transferring the knowledge of the universe to a being that already has it and keeping a close eye and ear to what instructions that being has to give. And then following them.

I keep going back in my mind on how good an illustration that is.

The Cold Start

2007-12-03T12:26:00.000-05:00

Welcome to December.

We're at the home stretch here. In less than thirty days, there will be a new year for us to do with what we like. I've always had it out for new years. Mostly because of the complete arbitrariness of the whole thing. The Romans laid the foundation for the calendar cycle that we have today, but it could have been anyone. The names of the months could be different. The amount of days in each could be, too. And, most importantly, the start of the year could be sometime in March or June or August.

It's funny how much stock we place in it though, especially considering what we do for it. The celebration is one thing, but the social norm I've always found most fascinating is the new year's resolution. It is the idea that despite our failed attempts in the past and a lack of discipline, we can somehow find the strength to give up a vice or gain a virtue simply because there's a larger starting gun.

This is a prime example of what I meant when I talked about waiting for permission to live our lives.

The reality is, obviously, that you don't need a symbolic fresh start to change your life. In fact, most resolutions fail horribly because they exist only at a surface level. You could change your life today, this minute, if you wanted to. You don't really need a large holiday or fireworks to make it happen.

Something else will happen in less than 30 days. We will have known each other for six months. Half of a year. Some of you I've known for longer, of course, but if we're going to measure out our lives month to month, most of you will have been in 2% of my life. It doesn't sound like much, but think about how dramatically you've impacted my life, how much you've changed each other. And if you're really concerned about racking up large numbers - stick with me until I'm 80 and you will have been in 72% of my life.

Now is a time for thinking about how far we've come and how far still we have left to travel with each other. Think about how much you know about each other and the vast realm of things you still don't know. There is still so much left to explore.

In less than a month, there will be a new year waiting for us to attack it with gusto. But who says we have to wait that long to attack?

Path of Least Resistance

2007-11-05T10:57:00.000-05:00

Is there any reason to search for the meaning of life?

It seems as though we live in a culture that has abandoned the question almost altogether, which is especially alarming considering that the question is only getting more complex. We're dealing with ancient questions and modern ones alike. The new ones seem to pile on by the minute. Is it ethical to clone humans? Can we achieve immortality through medicine? Is changing the social dynamic a good or bad thing? How can so many still be starving in the world? Are we powerless against fate?

There are arguments to support a need for ignorance though. It's difficult to watch those around us who float through life without any desire to look upwards to the sky or inward into themselves. They are content to consume whatever's given to them. And they're happy. With intelligence comes sadness - the knowledge of the greater implications of one's actions or inactions is enough to drive one to drinking. The evils of the world are overwhelming when taken in all at once.

But the meaning of life is a necessity, so I've been thinking about a rebuttal to the main arguments.

1) There is no meaning of life.

Of course there is. As there is a system, there is a set of rules for it. Because there are a set of rules for it, there is a correct way to navigate those rules. To claim that there is no absolute truth is an absolute truth statement. At the end of the day, somewhere in the universe, there is an absolute truth that governs all of existence.

2) We, as humans, cannot find or understand that truth.

As if this was an excuse not to look for it. Not to leap off of the deep end in search of something buried deep within the human spirit. Sometimes I feel like we're attacking on all fronts. Science is furiously working to understand the world. Philosophy is furiously working to understand man. And Theology is furiously working to understand the beyond. Plus, even if we never find or understand the Truth, isn't the search most of the fun?

3) You don't need a meaning of life to live it.

This is the prevailing wind of the day. It seems like our peers are awash in the spirit of undefinability. Now, I'm all for casting off the old, dusty definitions that our parents created, but I want to replace them with something. I want to be a pioneer, not someone who gets in the car, starts her up, and has no idea where he's going or what's powering the motor. To be alive, you have to know what you're living for.

This thought seems more bravado-filled than normal, but it needs to happen every once in a while. Figure out what you're living for. What drives you. Stop what you're doing until you know. Maybe what you're doing is a waste of time, maybe it seems like a waste but isn't, maybe you're exactly on track.

The search for the meaning of life is easy. It can be found in giant, old tomes or at the bottom of a laundry basket or in the end credits of a movie or in a friend's handshake. Live your life as that search, and it'll at least be worthwhile. Or at very least, entertaining.

Retro-Exodus

2007-11-02T20:15:00.000-04:00

Someone on the list wanted to know my thoughts on sexuality, on waiting until marriage, monogamy, etc. Consider this a thought on request.

I've been thinking a lot about what one pastor dubs warm love and cool love. He's noting the trend for couples to lose interest in each other. The warm love of the beginning stage gives way to a cooler love, a calmer love. This is, most often times, not a good thing. It is certainly not smiled upon by the couples themselves.

Why does this happen? I think I have a few reasons.

1) Marriage is not necessarily the natural order. It is within our nature to be monogamous but humans are one of the few species that couples in a wide array of ways. Take dating for instance - most animals don't date. They find a partner, mate, and either stay with that partner for life or go on to others. But, we are also an animal that couples for more than the propagation of the species. We find love. We need companionship. We want to stay up until 4am having deep conversations about nothing. We need a Scrabble partner. We want someone to cook eggs for in the morning. Someone to decide which restaurant to go to. Someone to drag us to a movie we don't want to see. Someone to hold our hand.

But we also like variety, and marriage does not afford that to us. Here's the surprise of the century: Marriage takes work. And that shouldn't be a surprise to most going into a religiously sanctioned unity. Like most everything in religion, marriage is a struggle against nature. The Bible requests that you slough off the recklessness of human nature for the divine spirit. You must die and be reborn in a new light. Marriage is no different. It is a challenge against your natural drive. There is nothing wrong with coupling, but the pastor makes a great point by showing that a different kind of love seems to cancel the old love. And something is lost. The question is, does this have to happen?

2) Specifically dealing with Christian culture, there is a certain naivety that comes into play when dealing with sex. In some ways, I envy it. Why? Because I didn't wait until marriage, and there are certainly some benefits to be had by waiting. But I also note the pitfalls of waiting. I was hanging out with some friends at Baylor one day, and a guy I know was excitedly flashing his Human Sexuality textbook in our faces and shouting like crazy about one of the illustrations. He was giddy. It was hilarious to him. A mix between a joke and a treasure at the bottom of a pyramid. He clamored the way a thirteen year old does when he stumbles upon his father's Playboy. I turned to a friend and (in a comment I now regret making (shocking, I know)) I said, "This is what happens when you wait til marriage to have sex."

My friend, 21 at the time, acted effectively like a child when it came to a simple illustration. He had no candor, no maturity about a subject that demands it. This Human Sexuality course he took in college was the first real introduction to anything of consequence that he'd seen in the topic. Nearly a decade after developing as a man, he was finally seeing what everything was used for. It was mildly embarrassing for him.

If I can make a tangential diatribe - I blame some of this, and a lot of youthful sexual ills on abstinence-only sex-ed. I think this sort of teaching exists because they believe that education is the same as condoning. They believe that students will be introduced to sex in a classroom when, in fact, sex is introduced at a young age to students by nature itself. Also, I know of no situation in life where more knowledge is a bad thing, where ignorance is key to solving a problem. Abstinence-only education seems to cover its eyes to teenage sex and shout, "La la la" so loudly that it can't hear the truth. Battling AIDS and teen pregnancy is not done by pretending that people don't experiment with sex until after marriage.

All this to say, the pastor who coined the phrases is right. The image of Christianity is one of sacrifice, solemnity, not red-hot passionate love making. It's silly to even think about the dichotomy a person has to be to share an incredible devoutness to purity during their youth and then express an insatiable sexual appetite once marriage strikes. Why? Because a sexual awakening happens at an early age, and if not cultivated until later, it can lead to certain misunderstandings. Part of that ease of expression comes from experimentation when you're young. Without that, it seems difficult to go crazy once you've said your vows. It was even mentioned by Alfred Kinsey - noted scholar on the subject of sex - that one of the reasons he decided to do his groundbreaking study of the subject in the fifties was because he counseled a ton of newlyweds who didn't even understand the basic mechanics of the situation. Nowadays, I feel like we are better educated.

For a cultural context for the Bible and its Old Testament view on saving yourself until marriage - girls were getting married at 12 and 13 to 16 and 18 year old boys. Think you could wait until then? What's more, that was practically middle-aged by the age-expectancy of the time.

I suppose I haven't said much by way of opinion on any matters, suffice it to say that I think monogamy and waiting until marriage are good things that come with prices. But they are certainly not overwhelming prices. They just take work. Whenever you choose a particular lifestyle, you gain riches and lose opportunities. And I've said before that since we've got food and shelter down (for most in society), that finding a mate is the last great struggle for us as humans. If you find someone that loves you, count yourself lucky, do the hard work it takes to keep that person, and cook eggs for them every morning with a smile on your face.

There's a sunny-side up joke there somewhere, but I'm not one to make it.

Lost Time

2007-11-02T20:14:00.000-04:00

Sorry for not emailing yesterday. I was sick, and the only thought going through my mind was when I was going to get better - I doubt you would have enjoyed that email. However, I return triumphant with two thoughts in one day.

The first thought:

It's incredible how much good news can bring you back from the depths. Yesterday was a tough one - it's never easy to be sick, and I spent most of the day completely idle which took its own toll. But late in the 9th inning of the day, I got some good news - nothing crazy, just a simple thing that turned the day around. I got a smile on my face and a second wind. It's interesting how things like that tend to pop up just when you need them.

The second thought:

I play pretty much any instrument that doesn't require that you blow into it. A friend of mine that plays trumpet and I were talking about the differences between the levels of commitment it takes for various instruments, and he noted that if he takes as little as a week off from practicing an hour a day, he can notice the difference.

He gets worse just from missing a week of playing.

Other instruments aren't like that, but there are a solid amount that require constant attention simply to maintain a current skill level. We don't tend to think of life as something that takes practice since we can never really step away from it completely. There's a mental shift between playing an instrument for an audience and practicing. One allows for mistakes.

But shouldn't life be something we practice? Shouldn't we have to take time out to evaluate our progress or to maintain our current skill level? How do we go about doing something like that, separating ourselves from our lives long enough to feel like we can make mistakes?

I think it's possible to mentally practice life or at least mentally prepare for life by knowing what types of things you'll do in certain situations. Boundaries that you feel uneasy about crossing. Stands that you'll be taking. But if you had to write these things down right now, would you be able to? Imagine that someone is asking you what your life is about, what the theme of your life is, what the main driving force in your life is.

Would you be able to answer?

The Ghost in the Shell

2007-10-31T10:16:00.000-04:00

It seems lately I keep getting into discussions about why Halloween is so appealing - specifically why it's so appealing for members of the fairer sex to dress in far more revealing clothes than normal. It seems as though we're still wearing the costumes of our youth, only updated for adults. Alice in Wonderland becomes Slutty Alice in Wonderland. Indian Princess becomes Slutty Indian Princess. Ronald Reagan mask is replaced by Slutty Ronald Reagan mask. You get the picture.

The appeal seems obvious to me - it's the generic appeal for everyone on Halloween. It's a night to get a free pass.

It's a night where we are specifically instructed not to be ourselves. Now, I won't get into how silly it is to have a socially sanctioned night to go against social sanctions, but for the most part, we're supposed to act differently. We are supposed to let loose and be someone else, live for one night as a vampire, a mummy, an abstract concept. Our behavior changes along with our outfit.

Today is a day of release. It's a day where mischievous behavior is acceptable and even expected. It's a day where all of the sins committed are not even written down or recorded. A day with no authority figure.

So why do some girls dress like Disney-themed prostitutes on this night? Because they're allowed to. Like we're all allowed to play a part - because humans need to not be themselves every once in a while. And we're such pack animals that we only feel safe stepping outside that boundary when the rest of our society says it's alright too.

I remember when I put on my pink polo, popped the collar and borrowed Taylor's Croakies and sunglasses to go to Target. I wanted to experience life differently. I wanted to have people judge me differently based on my appearance. When I dressed in Hunter's clothes for Christmas Dinner - it was a similar situation.

So my question has never been why people dress radically but why they need permission to do it. Why do we insist on only stepping outside our norms when its socially acceptable? Doesn't that sort of negate the entire thing? We cannot really step outside ourselves unless its marginally unsafe. Halloween offers a safe environment for experimentation. But the experimentation is limited by it. To really toy around with being someone else, you have to do it without the net. In order to be seen differently by people - to experience what it's like when you dress a different way or act a different way - their reactions can't be watered down by the social acceptability of it all.

Go trick-or-treating on May 4th, and you'll see what I mean.

The day that we're allowed to dress like freaks is arbitrary anyway. It could have been any day. It could still be any day. Fifty years from now, we might be celebrating a different holiday on a different day that celebrates wearing masks and playing dress up. We should be challenging - or at least playing around with - these human constructs. Talk to people you've never met. Introduce yourself in the elevator. Don't blend into the background of people who are awaiting permission to act oddly. Live your life based on whims. Wear a mask next week. Experience life through the eyes of someone else - real or imaginary. Be homeless for a week. Take a road trip without telling anyone. Paint a picture. Go build a house. The world is not set in stone. It's been defined, but it can be erased and redefined and redefined again.

What does this have to do with dressing appropriately inappropriate? I'm not sure. But I think it's telling that when given permission to go crazy, we usually do.

The Tiger or the Tiger?

2007-10-30T12:26:00.000-04:00

The only moral questions are the difficult ones. If the answer is obvious, it probably has little to do with ethics. After all, ethics is not designed to be exact - its meant to question your sensibilities.

You can learn some fascinating things about propaganda if you know where to look. The word gets a bad connotation, but it spreads from advertising to everyday conversation to mass-population mind control with ease. This also makes it difficult to pinpoint when its being used. And of course there are dozens of successful techniques to veer the human mind in the direction you'd like it to go.

One of my favorite stories about advertising propaganda involves Tylenol who branded a catchphrase - "Nothing is stronger than Tylenol". This, of course, is completely true because nothing is stronger than Tylenol. Nothing is weaker than Tylenol either. Since Tylenol is acetaminophen and nothing more, and since several other brand name pain relievers use the same base, everything is just about equal. But by creating a brand image of strength, people still think that Tylenol is a better pain reliever than another brand when they exactly identical products. It's not a lie. It's just misleading.

Which leads to the question of the moral compass. Let's say it's 1939, and the Nazis are rounding up Jews to send to death camps. You're hiding several in your basement, and when the Gestapo makes a pit stop at your house, they ask if you're hiding anyone. Answering 'no' is a lie. Answering 'yes' would get several people killed.

I doubt seriously that anyone sees any moral qualm with lying in this circumstance. This is an easy one - not a true moral question. Res Ipsa Loquitor (right, Hunter?).

Now, let's say that you're working at a store selling stereos and the owner wants you to pitch them by exclaiming that no other stereo brand has more decibel output. Imagine that this is not a lie, but is misleading in the same way that Tylenol is misleading. Let's say the stereos you're selling are decent, but your pitch makes them sound stronger than things that they are equal to. Let's say there's commission involved.

Is there a moral problem with knowingly misleading a stranger for personal gain? What if your manager wanted you to lie about the quality outright? Is it a small enough transgression that it won't matter?

Of course, the famous example of moral effrontery comes from Socrates' story of Gyges' Ring. The ring is an object that allows its wearer to be invisible (Tolkein mirrors this concept in The Lord of the Rings. Invisibility grants incredible power). In Socrates' myth, a shepherd finds the ring and uses it to seduce the Queen of the land and murder/dethrone the king - becoming ruler himself. The question of the ring (or of invisibility) is what you would do with it. Petty theft? Rise to power? Help humanity?

How would you act if you could walk around undetected?

This speaks again to the intangible feeling, the intrinsic value of doing the right thing. The corrupt man will strive for worldly gains and feel empty for doing it so deceptively while the virtuous man will shun immoral uses of the ring in exchange for personal well-being and a state of peace.

And what happens when the virtuous man is confronted with making a choice between two immoral actions? A moral question finally arises. What if the two actions are equitable, what if the ignoble act is as major as the positive outcome it might elicit? What if there is no right path? Once again, our society has flattened these situations into aphorism - being stuck between a rock and a hard place, choosing the lesser of two evils.

But how often do we really think, truly sacrifice to find that third road that might be a bit more narrow but worth the trek?

A Step Toward the Plank

2007-10-29T16:02:00.000-04:00

When you do a basic task with the opposite hand that you're used to, it creates new neuro-pathways in your brain. You get more wrinkles. For example, try brushing your teeth with your left hand for a while, and you'll get quantitatively smarter.

I'm wondering if the same thing can't be done for your soul.

In a religious context, I'm wondering if you can make your soul glow brighter by doing things in a different way - figuring out new ways to love people, to respect them, searching in different places for God, finding yourself in uncommon waters.

I guess I'd like to look at it like a 9 to 5 job. At the end of the day, I know I'm not made for this type of work. No matter how much I enjoy doing the things that I do in the office, the monotony of coming into work in the morning and leaving in the evening, the schedule of it all, the repetition - it gets to me. I love my job, but I dislike the format.

Think about your spiritual life that way - what if even if you enjoy to the fullest every aspect of it, you feel refreshed by it, you relish in it, the fact that you have a pattern frustrated you? Isn't that sometimes the case? Even if you're meeting dynamic people and having great discussions, don't those discussions tend to flow in patterns? Doesn't it feel like you've had the same conversation before? Reliving the same moments with different people?

What fascinates me about Christian theodicy is that its an ethos that accepts (although many seem to struggle with that acceptance) of striving for a goal that is out of reach. Being Christ-like, living with a pure heart - these are things that a follower should look toward, but knows he or she will never, ever achieve.

In Genesis, and this may just be a Hebraic reading of it, God lays down laws for mankind. But throughout the Torah (and continuing into the Nevi'im and Kethubim) God's laws are like an arrow that he's shot into the distance - it only gives direction. God points off somewhere and commands to head toward it. This view contradicts the narrow alternative that God gives strict commandments. When seen as a moral homily, the story of creation and redemption really becomes about moving in the right direction, not necessarily about taking the "right path".

But it's a direction you'll walk your entire lives without reaching the arrow. I'm wondering if along the way, some experimentation on pacing, the path, and method of travel might be done to shake off the cobwebs of faith and give new perspective. I assume God wouldn't care if you did cartwheels as long as you were headed in the right direction.

What are some things that you can do differently in your spiritual life that might bring greater joy to you and your loved ones? Could it be as simple as using your left hand? And that raises another question - if we have more than one hand, and we tend to utilize one far more than the other, is there a correlative to the soul? If the soul has many faculties, isn't it possible that we only lean on one most of the time?

If this is the case, how can we stretch those other faculties and get ready for the big game?

I hope you'll appreciate that I've used over 4 different analogies to express the same basic idea. I couldn't have planned it better.

Mother Theresa be Damned

2007-10-25T10:19:00.000-04:00

There's a story of an old woman who lived alone until the day she died. Friends came and went as they pleased and she was close with her family, but she had never married, so after they left, the house was empty. She lived a full life, experiencing incredible things and going to incredible places. When she was only 18, she made the decision not to get married because the love of her life was taken away from her to die in World War II occupied France. She never went back on that promise to herself.

There's something noble about inflexibility, but it also makes me wonder how viable it is. Can you imagine sticking to a plan your made when you were 18? Can you even remember the plans and promises you made when you were 18?

Noble choices often have no extrinsic value. In fact, they usually hinder our opportunity for potential gain. Making the "right" choice is usually one of sacrifice. Of course, it seems the only times we see these decisions being made are during movies and in books. A chivalrous hero upholding some arbitrary code of existence that has fallen out of practice in exchange for the base ways of the day. So then, nobility seems to be strict adherence to an outmoded moral code, a truth that has gone out of fashion.

But is what the woman did really that noble? She's preserving the memory of the man she loved, but is there any inherent worth in the way she's going about it? Perhaps its the importance we place on finding a partner in life that frustrates the situation. Perhaps we cannot see ourselves doing the same thing - ending a quest for love because you've already found it and lost it. If her love had just moved away or decided to break up with her. Would we still consider her decision to stop looking for love once she found it noble?

The underlying question is one of why we give. Noble acts are defined by giving something up in exchange for an intangible - when a city worker found a sack with $65,000 in it last week, it made the news because she returned it (it had fallen off a bank truck) without even thinking about keeping it. It was the right thing to do. She traded monetary gain for something. But what is that something? Karma? A good feeling? The frustrating thing for most when dealing with the noble act, is that the gain is something intrinsic. It is something that that woman will never be able to put into words for another human being. She can't wear it or drive it or live in it or flaunt it, but she has it, and she knows what it is.

I think lately, I've been dying to know what it is.

Off the Grid

2007-10-23T13:00:00.000-04:00

Last night I got to listen to my outgoing voice mail message for the first time ever. I didn't even realize I had one, because a few year's ago I switched to the robotic voice blithely spouting out my number and informing listeners to record something sweet and meaningful after the tone. I was under the impression that I'd never recorded a new one.

However, after making fun of a friend of mine for sounding like he sold out - a punk rocker with the most polite message you've ever heard - he turned the comment back around on me.

So I listened to it.

I sound like a tool.

So one of many goals that we've made for each other this week is to change our voice mail message. I'm not sure that it has to be a radical change, but it needs to be one that moves away from sounding so tool-ish. Some of my friends would say that's impossible for me. I'm open to suggestions.

At the core of it is a need to change something very small, something very basic that is also a cornerstone in my life. Think about how many people hear that message a day - how many people from friends to strangers that have heard that voice and made a decision based on it. It is something small, but it's also a way that we represent ourselves - putting our best electronic foot forward. For the time being, I have what would be considered a very good message, calm, polite, professional sounding - but this is not who I want to be. I want to be myself, even for a small moment in time that is replayed over and over again during the day.

I remember noting the change to adult-hood with many of my friends as the days when their phone messages changed. The excuses were simple - awaiting calls from med schools, from Law programs, from potential clients, from colleagues now in the work force, from an interview with a major company.

Whatever the case, "Do what the lady says" followed by that ever-present electronic female informing me that in order to leave a voice mail, I needed to press 1 - was replaced by "Hi. You've reached James. I'm not here to answer your call, but if you leave a message, I'd be happy to get back to you as soon as possible."

And what's worse - we all have the same basic message. You've reached us. I'm unavailable. I can't get to my phone right now. I'm away from my phone. Please leave a detailed message. Leave your name and phone number. I'd be glad to get back to you. I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Have a great day. Hope you're doing well. Take care.

With so much monotony, is there any reason to have a message in the first place?

There's Something about Mary

2007-10-19T10:19:00.000-04:00

This is a revolution of the mind.

The two sides are pretty easy to describe: Naturalists believe that there are only natural things in existence. They seek to explain all of life's mysteries, using only what is in the physical world. Non-naturalists believe that the world's mysteries can only be explained through non-natural entities, supernatural entities like God, parallel universes, Forms, Universals, etc. They believe in things outside the system.

The two main problems are easy to describe: Naturalists have trouble explaining things using only natural entities. Non-naturalists have explained these things, but now must explain the supernatural entities, which is another huge problem.

I'm revisiting a thesis I wrote concerning a brilliant philosopher named Frank Jackson and a troubling scenario that he puts forth. I say troubling, because it causes further difficult for the Naturalists. And it's brilliant.

(A quick sidenote: Jackson is arguing against physicalism - a system that claims there are no kinds of things other than physical things.)

"Mary is confined to a black and white room, is educated through black and white books and through lectures relayed on black and white television. In this way she learns everything there is to know about the physical nature of the world. She knows all the physical facts about us and our environment, in a wide sense of 'physical' which includes everything in completed physics, chemistry and neurophysiology, and all there is to know about the causal and relational facts consequent upon all this, including of course functional roles." (Jackson 291)

Mary knows ALL physical facts about the universe. Yet she's only seen in black and white.

One day, Mary is released from her room and set free to walk down a garden path outside. For the first time in her life, she sees color. She sees a red flower - taking in for the first time the concept of Red.

Now, if physicalism is true, then Mary knew everything there is to know inside the room. But when she's let out, she learns something. There must be some knowledge beyond physical facts.

Knowing how the eye perceives light and how the brain translates this as a color is not the same as knowing what it's like to see Red.

After gaining total physical knowledge, there's still something else to learn.

This is a major problem for Naturalism.

The problem, simply stated is this:

Mary knows all physical facts.
Mary learns something new.
There must be facts that are non-physical.

Don't think too hard over the weekend.

Don't Forget your Towel

2007-10-18T10:46:00.000-04:00

If a train were out of control, speeding down the track toward five people stuck on it, and you had a lever that could send the train down another set of tracks at a junction, would you pull it?

This is the opening question of a series of questions meant to baffle our moral sensibilities. I heard it a couple of weeks ago from one of the students at the forum who was taking a medical ethics class. I've never been a huge fan of ethics - it so often devolves into the unprovable. What's more, the philosophers involved usually write with such an air of stubborn correctness that it's almost laughable that they might truly believe there was no other way to think about the issue of what Good is.

The "correct" answer for the first question is, yes. There are some hypotheticals that could draw that into question, but answering yes leads you to the next question.

What if there was a person stuck on the other set of tracks? Pulling the lever would kill that one person. So, do you leave it and let it kill five or pull it and let it kill one?

This is a bit trickier because our mind is flustered by the prospect of losing human life - albeit imaginary people. We don't want to lose anyone, especially having to make the choice on who lives and dies. Most people, I would wager, answer that they would still pull the lever because saving five is better than saving one.

Now, the last question, and whoever came up with this must have thought themselves fairly clever -

What if the situation was in a hospital? You're a doctor with five patients who need transplants or they will die. A patient comes in with compatible organs. Do you let him die to save the others?

Supposedly, this should make you rethink your answer to the second question - is going purely on numbers correct? It doesn't seem ethical to allow that person in the hospital to die to save others, why would it be ethical on the train track?

The answer is, because the hypothetical situation is a bad one.

The best hypothetical situations are simple. That's what makes the game Would You Rather so perfect. There's little room for error. A decision must be made - it can be debated forever because the premise is so airtight. The author of this particular problem, did not receive that memo. It's long. And the worst part about it, is that it sets up a false correlation.

I assume the author would argue that it doesn't, having probably tricked plenty of students into thinking with it, and I imagine no one from the medial ethics class even noted the problem since the student that re-vocalized it seemed so enthusiastic.

(On a side note, the other reason I hate stuff like this is because it's almost always said with a wink, as if the professor or whoever is delighting in tricking you. There seems to be a definite "gotcha!" moment involved that seems a little more self-serving than to be genuine. Essentially, it seems to highlight the teller more than the story. Plus, it's just intellectually lazy.)

The problem with the correlation between the train tracks and the hospital is that one is an active choice and the other is passive. In the train scenario, death is headed for both groups, but it can only hit one. In the hospital, death is only headed for one group - the group of five - the single person coming in might not die, and in fact, if certain death was facing that person, there would be no moral quandary. You'd simply do your best to save him, knowing that he'll die, and then use his organs. But, since the guy could just have a simple, treatable illness, you would have to make an active choice to kill him to get his organs.

In one, the train is the killer - you just have the terrible power of passively manipulating it. In the other, you're the killer. You have to make an active choice to sacrifice someone for others.

So it's a bad analogy. I'm not sure why stuff like that bothers me - probably because people continue to pass it down as knowledge without realizing how silly it is. In the end, it isn't even a good enough situation to cause critical thought.

In a diner at the end of the universe, however, there's a great question. From the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, Doug Adams created an incredibly great ethical question.

A vegetarian - choosing not to eat meat because of ethical objections - is eating at a diner at the end of the universe. The special for the day is pork, a very special kind of special, because its made from pigs that were biologically created to want nothing more in life than to be eaten. These pigs are born with the goal of being eaten and would desire nothing less. Since the pig wants to be eaten, the diner would be fulfilling its wishes, so the ethical qualm of eating meat is completely sidestepped.

"The Pig that Wants to be Eaten" is a great question because of its simplicity. Without set up, you could ask, 'is it alright to eat an animal that wants to be eaten?'

It's a good question.

A Transitive Property

2007-10-17T16:52:00.001-04:00

Another change of perspective.

I'm a huge fan of shifting focus in order to gain insight. Taking a different side to see if its worth taking. I think that's why I don't get up in arms when I meet someone that disagrees with me. For most people, at least people militant in their beliefs, the main question upon meeting a dissenter is how someone could possibly feel differently. As if people don't have different life experiences or biases that lead them to certain, differing opinions. That it's so unfathomable that someone would see things in a different light. Once you get over the fact that people think in different modes, things get a lot easier.

In Hollywood, there's a sage piece of advice that gets thrown around to those fortunate enough to hear it. With an environment of chaos and competition, Hollywood sells a dream of fulfilling your passion while shoving its boot into your throat. Yes, it's that bad. Sometimes.

The key to it is sheer numbers. Millions move out there specifically for one job market. Cities like this exist - Midland/Odessa, TX for oil, DC for politics, but they are slowly evaporating - perhaps even Hollywood is. The point is that not only does everyone not make it out there, the vast majority don't. It's a lottery system. A few get it all while the masses get nothing.

The advice I was so lucky to receive involves purpose. People go to LA with a purpose - to write, produce, direct, act, design art, design costumes, create musical scores, etc. Unfortunately, since no one is handed the key to the city and pointed in the direction of the nearest studio where they can claim their dream job upon moving in, people end working at Starbucks, restaurants, delivery services, as costumed heroes and princesses on Hollywood Blvd. outside Graumann's Theatre, etc. These jobs are pointless - they keep you in LA, but no where closer to your goal.

The real key is to get a job that's tangential to your ultimate goal. The golden example of entry level work for almost anyone (except actors) is as a production assistant. Long hours (12-16), low pay (free - 125 per day), and you're at the bottom of the totem pole, constantly told what to do. You aren't allowed to sit because it looks bad. You have to constantly be ready to work at a moment's notice. And you better hustle, but, like a friend of mine once said, "At least you're on the totem pole."

Here's the advice: When you have a plan A and a plan B, you should make your Plan B, your Plan A.

Switch perspectives.

If you came out to Los Angeles to write and ended up being a production assistant, you should stop making writing the focus and start making your assistant job the focus. Counter-intuitive? Perhaps. But most great advice is.

People usually get nowhere just focusing on their art. You have to be incredibly talented, tenacious and after all that, have to rely on someone else being able to recognize those traits and take a chance on you. As a low-level assistant, there is nothing to lose. After I started focusing more on my assistant work, I got more jobs, made more connections and eventually became a production coordinator. Then, I was telling assistants what to do on set. What's even more - the connections I made started becoming interested in me - why was I out there? What did I want to do? People realize that being a production assistant isn't the dream, so they ask you what yours is.

Now, after making my Plan B my Plan A, I have a few great friendships with some incredible people out in Los Angeles. Had I stayed out there, I would working just about as steadily as one can and well on my way to climbing toward my goal. See, most people don't know how to head toward their goal because they don't know how to take the first step. Exchanging for your Plan B for your Plan A is that first step.

I bring this up because someone reminded me of it yesterday and I've been thinking about whether it can be applied to relationships or other goals. I wonder this, because I claimed it could.

Let's say for instance that your Plan A is to get a girl to like you, to become her boyfriend. Would Hollywood's advice work here? Could you focus on something other than making her your girlfriend in order to make her your girlfriend? Perhaps becoming her friend or just getting to know her better?

What if your plan was to make a friend? Learn how to change a tire? Become a diplomat? Start a co-op? Become healthier?

I understand that this advice is not universal, but I'm starting to question how far flung it can go. I know it's not for everything, but I'm sure it can't just be for Hollywood. What are some situations where switching your focus could help you attain your goal in the longer run?

Also, I couldn't help but think that if B.A. Baracus of TV's "The A Team" followed this advice, he'd become A. B. Abrbcus of TV's "The B Team".

I'm really sorry.

The Road Back from Canterbury

2007-10-17T11:32:00.001-04:00

Back to Anselm.

So we left off with St. Anselm proving God's existence by showing that if God is the greatest of all things, and it's greater to exist in reality than just in the mind, then God must exist in reality outside of the mind.

It's flawless, which is probably why it's so absolutely wrong. There are scores of reasons that people come up with for why this doesn't work. I've come up with a few that I'm sure are written down somewhere by smarter men and women than I. Hopefully, you thought of a couple yourself, although there's something funny about Christians trying to prove why an argument for God is bad.

1) Man does not preempt God. This argument seems to weigh heavily on man's ability to imagine a being greater than all others. While this is possible, man's mind should not be the catalyst for the existence of God. This seems to be a fundamental flaw in trying to prove God's existence through logic in the first place. One cannot simply wish something into existence.

2) The imagination of a perfect being is not necessarily possible. Anselm believes that man can easily imagine a perfect being - yet what does this look like? To ask 100 people what a perfect being would be would garner 100 different answers. Anselm points to our ability to imagine perfection as a reason for proving God, yet it is more so the case that we know what "good" is and can therefore think in degrees of goodness. If we can imagine good, we can imagine better than good, and the best good.

3) Anselm is correct, but not about God. I actually agree with the entirety of the argument. I think the frustrating thing about it is that it's so clean that people have trouble finding flaws with it. I see no flaws for what it is - if we replace the word God with X. Anselm has proven that X exists - a being that is greater than all other beings. Most of you don't really know what I believe in or the dynamics of my belief, but they fall in line perfectly with Anselm's argument of a higher power. In the simplest terms, I'm a monist - I believe that the universe is made up of one object that is constantly reacting with itself along the lines of existing natural laws. Things unfold as the should because they must. You could also call me a pantheist - God living inside nature (not nature as in the trees and lakes, but nature as in all things). As a monist, if God exists, and there is only one object in existence, then God is that object and we are as well.

Anselm proves that there exists a thing greater than all others. But isn't that obvious? Isn't it clear that if there is a good, that there must be an exemplar of that Good? The best? The greatest? Even if it is obvious, Anselm does a great service in logically pointing out why it should be so - sometimes the most obvious things are the hardest to prove logically.

He certainly does it with a religious tilt, but his argument can be used to bolster pretty much any religion or no religion at all. At the root, it confirms that there is something in the natural world (or supernatural for Anselm) that exists that is greater than all other things. When read to the nth degree, it becomes an argument for a creative being that started the whole mess. So, perhaps the greatest flaw in Anselm's thinking is his projection of his own faith onto reason.

In your face, 11th century Archbishop and founder of scholasticism!

What a World. What a World.

2007-10-16T12:09:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I just can't figure out this thing.

It took someone asking me how my weekend was for me to realize that it was bizarre and fleeting. It was intense, and the range of emotive responses that I undertook are surprising considering that they barely crossed my mind at the time. Perhaps I blocked the weekend out because it was too much to deal with.

On Friday, I escaped work and couldn't get a hold of anyone to do anything with so I settled for an evening walk and a $50 meal at a cafe on Lincoln Park. Four-spice duck and a pan-seared white truffle followed by the best tiramisu I've ever had. It was calming, and it was the first time I'd ever spent that much without caring. I just let go. I went from a three star restaurant, clinking forks and knives against plates with lawyers and business executives all made out of ticky-tacky, to watching Knocked Up. It was a decidedly, bi-class night.

Saturday, I had lunch with Emily which was really eye-opening and fun. We ate, walked around the harbor talking and I tried to figure out how to break into really nice looking older buildings. I got home to find my friend Marco wanted to meet up with me, so I walked the mile to the metro so I could talk to Kimsey - always excellent - and four seconds after hanging out with her, some young kids ran past me. Another came on a bike and dropped it right at the metro. Another scrambled onto it and took off. Then the cop cars showed up. I was riding the escalator down when a bike-cop had a teenager on the ground putting him in handcuffs. I have no idea why.

Taking the metro to the capitol, Marco decided he wanted to eat so we walked back to, you guessed it, Eastern Market and rolled into this nice cuban place that did Ropa Vieja nearly perfectly. Marco lived in a commune at Stanford where there was a lot of comfortable nudity and socialism. Our conversation was quite different than the ones I had with Emily or Kimsey. I adapted. We then went from calm dinner, to deciding we'd start a band together, to going to a house warming party that was part suave sophisticates and part fridge-full-of-beer. I ducked out after a few free beers and headed home, finally getting to talk to my friend Dave whom I've been missing lately.

Sunday morning, I had a soccer game that turned really ugly. The ref was frantic, barely knew what she was doing, and it resulted in a lot of bad calls. Two or our players got yellow cards. We had to restrain one guy from talking to her. She exhibited that nervous stature of someone whose authority only derives from authority. The yellow cards in her back pocket and whistle were not enough to prove that she could judge a match, and it showed. I also went from cloud nine when assisting a goal to almost dying of dehydration on the field. We won - and what should have been celebratory was tarnished by anger and bitterness.

I meant to get a lot done yesterday, but instead I crashed when I got home. I woke up disoriented in the evening, decided to get groceries and spent from 10 - 11pm there. There is nothing more satisfying that getting groceries. Having a full kitchen is an incredibly relaxing feeling, and I was able to go to sleep around 2am feeling really relaxed.

This ended at 5:30am when I got a call from my ex-girlfriend informing me that her dog had broken her other front leg, and the vet is suggesting that she be put to sleep.

I'm still trying to process this.

I've been first class, low class, pleasantly surprised, exhausted, liberated, responsible, irresponsible, victorious, angry, calm, and heart broken.

While I was writing this, a coworker asked how my weekend was, and I just said, "Fine."

I'm afraid this was more journal-like than usual, but I feel like there's a lesson in here somewhere, one that doesn't need to be drawn out. One that I don't have to go into much detail beyond what's there in the history books. One that reminds me that I'm never quite going to get the hang of this thing.

Antediluvian

2007-10-11T12:24:00.000-04:00

95% of all the media you see comes from Los Angeles.

That figure is probably a complete fabrication, but it might as well be true. It's probably fairly close. Most people don't even think about the amount of media that enters their brain everyday. We're bombarded by it, but it's become so common, that we just pass by without a second glance. A typical morning for me consists of hopping in a car to drive to the metro (listening to the radio = songs, commercials, live content; or a CD = music), walking to the metro past the signs for gas stations, CVS, etc., getting on the metro (walking past advertisements, grabbing a newspaper, listening to a recording telling me the doors are closing), exiting to Farragut (past signs, more advertisements, store fronts with placards and posters) and getting to work. I don't even have a working TV set.

The thing about media is that it's not just advertisements. That voice telling me the doors are closing on the metro - someone recorded that. It's someone's voice. An actual person somewhere with hopes and dreams and thoughts and fears. This dynamic human being stood in a recording booth and repeated "Stand back the doors are closing" until they got it just right. Now her voice is heard thousands of times a day by strangers. A copy of her is out there everyday. I wonder if she ever rides the metro.

Chuck Pahlaniuk (who you'll find I refer to a lot because he makes me think) notes a fascinating phenomenon in his book Fight Club when he mentions the laugh tracks for television shows during the 1940s and 50s. Those same laugh tracks that you hear today were recorded back then. There's been little need to update them because collective laughter all sounds the same. So, get this, when you hear an audience crack up at the latest wacky thing that the lovable sitcom star does, you're listening to the laughter of dead people.

At least a decent percentage of the people who had their laughter recorded for shows back then are now deceased, and their recorded ghost lives on.

Media has a way of flattening its subject matter. The image or sound has to serve a singular purpose. Sometimes it can serve two, but anything more than that, and the simple message of the advertisement or the mass-produced signal is lost. It becomes muddled, and large groups of people can't handle that sort of exposure. The message has to be dynamic - and that means, one message, direct, loud, clear.

Today on CNN.com there is an icon for a story on the bra turning 100. A century's worth of the invention. The icon above the story is a small picture of a woman's bust in a red bra, framing her shoulders down to her xiphoid process, and nothing more. No face. No name. Just a bra.

And yet someone posed for that photo. A human being somewhere could look at that website today, point to that picture and say, "that's me". A living, breathing human being reduced to a single message, a flattened image. She's most likely a model, but she might not be. She might be a nursing student who was helping a friend build a photography portfolio, and when the image ended up on an open source market, CNN bought the rights to it for almost zero dollars and are now using it. I wonder what that woman's like. We don't often think about the people behind the images. Movie stars are not real people in our mind. They are a blank canvas for us to project our desires onto. Girls want to be swept into Brad Pitt's arms because he's attractive, and because of this, they imagine he's also a great person. Guys fantasize about being with most actresses without knowing thing one about them.

We are now becoming those celebrities. Not in the same stature, but in the same concept. For the first time ever, a girl I've never met randomly messaged me on Facebook to tell me that she dug my musical taste. She has access to what I've posted, my pictures, but I'm flat. I'm anything she wants me to be. I'm a bulletin point of a human being. My likes and dislikes are spelled out short order, my photos do little to paint a picture of my humanity, and a few short quips from strangers does nothing to explain who I am. Yet we do this every day to people - marginalize them. We read magazines, watch television, listen to the radio - never thinking about the human behind the image or the motion or the voice.

A guy putting himself through grad school for computer science smiling in a tooth paste advertisement, a young guy from Missouri who dreams of owning his own business acts as a human clothing rack for khakis in a Sears catalogue, a girl who fears that she'll end like her mother, loves horseback riding, and crossed her fingers that this will lead to something big steps up to a microphone and says, "Thank you for shopping at Walmart. This week, you'll find incredible savings on..."

I have nothing against consumer culture. In fact, I find it fascinating. It does, however, naturally rob the people involved of their humanity, turning them into a singular statement or a blank canvas. There's nothing really harmful in this - the person is still walking around being as dynamic as ever while their image floats around attracting the eye and convincing or not convincing in a split second a person to buy a particular brand of soda. There's nothing deep or tragic or joyous going on here. Just a fun exercise in humanity. The next time you see an image of someone else, wonder who they are, ask what they might be like, question their background and their hopes and dreams and desires. Remember they are real, someone with a life as interesting as yours walking around somewhere out there.

Or next time you hear a laugh track on television, remember that who you're hearing is no longer with us.

The Road to Canterbury

2007-10-09T11:10:00.000-04:00

Let's imagine, for a moment, that God doesn't exist.

It's not that difficult - just close your eyes and imagine a world a complete existence without a creative-higher power. With nothing outside what you see in your mind or (if you open your eyes) in your room. Take everything at face value. You're a grand biological specimen placed in a complex environment shaped not by a creator, but by unfolding natural laws that flow along a path.

I assume you all have the capacity for this imagination.

St. Anselm lived during a really dark time. The medieval period is one not of science or religion, but of power. For the most part, people were Neanderthals when it came to medicine, astronomy, biology, ecology, and almost every other science. They also practiced a faith dictated by political power which, as we all know, isn't really faith. People were catholic because of what state they were born in, not because they felt incredibly inclined toward that particular expression of religion.

It is a time completely foreign to us. One we have trouble even relating to. At 1,000 years ago, the era is more fiction than history for us. We relate to it as being so long ago that the people in it might as well have been characters in a story book. This is due in large part to our own ignorance of the time, the lack of prolific writing during the period, and the abundance of fictional tales of kinds and knights. When I say that Anselm became Bishop of Canterbury under King William II, I might as well say that Batman was on the throne at the time.

Isn't it interesting to think that they were closer (chronologically) to Christ? If this time was so long ago that it appears cartoonish to us, unimaginable as a reality, can you even begin to comprehend 0 AD?

But Anselm had a fascinating life - raised religiously, he was steered away from the monestary life by his tyrant of a father until he fled his home and joined the ranks of the Bec Abbey where he was soon made Prior. Traveling to England, he became a successor for Lanfranc, the Arch Bishop of Canterbury. This position is the spiritual leader of all of England. Imagine waking up in the morning and putting on your vestments to lead an entire country toward salvation.

Anselm's not necessarily famous for his life as the Archbishop, although he did some interesting things (he was one of very few who opposed the crusades). He is famous for his argument. That's right. He has his own argument named after him - the Ontological Argument for God's Existence.

Imagine, for a moment, that God doesn't exist.

But what is God? By definition (widely accepted), God is a being that nothing greater can be conceived. In short - perfection.
And, can't we imagine that? Can't we imagine a being that is the greatest being? So God exists within the imagination, within the mind.
I'll reiterate that we're assuming God does not exist in reality.
But can't we imagine God existing in reality? Can't we imagine a world in which a being greater than all others exists?
Now, if an entity exists in reality and in human understanding, isn't that being greater than one that solely exists in the mind?
Thus, an entity can be imagined that is greater than God - a logical contradiction to God's definition.
Therefore, by showing a contradiction, our original claim that God does not exist must be false.

Basically, If God is the greatest of all things, and if it is greater to exist than to only be imaginable, then God exists.

That wasn't so hard. And God's existence is proven. Why are people still fighting over this one? Still not believing?

Well, it's been a fan favorite in philosophy courses for a long time. The interesting thing about it is that the argument itself is so simple, that it's difficult to refute. There's not much to it, so there's not much to attack. But something does feel wrong about it. Call it a gut instinct, but there's just something off about it.

Think about what's wrong with Anselm's argument. Can man prove God by reasoning? By logic?

Can we prove anything by pure logic?

Alright, you can go back to believing God exists. Or whatever you believe. I imagine there will be more on Anselm later - he's been on my mind lately. Pretty impressive feat for guy who's been dead for almost 10 centuries.

Brave New World

2007-10-08T23:55:00.000-04:00

Merry Columbus Day.

On this very auspicious occasion, I don't have work, so I'm sending this from the comforts of home. But that's not where I should be today. In the spirit of discovery and the man we celebrate on this date, I wonder what great discoveries are yet to be made. Who will make them? And why am I lyng in bed instead of out there risking my life on the brink of finding a new world?

I'll see you guys out there.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bush Presidency

2007-10-05T16:01:00.000-04:00

In 1964, Stanley Kubrick released upon the world a masterpiece of cinema known as Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. This was a monumental feat considering the genius of the work itself and the climate in which it was released.

For those who haven't seen it (go see it immediately), the story picks up after a Brigadier General calls for a nuclear strike against Russia after going completely insane with Red Fever. The President and his top brass have to stop an entire bombing group from bombing targets as their actions would set off a vast nuclear war with Russia, but would trigger and automatic Doomsday device set to destroy all human life.

It's hilarious.

In the Cold War era that it was released, it's probably surprising considering the current political climate that something of this caliber would make such an impact. It's a brilliantly written and directed film starring some of the greatest acting talents (including Peter Sellers and George C. Scott). But at the core of the movie, it is an indictment of the government's flippancy and arrogance. It is a black comedy making fun of the hubris that could eventually get us all killed. It was also a statement on the attitudes toward our enemies, displaying the leaders of the country as little more than schoolboys impressed by the levels of power they'd achieved.

It makes me wonder if this type of movie could be released today. So far, nothing has - and maybe that's something that will take time. Certainly the 1960s are regarded as a hotbed of political activism and activity in general. A tense time where domestic issues (racial, etc.) were dwarfed by international relations.

Where is the satire of our current political state?

I feel like that's a necessity. To laugh at the state one is in. There has been so much vitriolic sentiment between the people and their government, the president and his party, our country and the world, both political parties, etc. that it seems like we all need to sit down and have a good laugh about it. That's what Dr. Strangelove did for the 1960s.

Of course the subject matter was a bit more momentous. The concept of mutually assured destruction - of wiping out all human life for a political point - is fairly easy to satirize. What exactly would we be making fun of if we made fun of the climate today?

It's too easy during times like these to make a piece of art and infuse it with bitterness. Instead of Stranglove - a work of inspiration by the best of the day - we have Michael Moore making fauxcumenteries with little more than tongue and cheek idiocy. Isn't there someone out there that can make a funny movie? If war has evolved, why hasn't the war-comedy?

I feel like it's our duty to constantly examine ourselves and to laugh at our situation. Indeed, if we truly examine ourselves, the correct response should usually be laughter.

Are we too afraid to look at ourselves to find humor? Too afraid of being the butt of a joke?

Or maybe the joke is just too big. At this point, I'm not sure, but I get the feeling that Dr. Strangelove would be.

The Haunting Proposition

2007-10-05T10:26:00.000-04:00

Where do we go from here?

I found out a few weeks ago that, at work, several interns working in our program were not given an exit interview upon the end of said program. That surprised me, because that interview is the only way of evaluating the program to improve it or to send the interns off with a culminating wisdom to shove into their pockets for back home.

I thought about writing on this topic last week, before the NSL Forum, but it almost seems more apt, now. The question, of course, is whether we're at where we need to be. Are we at least at where we said we would be?

A couple of years ago, there was a piece in The Rope (the Baylor satire newspaper) poking fun at the concept of weekend (or weeklong) bible camps and the concept of getting fired up for God. The cliche (which is more often true than not) is that individuals bask in the ultra-violet glow of religious fervor during camp. Everyone there is there for the same reason. The leaders are charismatic (maybe even some of you have played this role?) and the other kids seem really in tune to what's going on. The result is an explosive, intense, short term effect. Kids usually return home to settle back into their daily lives - as if the weekend had never even happened. The piece came out right after Spring Break - "On Fire for Secularism" - and gave the fake-news story of how Baylor students were returning back to campus from a secular retreat that had them totally on fire for bikinis, beer and all things secular (except, of course, those that were totally faking it.) Baylor religious leaders weren't worried though, because they recognized the pattern, and soon students would be backsliding in their secular-ness, returning to the pews to continue their Godly lives as if the retreat had never happened.

I'm going to try to do this without belittling the subject matter.

On their television show, Penn and Teller sent out a woman to a Greenpeace protest to gather signatures banning Dihydrogen Monoxide. They didn't lie - they mentioned that it was found in pesticides, that it stayed on food even after it was washed, that its rampant in our homes, a corrosive chemical. They got tons of signatures. Of course Dihydrogen Monoxide is water, h2o, and of course the point of the social experiment was that people like signing up for things, they like joining, belonging. It mattered less what the cause was and more that there was a group of people to identify with.

Now, I believe that philosophy and theology are about a million times more important than one's choice to join the green movement. The culminating ethos of life is not something to compare to a movement of people just wanting to join up. But, sometimes, isn't it? I speak from personal experience when I say that if not careful, people can join a religion for the people instead of the ethos, instead of the God they are worshiping. In fact, even Jesus can be a false idol if viewed the wrong way. You start worshiping the man instead of his teachings, instead of the initiator of those teachings. To worship Christianity instead of Christ.

The same could be true about any ethos. Why are you what you are? Is it because you firmly and passionately believe a certain way or is it because you haven't had exposure to anything else, that your friends were doing it, your parents?

It's easier to live life than it is to think about living life.

Examining takes time. Takes effort. We have to sit down and really contemplate ourselves and our motivations - our goals and successes, where we've failed. Living is easy. You just go through the motions. (Think of the commercial with all the people kicking trees and the one guy in the Wendy's red wig. [Why they kickin' trees, dog?? Why they kickin' trees?] ) They've got it made. Ignorance is bliss. Tree kicking is easier than questioning why trees exist in the first place, what our ultimate purpose is.

So in the whirlwind of this summer, of this weekend, of all the new beginnings we're embarking on, are we where we want to be - have we grown from our experiences or have we left all the good lessons of the recent past behind us? How well have you kept up with the people you loved this summer? The people you said you'd call and write to?

I know I have a lot of room for improvement. How about you?

Your Star on the Walk

2007-10-04T10:05:00.000-04:00

I spent far too long in Blockbuster last night. For some reason, my mind could not wrap around the fact that they didn't have a copy of Saving Private Ryan, so I spent the next 20 minutes wandering aimlessly around until I grabbed Dr. Strangelove and headed home.

Somewhere during that aimless wandering, I came upon a DVD copy of Dane Cook's Tourgasm - a semi-documentary about Dane Cook and three other comedians touring college campuses. The four aren't friends, really, but they develop an odd working relationship. From the episodes I saw on television, I can tell you that one comedian is singled out as sort of a loser. A wimp. Sort of a tool.

In the crazy, no-holds-barred life of Dane Cook, rock star comedian, this other guy looks like a pansy. He complains almost constantly, dramatizes the smallest of differences that he has with the other men, and succeeds in outcasting himself to become the butt of several jokes.

It got me wondering, much like in the "bad guys" thought I had a while back, what this guy thinks of the documentary version of himself.

I've seen this before in reality television. The best programs create a narrative with their footage. Often times, they will take the two or three people that make it to the end and create a rivalry between them stretching back to the first episodes. It's the fiction of reality. The art of creating lies with truth. While the footage is real, the way its edited creates a false sense of what's going on. It might tell nothing but the truth, but it's far from the whole truth.

I remember seeing this program on (probably) Channel One in middle school about documentaries. It showed two versions of a girl's life. In one version, she got up fairly early, ate a decent breakfast, behaved herself on the bus and made it to school on time to be greeted by a smiling teacher. In the second version, they used footage of her getting up late, having to skip breakfast, being loud and unruly on the bus, and trudging up the steps reluctantly to school. The point being? We can paint anyone in almost any light.

But - if we saw a documentary on ourselves, would we like what we see? Would we be the hero of our own story? Could we handle watching it? And at the end of it all, what would the final judgment be? We could try to dismiss it - afterall, anything can be said about anyone else. Like the comedian touring with Dane Cook, maybe he was just painted in a highly negative light to create drama for the show. Maybe it was even staged. But if it wasn't, even taking into consideration the editing process, he still said those things that he said. Still acted fairly lame on several occasions. If we were in his shoes, would we try to change or rationalize the footage?

I've always said that the worst thing you can do to a person is tell them what they are. It defines them. And the only freedom we have is to define who we are. But a documentary does that for us. It defines us by reflecting back our actions and words. Perhaps if we were strong enough for it, we'd want to watch all of our actions replayed to us. To give ourselves an honest critique. To work on what we didn't like seeing. If we were even braver, we'd watch with those close to us, the trusted core of people that can be harsh and cruel and honest with us. Their feedback would be even plainer. Harder to swallow, but if we truly believed in them, their advice would be right.

It's just never that easy to take, let alone do something with. We want to believe that we're perfect, that we're already done. In adolescence facilitates growth easily. We just soak up our surroundings. Growing is the norm, so we roll with it, get excited by it, get scared by it, but keep doing it. Growth seems to slow down or halt completely for adults. But it's our job to keep fighting uphill. It's more difficult to keep moving upward, but life cannot get better if we camp out on the side of the hill.

Are we brave enough to watch the movie of ourselves in order to do that?

The Chemical and Physical

2007-10-03T10:25:00.000-04:00

I've decided to make a list of my addictions.

I'm sure it must be a healthy thing to do, to point out the things in life that I cannot do without, that I feel empty without. I'm not sure what the common consensus is, but I would define an addiction as a dependence (chemical, emotional or otherwise) on an exterior force. With that in mind, here is a short list (I'm sure I'll be thinking more and adding later) with the hope that you, too, will create a similar set of bullet-points. Admitting you have a problem is the first step, after all.

1) People. The rush of endorphins I get by being around the right people is astonishing. I noticed this last night when I stayed out far later than a responsible human would simply because of the people I was with. I've also been known to stay awake indefinitely as long as I have someone to talk to. I am very rarely the person to end a conversation. I'm coming to see this as an apparent weakness, especially with the opposite sex. I've always admired the guy or girl who can have an engaging conversation and then express a cool need (with appropriate reason) to end the conversation. In the rules of attraction, as in most things in life, you should always leave someone wanting more. I feel I lack that ability. I would rather go without sleep or food than end a great conversation.

2) Writing. I've tried to not write. There have been periods in my life that I've cut it out for other things, but inevitably I keep coming back to it. It clears my demons. As a result, I've written some beautifully tragic, sometimes off-putting, things ranging in topics from the familiar to the graphic. I have an odd mix of standardized humor and gallows humor that keeps me entertaining at Thanksgiving dinner with the family and appropriately shocking around friends alike. I feel physically ill, though, without writing. When I haven't in a couple days, I can feel it. I get lethargic, cross, cynical.

3) Love. I'm an idiot. As such, my stupidity usually manifests itself in the opposite gender. I seem to have no grey period on infatuation. I dive in head over heels first into the deep end of a person and refuse to surface despite the warnings of drowning from the life guard. This ties into an addiction with people, but it's more localized. It's focused. And it's even stronger. In taking stock of my stupidity - I've moved cross-country for a girl, pick up on small nuances and play them out, spent countless amounts of money in an effort to make a relationship more romantic, read the most out of the least, failed to eat, to sleep, renounced responsibilities in order to spend more time with a girl, ad nauseum.

4) My status as an outsider. Even more than being right, I relish this status. I enjoy being the black sheep. I like being unique. My biggest fear in life is to be labeled average. To be considered just one of the norm, to be easily categorized even. To be told what you are is the worst thing that can happen to you. To have someone figure you out. Most of the people I'm drawn to, I can't figure out 100%. I'm a solid judge of the internal workings of people, but the people (like you on this list) that I like the most are somehow beyond definition. I crave disagreeing with people (usually in a calm way) to figure out where they are coming from. I've been labeled a contrarian, and I'm alright with that. That's why I also like shock value, jolting people's systems, jarring the way they normally think. Making them question how someone can think differently than they do. This is the only reason, so far, that I can come up that explains my love for hanging around Christians other than that the right types are usually incredible, dynamic, lovable people.

This list will continue to grow. I'm not sure if addiction in any sense is healthy, but we all have them.

When you get a craving for a certain type of food - say, potato chips - it's because you're body is telling you that you need something in that food - say, salt. Your body is smart. It knows what it needs. On top of our usually nourishment, we feed ourselves chemicals - our brain puts out amazing chemicals when its programmed to - when we write, spend time with people, spend time or think about someone we have romantic feelings for, or experience something that bolsters our ego. These chemicals - dangerous or not - are with us.

I'm swimming in them.

I'm Not There

2007-10-02T11:42:00.000-04:00

The thing about Bob Dylan is that he's more a poet than a singer. Any average music fan can tell you that. The great thing about Dylan, and the thing I just realized yesterday, is that his particular style of music is filled with what I might call (if you'll let me) melancholic joy. His words and guitar lines possess such emotional range that they can facilitate almost any feeling a person has. The same song can be used to bolster the good feelings of a road trip to the beach, to relax someone after a long day at work, to spark nostalgic stories after the funeral of a friend lost too soon, to cause a married couple to dance in public for the first time in years.

Because his music covers both major emotional bases at the same time, his songs are the perfect backdrop for nearly every occasion. You probably won't be spinning Blonde on Blonde at a rave, but for times alone and times with friends, its flawless.

Most of you know that I go through phases of listening to only one band. I listened to Ted Leo for three weeks, watched Ben Folds Five's Sessions at 34th Street DVD every morning before I went to school my senior year of high school, and listened to John Neunswander almost religiously this entire summer. I usually hop around an entire catalogue, but for some reason I've been focused solely on Dylan's version of Catch the Wind. It's about someone longing to celebrate the joy of life and be comforted during the pain of it by someone else. This dream, however, is futile.

The duality theme is present in most of the song (originally written by this Scot named Donovan). Celebration and comfort are one thing. The singed fluctuates between praising his love and admitting its impossibility - with each stanza, no matter what task he sets out of his love, ending in the inevitable, "Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind". Love replaces something undesirable for something longed for - the "chilly hours and minutes of uncertainty" are cast away by "the warm hold of your loving mind"; the lover's smile takes the place of the sun after it sets; when "rain [hangs] the leaves with tears" the presence of his love casts aside the depression.

Maybe there are a few things in my life that I feel that way about. The thing about Dylan is, it's hard to figure out why you're listening to him - is it because you're reinforcing the blues, need something to slyly draw a grin on your face or need a backdrop for taking that deep breath of life that applauds your humanity? Maybe (wait for it) it's all three?

With a dual nature and an incredible capacity for emotional depth, I wonder if it's not such a bad thing to aspire to be a Bob Dylan tune. To be a friend that's wanted when good times are being shared or when losses are being mourned or when the day only requires a porch swing and a glass of sweet tea to be a holiday. To be a friend for all seasons. To be called upon when someone wants to go bowling or needs to cry on a shoulder. To get hammered with or discuss life's mystery with (although both can happen at the same time). To need advice and to give it. To give joy and to take it. If a Dylan song is the perfect accompaniment to any occasion, the perfect background sound for times happy or sad, shouldn't we try to be the best possible foreground?

The last message, I think, is that even while hopeless, the singer takes pleasure in his love. He revels in it. Even if what we want is constantly flying off down the road with the wind, we should still try to catch it. Strive to do the impossible. The wind may be faster, but sometimes its the chase that matters.

I'll let you know when I catch it.

The Carpet Baggers

2007-10-01T10:52:00.001-04:00

I'm not a fan of disappointing the nice lady on the telephone.

What's more, I'm realizing that a lot of my definition of myself comes from not letting people down. I can think of little I hate more than having to apologize - not for a mistake or indiscretion - but for not being able to come through on something that I've promised I could. Letting people down. I think most of us hate doing it. It means you've come up short on something, failed, and even though people are understanding, you can tell they're displaced by your faults.

What's worse is when it's something that's owed to them, and you're just the messenger.

I'm currently juggling between a very nice woman (who is trying to appease her boss) and my boss. The details are meaningless, but the overall picture is one of me trying to stay afloat while apologizing sincerely for something that isn't my fault. It's no one's fault really, unless you mean ours. And yet the people that will pay the price are the kind-sounding woman on the other end of the phone and her boss. In the end, I'm hoping to reach a compromise that will be agreeable to everyone, but that means little for the initial damage. Whether I like it or not, I've let these people down. I've shown a tragic vulnerability.

How many times have you failed at a promise? Not refusing to do it, not going back on it, not breaking it. Simply being unable to do what you thought you could? Being shown your limitations through the lens of a spotlight shining on you alone on a stage with an entire audience of yourself packed into the auditorium? Those glaring moments of inequity.

I hope they are rare. Few and far between. But still, they're unavoidable. When the time comes for you to fail, the key is to take it on the chin. Be true to yourself and stay humble. Realize your limitations for what they really are - just another sign that you're alive and doing fine. That you're human.

So We Think that We're Important, and We Think that We Make Sense

2007-09-28T15:08:00.001-04:00

All of our representatives are currently busy. Please hold for the next available representative.

We spend so much of our time waiting. Yesterday, I stood in a line for almost an hour at the DMV only to be told that I was one form shy of getting what I needed. It would have been a complete waste of time if I hadn't brought a book to read.

It's frustrating, though. I once saw film footage of the 405 in Los Angeles - probably the busiest freeway in the country. The local government is debating whether to turn the 8-lane highway into a 16-lane highway by building another highway on top of it. Double-decking. It seems like the most dangerous plan of all time.

The great thing about it this film footage of the 405 shows it in the morning - packed to the gills - and in the time just before noon - completely barren. We are all, essentially, trying to get to the same place at the same time. Or at least headed in the same direction all at once.

I always knew I was made for a big city. Growing up in a town of 300,000, I was one of the few people who recognized it as a small town. Now, living in a decently sized place, I find myself equally exhilarated and exhausted by the urban problem of population. This wolf in sheep's clothing offers incredible social opportunities, a sprawling music scene, life of every walk - anything you could really want at fingertip's reach. It also offers the crowded metro system, the red tape of dealing with so many with so few resources, and, of course, our friend the one-hour wait at the DMV.

The plan is evolving into one of becoming decently wealthy and moving to the outskirts of some far off place. Central Texas would be great. I've always liked the hill country. I imagine I'll become a corn farmer in my spare time. I'll spend the rest of it with my loved ones. Visitors will come and go as they please, spending the night or the month in my spare rooms. My main interests will be whittling, filling my children's heads with nonsense, and writing haiku about the animals that stop by to graze in my front yard.

Every now and again I'll foray into the city to remember what life was like. To enjoy the comforts of the busker playing saxophone on the street corner, to dive headfirst into a pint at the local hipster bar, to seek refuge from all of my serenity.

Maybe I'll even wait in a line to see what all the fuss is about.

I can't wait to be an old, farmhand by age thirty. I guess it's the only thing I am willing to wait for though. Call me impatient, but the way our large lives are structured involves far too much inactivity - waiting in long lines for the simplest of tasks; the bank, the grocery store, the metro station. The biggest problem? All that waiting makes us hurry during the parts of life we should be slowing down for.

So what are you waiting for?

The Pitch

2007-09-28T10:51:00.000-04:00

So it's as simple as it could be.

Since high school I've been able to play right wing defense on a soccer team with fair capability. I have the speed there when I need it, the attack, and the wisdom to simply contain when that's all that's needed. Basically, I'm decent. Passable.

Last night, with a team short on players, under the bright lights of the George Mason High School of Falls Church, VA, I was told to play left back instead of right.

My league is a co-ed one, decently competitive, but mostly just fun. With one player short, we were actually fairing pretty well, and the most surprising thing was - I play better left side than I do right. I had just never tried it before.

You'd be surprised how simple that switch can be. When I took my place on the field, there was no awkwardness. I had a different view, but I ended up liking it better. I was able to use my body a lot better based on the angles of attack that their offense was using. It was a great feeling. I played better than I ever have.

Sometimes that's all it takes.

We are dead set in our ways most of the time. We're stubborn. We assume our point of view is correct, so why should there be room to argue? Then, by a fluke chance you get placed on the other side of the field and like it better.

A writer that I know once told me that he would often take a side of an issue that opposed his viewpoint and defend it just to test his writing skills. I have also taken up that mantle, arguing when I can for something I don't believe in just to give myself the proper perspective - one of 360 degrees.

We won our game last night. We communicated well with each other and benefited from it. Where the extended metaphor ends, though, is that there are not just two sides to beliefs or opinions like there are on the filed. That would be too easy to say, too cliched. A debate isn't as easy as one side vs. the other. In most things, there are multiple viewpoints that we have to seek out, that we have to be way of, that we should defend from time to time for no other reason than to imbue a modicum of wisdom into our normally stubborn minds.

What could you switch sides on? It's not necessary that you stay there permanently, but last night I got the chance to have a different perspective, and I found that the grass was greener.

For those worried about me resting on my laurels about last night's win, I spent the entire morning at the DC DMV - which can dampen anyone's spirits. I'm back down to humble.

Personal Capital

2007-09-27T09:50:00.000-04:00

A recent occurrence has had me thinking about integrity. Without going into much detail, I'll say that out of all the things in the professional (and the personal world, too) world, the one thing that counts the most is something loosely tied to how others view you.

I would never say that integrity is how others see you. Integrity is first how you see yourself. It's something you project onto others' opinion of you. You, first and foremost are in control of your integrity. You are decidedly not in control, for the most part, of how other people see you. People come with their own hang ups, pre-made, handled with care, and should they decide to project them on you, there's not much you can do besides the usual humanity that is out of reach for most.

Integrity on the other hand is a much stricter code. Ben Franklin could be called an authority on the subject, writing in his autobiography about only spending what you need; not hanging out in the bars with women of ill-repute; being genuinely kind to others. Your reputation should walk ahead of you. People should meet it before they meet you. Depending on what career you choose, your integrity may be all you have on which to stand.

And yet, our personal and professional integrity are not things we often think about or take stock of. Where do you stand? Is integrity important in your job? Dealing with money all day, I only have my integrity and my left-brain to prove myself with. If I did something questionable, my entire position would be questioned. Even the act of being open to question-ability (even if you're innocent) is sometimes enough to sink integrity. And what about with your friends? Are you beyond repute with them?

Why don't we think about this more often? For something so important to our lives, why do we not sit down every week and rethink our activities to see if they've built up or torn down our stock and integrity? Perhaps it's so important that we're afraid to take stock of it (like my bank account). Maybe we refuse to believe in its importance. Peradventure, we simply forget.

(Sorry about using 'peradventure'. I ran out of synonyms for 'maybe'. Ah, who am I kidding? I wanted to use 'peradventure' all along.)

The key is to live a life as cleanly as possible. To be above reproach. To be looked upon by our projection of ourself, for when we project our own image, there is less room for others to fill us up with their own. It solves the problem of having others' opinions of us be suspect, and leaves us less vulnerable to others influencing us with ease on how to be human.

The Victory March

2007-09-25T17:30:00.000-04:00

You should treat this life like it's the only one you have. A fairly common critique of religion (and sorry if I'm on a religious tip lately) is that the ease of an afterlife calms the ability to live in the present. Augustine wrote to admonish Christians to act as ambassadors from Heaven - their place on Earth simply being a vacation. To act as a tourist in this life. Muslim jihadists are quick to suicide because it will usher them away from this life and onto the next. Even Buddhist monks strive to reach enlightenment - a realm far beyond this one.

It would seem as though religionists are obsessed with things out of this world. It doesn't feel that way most of the time, though, does it? It feels like you're planted firmly here on the planet.

After a victory, Roman generals would parade the streets, but they always had a slave march next to them, whispering in their ear above the crowd, "Memento Mori". Remember that you're mortal. Remember that even though you are the winner today, tomorrow is a new day. This is probably the darker side of Carpe Diem. Instead of remembering how great today is, it points out that you might not get a tomorrow.

And, Augustine be damned, I'm not sure that living for the moment doesn't fall in line with Theology. "Eat, Drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die!" might be a Dave Matthews Band lyric, but it's also from Isaiah (22:13 for sticklers).

I took some allergy medication near the end of work yesterday (only I would have a bad reaction to some sushi served at an event on Chinese Food Safety), and it made me so drowsy that I ended up going home and crashing immediately. I woke up in the middle of the night only to go back to sleep.

In the morning, I wondered if I continued on that path, then I would end up working or sleeping at any one point in my day. Only two activities. One soulless, the other unconscious.

Yesterday was very much a wasted day, and I should only be getting around 26,280 of them. Every one of them should count. Taking stock at the end of the day should be about how alive you are. I failed at being alive yesterday. Yes - it is possible to fail at life. It doesn't have to be exciting, but you still have to live.

Respice post te! Hominem te esse memento!

I love dead languages.

Solve for X

2007-09-24T15:21:00.001-04:00

Let's suppose for a second that God exists. I'm willing to play that game. It's, afterall, a fun one. Let's work under the assumption that he,she,it,X exists.

Now that we have that out of the way - it is my firm belief that the only way to know God is not by reveling in His/Hers/Its/X's triumphs. I believe that the only way to know God is to have your heart be broken by the things that break God's heart.

It's a concept attributed to Bob Pierce. I don't agree with a lot of what his organization does, but I do agree with him on the theological level. I've spoken about suffering defining who we are before and questioned why it's given such a premium spot in our development. I think, concerning group dynamics, the answer is simple.

Those that want to be there to celebrate fail to see something those that want to be there to mourn do.

On any team, there are those who wear the bright smiles of success, that seem to appear only for the trophy ceremony or when the cameras turn on for an interview. Are they still around, making pensive faces on the bench when the team is behind? Are they doing the hard work of rebuilding during a tough season? In a group dynamic, suffering matters because it defines character. It's easy to win. It's much, much harder to lose.

And what if the ultimate what as stake?

Do you have the strength of character to not only love your creator, but to empathize with Him? It's odd to think of an omnipotent, omniscient being as needing our empathizing, but I offer an easy illustration.

Intelligence is a curse. You don't even need to look beyond Genesis if you'd like scriptural back up. Ignorance is where it's at. Learning only makes us open our eyes to social injustice, man-made horror, sickness, disease, poverty, famine. When we were younger, everything was Golden. So if increasing knowledge increases sadness, shouldn't a being with complete knowledge have complete sadness?

Plus, God has exhibited other emotions in the past (if we're staying Biblical here) - anger, jealousy, and certainly love.

As a people we pray constantly to God for Him to comfort us. When was the last time you comforted God? Wouldn't it be comforting to Him to see your heart break at the things that break his heart? And to act on it?

How can you cheer God up today?

Alright friends, back to assuming God doesn't exist. That can be a pretty fun game, too.

A Familiar Theme

2007-09-24T10:29:00.000-04:00

I tried to get that thought about the empty cup out of my system over the weekend, but I'm still stuck on it today.

I have to admit that I was really surprised by Hunter's response. Talk about walking into something with my cup half-full - I did not at all expect it. However, I'd like to think that even during the times when I'm guilty of having a full cup, if someone comes along with something better to fill it with, I have no remorse about splashing the current contents out on the side of the road.

And then I read Lewis.

At the recommendation of one of my wiser friends, I read C.S. Lewis's Obstinancy of Belief (a free online version can be found here through the Free Republic website). After all that pondering over whether doubt can be healthy part of faith, Lewis - amongst other things - mucks it all up.

I'll gladly send out my two-pager on the essay (I just can't escape doing things the way I did in undergrad) to anyone that wants it, although you should all definitely read it. One of the aspects of belief, though, for Lewis involves that the question already be answered. The essay deals primarily with the way a scientist views his craft and the way a Christian both 1) ascends to belief and 2) carries out that belief in the face of possible contradictions.

Lewis more than admits that a crucial difference between the modes of thought are that, for the Christian, the question of God's existence is already answered. To clarify, he notes that God's existence is not so much a matter of knowledge (as the term "belief" does not deal with knowledge) but that Christianity uses the belief in God as a starting point. I think to question that belief is to start from somewhere else.

I'm still not sure as to whether this deals with doubt in anyway. It seems to me that even the most steadfast in belief - let's take my own for example - can doubt the very premise of their belief-structure. Don't worry - I usually, quickly come to my senses.

I'm thinking more and more that even the sage author of the Tao Te King - where the Empty Cup comes from - had to have at least a little something in his cup. It's no way to live life where every morning you wake up a clean slate, ready to be filled by the new knowledge of the day. Basically, I feel like you can not continue to be in doubt of certain things in your life.

Then again, perhaps the cup only applies to knowledge, where certain questions in life only apply to belief. The difference between the two, if not obvious, is stamped out in that Lewis piece.

I'll be the first to admit that this life question has me puzzled and that perhaps the Agnostic is the only one with a truly empty cup - but what is that to live your life?

Lao Tzu

2007-09-19T17:05:00.000-04:00

Can you have faith and still doubt?

After a pretty severe discussion last night with an atheist friend of mine, I started thinking about the concept of the empty cup. In Eastern philosophy, the empty cup is how you must approach all things before you can become enlightened. It makes a lot of practical sense. You cannot come into the room to learn with your cup already full, for to fill it, it must be empty. My friend's cup seemed decidedly full before we began talking.

I'm a natural skeptic. I like to keep things in focus long enough to make a tentative decision on them. In the end, the things I cannot know, I admit to, and the things I can, I strive for a deeper knowledge of. This leaves me with good ideas, but not ones etched in stone. So of course for last night's discussion, I played devil's advocate as the Christian apologetist (never thought I'd combine those two things).

Some of you know that I've done it before, successfully. Last night, I wouldn't consider a triumph. I took the side of religion in order to facilitate questions that never came. It was absurd for God to exist. It was laughable that people would believe in something. It was cruel that religion had ruled with such an iron fist. At any rate, her mind was made up on the subject.

Most notably, she had a problem with Evil (a pretty standard complaint) and she felt that if something was unprovable and undisprovable, then it must not exist. I'll admit I got frustrated.

But I was more frustrated that someone wouldn't come into a conversation as an empty cup.

The more I think about it though, the more I feel like its a luxury only afforded to the atheist. Some don't use it, which is sad, but others, I feel, don't even have the choice. Can you walk into an argument openly questioning the existence of God and still have faith in Him? Can you call yourself a person of faith and still ask that fundamental question alone in your room? In short, can you not completely be sold on His existence and still believe in Him?

I've said before that one of my biggest complaints with religiosity is its closed mindedness. No matter how free some thinkers are, they are still bound to be closed on that one fundamental. Most Christians that I've spoken with won't even have a discussion on whether God exists or not. He does. End of story. Next question. When you start from that base, you begin the discussion with your cup at least partially full.

I find this odd, especially considering that faith is not a question of the Mind but of the Heart. So is it possible to have your heart made up on something, and your mind not? Are Faith and Doubt mutually exclusive?

The crux of the question is whether someone can openly say, "I believe in a higher power, but sometimes I don't know if that belief is correct." Of course we never know if our belief is correct, but I've yet to hear a Christian profess this. I feel like this could be due, in part, to a fear of the abyss. Staring into the chasm of doubt, opening up a Pandora's box of questioning God's existence is something that the believer might not come back from. I certainly haven't. At least not yet.

So I went to bat for Christianity last night. I swung out considering the goal, but as always, looking at things from a separate perspective gave me insight. I'm wondering if a Christian arguing for Atheism could benefit in the same way. Perhaps it would strengthen that belief in earnest. Maybe it would wash off the dust of the soul. Maybe it could make them just uncomfortable enough to really feel the joys of their ethos again.

It is my sincere hope that you approach today with an empty cup (and everyday, frankly) ready to be filled. Carrying a full cup makes the walk harder, and you inevitably end up spilling it on others who may or may not have a Tide To Go Pen handy. Before bed, take a look down, and you'll notice that your cup probably filled to the brim. There's not left at that point but to drink it down, breathe it in before a good night's sleep and leave it empty for the next day.

Here in Status Symbol Land

2007-09-19T14:13:00.000-04:00

We tend to bow down to a lot of people.

With the hustle and bustle of having an event, we put on our best faces - bright smiles, warm welcomes, polite vestiges invented ages before our grand-parents were born. We go out of our way to become someone else in front of someone we think is important.

When I was working for the Oscars, we were told not to make eye contact with any celebrities if we crossed paths. It made me wonder, would it make the situation more awkward to walk normally - possibly making eye contact - or to avert my eyes to the ground if I turned a corner and saw Anne Hathaway walking toward me? I didn't get a chance to test this hypothesis (I passed Anne Hathaway and made eye contact but didn't get a chance to replicate the scenario in which I avert my eyes as scientific testing would necessitate). Even without testing, though, I'm pretty sure that treating people normally is, well, normal.

I think I'm stuck in the middle on this one. It seems like their are justifiable cases where we should hold people in reverence. Other times, I revert back to my high school days when I refused to call my Vice Principal, "Dr. Whateverhernamewas" because I felt that titles created inequality. I'm not as hippie-esque about titles these days, but I still feel the same way about the paths in life we take that lead us there.

My thought back then was always a question of why certain life paths should grant us sobriquets in front of our names. Why does going to a higher education institution for a few more years give us a title? I know the mechanics behind it - because that's how academics have always worked - but I question the true value of it. The root of this very small problem is in expertise. We seem to allot expertise to a select few with noticeable titles while ignoring the housewife who might as well have a PhD in juggling budgets, making dinners, and running the household - the janitor who might as well have a PhD in cleaning (and probably humility) - and countless others who are experts at what they do without being granted a swell set of letters next to their surname.

My two questions stem from this, sort of, at least in the way that my thoughts usually work. Should we be bowing down to certain people in life? And if so, what is the proper way to do this?

We bow down to people because we want to be them or we want something they can give us (or something we delude ourselves into thinking they can give us). That Hollywood director that could read our script if we just sucked up enough; that law school professor that could pass us if we brown nosed; the mentor whose attention we crave like the sun. We want to become them someday, and we want to remain in the favor in case they are feeling generous one day. I've definitely fawned all over some people. Afterward, it felt disgusting, but I can't quit doing it. Part of me believes that they deserve this reverence - so why do I feel so guilty for doing it?

One group of people that I find myself doing this to on occasion - that doesn't actually have any celebrity status: girls that I like. It's not so much that I become a big dope in front of them, but I definitely find myself treating them differently. They have something that I want, and instead of acting like a calm, rational human being, I let my emotions take over the helm for a bit. This has mixed results.

I've watched girls do it to guys as well. For some reason, I'm fairly in the dark when girls are acting that way toward me, though.

Let's assume for a second, that certain people do deserve to be held in reverence. How do we do that? I feel like the normal sort of ass kissing that is done feels disgusting because it's incorrect. The fact that most people do it lead me to believe that it's the easy route, the uncreative way of handling the situation. At the end of the day, are we really holding someone in reverence if we are acting false to them? If we put up a mask, a smiling face to handle their needs? Why don't we feel that these people deserve our true selves? Shouldn't we honor them with who we are?

In every relationship, there are two people at fault for mistakes. It would be easy to watch people tripping over themselves to be sugary while getting Mr. Important's third cup of coffee and blame Mr. Important. He must be a real piece of work to want to be waited on hand and foot. On the other hand (and foot) there's the obsequious servant that allows this person to act that way. (The argument there is that if one person refuses his demands, there will be a thousand other applications waiting for the job. The myth, of course, is that holding the job is actually a gateway into somewhere important. Most of the times, you're better off trying to make real opportunities happen. Since when did getting someone coffee teach you how to do with greater skill what you're passionate about?)

I guess in the end, I'm unsure where to draw the line on being impressed by people. For the most part, I feel like holding people in high regard isn't a bad thing. Unless it is. Perhaps there are simply lines of demarcation that I'm missing. Degrees to which something is acceptable or not. The only thing I know, is that if I get my PhD, you can all still just call me Scott.

Or Dr. Awesome.

Whichever you prefer.

To the Shores of Tripoli

2007-09-18T11:45:00.001-04:00

There is a battle of intelligence. It has and will be waged in the social circles, and its soldiers will take refuge in the halls of academia and the isolation of the unknown. We are all trained to do what we must do.

I'm sure it's pretty obvious the distinction. This revolution of science and enlightenment has been growing for so long that some of its followers believe its just always been around. And it makes sense. With such an upsurge in popularity, it's easy to accept its credibility without any other real test. It's also easy to see how those who don't follow it would be labeled 'stupid' or 'backward' or (my favorite English word) 'antediluvian'.

It is a war between Free thinkers and those Shackled by an ethos. Science sets us free. Religion makes us slaves. There's been a steady fine line between these concepts of freedom for quite some time. This whole argument comes with a sort of haughtiness about it - an assumption that to be religious, one must be incredibly stupid. Too stupid to listen to reason. So blindly naive.

This is true. There is a certain foolishness in religion. But I would think that followers would relish that foolishness - it's a unique attribute to life, and it certainly makes it more colorful. I think the fault of the fight lies with those religious people who don't know how to respond to the allegations. Instead of being comfortable in their own foolishness, they get defensive and make the mistake of trying to play "science" in order to receive credibility. Intelligent design (and any other programs like it) actually weaken the religious argument by weakening the role of faith. The only response to science's onslaught for the religious person should be, "Isn't it a lovely day? I think I'll go for a walk."

But a defense mechanism kicks in - perhaps to prove their faith to themselves a bit? - and the argument is already lost.

I think about soldiers.

There are people who would say that soldiers are like robots, obeying blindly the orders of someone higher up. This is not a flattering view - it's meant to dehumanize, make them out to be stupid, to create automatons from them. I think they are just efficient human beings. We are all trained to do what we must do.

Soldiers are not unthinking. They've already done the thinking so that when the time comes for quick action, they can handle it. Some might argue that the thinking has been done for them, but not so much more so than any other person's thinking is handled for them somewhere in life. Their friends. Trends. Television. Books. Our thinking is so collective, that it's hard to separate anyone, really, from robots.

But we don't live that way. The day to day is a beautiful portrait of humanity. We are all still soldiers, but the fight is one that is going on outside of us if we think about it the right way. When the fight comes to our doorsteps, we can get on the defensive or deny completely to fight. Mental pacifism wins the day. In not joining in on a meaningless debate - one of whether religion is foolish - we are free to explore other rich, dynamic debates. Or take a nice long nap, secure in our own beliefs.

After all, isn't alright not to fight sometimes? To leave yourself out of it? How many times have you been egged on to fight only to realize that its a waste of your time? Your intellect?

Those who would draw you into the trap of this type of argument are probably so insecure in their own position that any critical view of it would be devastating. Wouldn't it be better not to ruin their view for them? To retreat into the isolation of the unknown and let them scurry back to the halls of academia?

Waving the white flag, I think I'll try to live somewhere in the middle.

The Devil May Care

2007-09-17T17:04:00.000-04:00

The people in your life will never be completely gone. We live in stages, and especially in the newer form of school-aged upbringing, we follow a path that leads us directly into the arms of new people every few years. From elementary school (5 years) through middle school (3 years) to high school (4 years) - this is by my South Texas model - we have a fair chance of meeting new friends every year. Odds are, and this is just personal anecdotes speaking, we won't really make many new friends. We cling tightly to those that we've adhered to since the beginning.

And at that time in life, making friends seems natural. It's a matter of which Saturday Morning cartoon you like the best and whether you're going to go swing or play freeze tag at recess. Once those friendships are in place, there's a solid chance that you will - for school districting purposes - be with those same friends (for better or worse) through your graduation.

This is when the upheaval commences.

After a lifetime of connecting to the same people, we have to leave them. We move off, chart new territory, and make new friends through our dorm levels, classes, frats, sororities, chess club meetings and facebook. You get four years. Five if you're really good at it. Then, you're thrown out again into a different environment to try to make it.

All the while, you have to work hard to make the relationships stick. Time and distance wreak havoc on friendships, and modern technology is a double-edged sword of ease and laziness. But sometimes, life throws you a curveball.

Sometimes someone you went to elementary school ends up moving to your town and getting a job in your company or a guy you barely talked to in middle school met a mutual college friend of yours and wanted to catch up after all these years. Sometimes an old flame gets relit. Enemies can become friends. Old friends can become enemies.

We are in constant flux in relationships. The changes are small, but they can explode, and turn our social life around. And without the social vomit of middle school and high school - those petty people that used to sneer at you might have turned into decent human adults, ready to form a strong relationship with you.

You can never count people out. You live long enough, and people you've left behind come sailing back through. Maybe you've been one of those that randomly sailed through yourself.

When they do come back into your life, try to remember their names.

Or just Big Time them.

Time On

2007-09-14T13:35:00.000-04:00

Vacations might as well be the enemy.

If you really think about a vacation, it's a terrible thing. It's something we relish, worship, long for. This small amount of time that get to have away from our lives and either enjoy it idly or actively. There are two types of vacationers. Those that plan to go somewhere and do something - people with a schedule and a list of to-dos. And those that want to do nothing at all. They may go somewhere, but they'll be napping under an umbrella somewhere, thank you very much. The two types have one thing in common, though.

They're both being duped.

Vacations shouldn't be longed-for. They should hated and despised for what they really are - medicine for the disease of life. Instead of treating the virus, we seek to numb our minds from it, taking a week off like we'd take any other pill that we hope can cure whatever ails us. The problem is that it won't. There is no cure for a bad life except to cut out the bad parts. You can take this morally (the bad life being the opposite of the goal of ethics) or humanely (the bad life is the torture of the 9-5 world and must be ended).

The vacation gives us just enough adventure, that we don't long for it in our daily lives. Instead of worshiping at the altar of adventure (just using a metaphor, not blaspheming) we lay down offerings to the god of the three-day weekend. In an ideal world, every day would be the weekend.

Of course this isn't feasible for a society to run itself. We need workers. Cogs. But who says you have to be one of them? Does it seem unfair to everyone else? Sure, but they could free themselves, too, if they wanted to. It just takes a little courage.

Are you tired after the day in that unfulfilled sort of way? There's nothing wrong with a 9-5 office job if it's your passion. I basically solve puzzles all day - and often I come home exhausted from accomplishment. I feel a sense of intellectual pride. My frustration is a healthy one and my triumph is hard-fought and appreciated. If you come home exhausted, but unfulfilled, what was it worth? I'm talking about that feeling you get after a serious workout or after finishing a 30-page exegeses on Augustine's Call for Chastity. You're sweating, but you've won. That ache in your muscles tells you you've done something greater, pushed yourself beyond a limit. You joke that you'll never "do that again!", but you will. Because it feels great to feel that exhaustion.

If your exhaustion is just enough to carry you to the sofa to watch reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond (and who doesn't?), you're doing something wrong. And I'd wager my salary that you long achingly for that vacation time.

If you're doing it right, you shouldn't have to have a vacation. Your exhaustion should energize you. It's a shame at how difficult living that life can be - obviously money is the root of the problem - but we should be hunting that life down with full force. Never complacent. Never resting until we can move on to doing what we are passionate about. I mean, what real excuse do we have for not doing what we love? If that's the big cosmic joke, if that's the question that they ask at the end of life - Why didn't you do what you loved? - what would your answer be? Would any answer suffice?

I would hope not. Enjoy your three-day weekend.

In With the Old

2007-09-13T16:17:00.001-04:00

You can't judge a book by it's cover.
That's putting the cart before the horse.
One in the hand is worth two in the bush.

We're undergoing a silent crisis of culture. This viral attack is brought about mostly by laziness and these common phrases. They are automated responses to complex situations - and they make sense. They are so prevalent in our lingua franca that I've heard at least one of them every day for the entire week. I even heard the one about books and their covers three times since Sunday. So if they do their job so well that they've become cliche, what's the problem?

We need new ones.

These old ones are so boring and trite. And besides, why shouldn't we be making our own aphorisms? Why shouldn't we cast aside the sayings of old in place of fresher sounding tidbits of wisdom? I'd be willing to bet that the people who originally started spreading these saying are all dead and buried, so I doubt they will care much if we replace their legacy.

The challenge, as I see it, is that 1) the sayings are so common and B) they work so well. They explain things so succinctly, and maybe that's the sickening part about them. I have an aversion to letting ancient, dead people tell me how to live my life. Maybe I can judge a book by its cover, and the old farts who first enlisted this sage catch-phrase were too dull to. Maybe we've risen above them.

But even if we haven't, we should reword them in our image. Recast the die. We shouldn't just sit back complacent and say, "Well that aphorism issue's been taken care of. Who wants ice cream?" Besides, we can always get ice cream after we come up with new phrases.

Here are some possible replacements:

You can't judge a movie by its trailer.
If you stereotype things, you're an idiot.
You can't make a value-assessment concerning a collection of words based solely upon the frontal decorations of their encasement.

Are these any good? Of course not. But they are a start. The point is that we need to shuffle off the cobwebs of the past (when's the last time you saw a ton of horse-drawn carts crowing the streets?). We shouldn't sit idly by and allow our ancestors to speak for us - or even to phrase thoughts that we agree with for us. Besides, some of these sayings aren't even true (see: An apple a day keeps the doctor away. It doesn't. Trust me.)

We need new lessons for our time, and new dressings for the old ones. We need phrases that will pertain to us in a dynamic, significant way. Imagine a few generations from now when a father tells a son, "Aren't you putting the cart before the horse?" and the son replies, "Dad, what the hell is a cart?" This is an inevitability. There may even come a day when children have to be told what horses were. The future is not static, after all.

My first thought email was one line: Life is not something to be taken lightly.

I feel like that might be a good candidate for a new aphorism. I imagine the day, several years from now, when a daughter approaches here mother while she's reprogramming the dish-washer-robot to speed dry, and she'll say, "Mother, I feel like sitting around all day inside instead of going out to play with my friends," and the mother will say, "Why Andromeda-5, you should take every opportunity to have an adventure. Life isn't something to be taken lightly, you know."

I also imagine that the little girl will mouth the last few words of the statement, having heard it so many times. Plus, Andromeda-5 is sort of a brat, I bet.

Creaking Knees

2007-09-13T11:48:00.001-04:00

It's something to worry about for the rest of your life.

Every year beyond, say, 20, you'll see it. You'll lost a little bit more hair, your metabolism will slow down without telling you, you'll start getting that heart burn (or what you'd hope is just heart burn) more frequently. It's enough to make you lose your mind - which will, on its own, happen eventually.

Everything we do medically is a failure. Nothing can really save us biologically. But the one prospect even more feared than death is getting old. We fear it, misunderstand it, needlessly worry about slipping down the slick hill of time unable to pull ourselves back up out of the mire.

This is, of course, the doomsday version.

Most people claim that the Golden Years are their best. They feel more independent, able to stable, and, thus, more free to live as they would choose. Of course this isn't the picture for everyone, but retirement is what it's supposed to be - you're suddenly free of the responsibilities of life, you hopefully have a decent cash flow, and you're armed with the knowledge and will to go out and truly live.

I see growing old as becoming more and more comfortable with being a child.

We are all, behind the ties and dress skirts, big children. We never escape that segment of our lives simply because its what we remember as the best. We start out with it. We have the most fun possible, and then school starts. Who wouldn't want to hold on to at least the tiniest piece of that lifestyle?

But as we grow older, most of us flip a switch and go from holding on to that small piece, to denying it - to ridiculing the idea of it, to claiming that we would never hold dear such an atrocity. We're more dignified than all that.

For the most part though, we're not. I think it goes back to what I was saying about being alone. When you're all alone - with no audience - don't you feel just a few years younger? If you haven't experienced this phenomenon already, I want you to really think about it the next time you get more than an hour all alone. With the house/apartment empty, no one coming home for hours, aren't you more willing to act like a child? Don't you feel like you've shed a few cumbersome years off your life?

And we do. Strip away the suit and tie, the 9 to 6 job, the law school, the sorority, the pearl necklace, the world traveling, the job hunting - and we end up alone in our rooms ready to hop in our PJs and stay up later than we should to watch SNL. We sing out loud. We dance around to bad 80s music. And you think you're ever going to get more adult-like than you are right now?

The truth is, after we make that switch, to start denying our childness, we end up making another switch somewhere down the line - I would imagine when we start having children of our own and the similarities are right in our faces - to start relishing those childlike qualities. I'm sure when a father reads a story to his son at bedtime, part of him is reading to himself, trying to remember what it was like. Could it ever be that good again? And it can. And as he grows older, he starts to accept more and more the idea of being what he truly is - what we all truly are - a child.

He becomes comfortable letting other people deal with things for him, wearing comfortable clothes in exchange for these terrible dressy rags, spending more leisure time and less worrying about money.

Some people have theorized that life is a timeline that begins at childhood and ends at childhood with this long run of adulthood in the middle. I don't have to repeat the similarities between the very young and the very old, but I think the adulthood in the middle is just denial. We're never really adults. Beyond our social strata (and who came up with this crap anyway?) we act like ourselves. We are loose. Free. We dance. We sing. We're children.

One of my favorite web comics is done by this physics guy that worked for NASA. His comics are very simple and decry the outlook of someone who grew up watching Say Anything. I would try to retell you the particular comic I have in mind for this thought, but retelling comics is impossible. The impact is just lost. So here's a link to it. You go here.

Hope you're having a happy childhood.

Where it Began

2007-09-12T11:55:00.001-04:00

Nothing really matters.

In the novel Choke by Chuck Palahniuk, the main character Victor is a (not so) recovering sex addict who had to drop out of medical school in order to work at a Colonial Recreation Village to pay for his delusional mother's exorbitant care-clinic bills. Admittedly, he's a bit bitter. Especially since his mother was in and out of jail for his childhood, kidnapping him back from whatever foster parents he was with from time to time.

He's an anti-hero.

There are certainly nihilistic themes in the book - in all of Palahniuk's work. The concept that what we do is out of our control, that nothing we do or achieve will last or matter, there's no real, good reason to do anything.

Like Tyler Durden from Palahniuk's novel Fight Club says, "Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart." Nothing Gold can stay. For Victor, its the threat of never getting out of particular cycle. He's desperately needy, and this manifests itself in his side business - choking to death in restaurants. He learned from a very early age that people seem to love you, pay attention to you when you're choking to death. You have to go all the way to the edge to ever be saved. So he goes to restaurants and chokes, waiting until the hero of the night saves him again. From that point on, they send cards, money, etc. to make sure that he's still doing alright.

But they need him, too. He's a kind of savior for these people, a heroic story they can tell their kids, something that gives their life meaning. The night that they saved another persons life. By being saved, he saves them.

Most find his work to be too gloomy, too new age, too nihilistic, too dark, too visceral. But I find a certain hopefulness in his writing. Nihilism is one of those buzz words that gets people's heads shaking even if they don't understand what it means. It seems spooky, mysterious, and there's an air of death about it. People need reasons to live. They need to understand things they can't understand. Nihilism doesn't offer that.

I think the lesson is less about things meaning nothing, and more about returning to the magic of life. In Fight Club, the main character's life something to float through - going to work, getting Starbucks, eating out, living alone, collecting junk he won't need, becoming the anti-evolution of man. It's depressing, especially to see so much of it happening in real life. But the thing that most don't see is that while his life is numbed, there is still incredible beauty in it. In the details. How often do we think of breathing as beautiful? Or the way the human heart works? We do it several thousand times a day, so its standard. It's boring. It's a rerun. But when you concentrate on it - the sound of air rushing in through the echo cavern of your nose, the feeling of oxygen spreading through your body, the mini-melodrama being played out in each cell in your system. When you slow it down and pay attention, it's like a symphony.

I tend to find hope within nihilism, and within Palahniuk's work, although it's counter-intuitive. When nothing matters, can't we pretty much do anything? Aren't we free to describe something as beautiful just because we think it is? Aren't we free to look at life how we'd like to see it? Aren't we free?

At the end of Choke, Victor's life is reaching the end of a downward spiral. He's devastated, in ruin. Countering that, his friend Denny has been becoming more at peace with himself by collecting huge rocks and has started building them into a structure on a small plot of land he owns. The people of the neighborhood are furious. They want to know what it is. They have to know why he's building it. He doesn't have an answer. He explains that he won't know what it is until it's finished. That he's just building it to build. The process is more important than the outcome.

They destroy it.

Denny, with the help of Victor, simply starts rebuilding. The beauty of the entire book - the entire gut-wrenching life that Victor and his friend Denny live - is that on the last pages, they are standing atop a ruined structure, happy just to start building again even if they don't know what the structure is. And in the darkness of the night, with the rocks piled up reaching toward the sky, it could be anything.

Same goes for you.

This is not a Very Good Title

2007-09-12T10:27:00.001-04:00

This is a meta-thought.

There's a huge wave of humor that has been cresting for the last decade or so. It started coming in and out of popular fashion in the 1960s when Monty Python burst onto the scene. For the first time, comedy was not about normal people in strange situations ( e.g. I Love Lucy, Dick Van Dyke) but about strange people in normal situations. So much of humor afterward has been an attempt at blending the two. The wave that I mentioned is one of meta-humor - specifically, jokes about humor. About the crafting of humor. Jokes about jokes. About set ups, about punch lines, about why we make them.

In a mild sense of what meta-humor is, it could be described as self-aware. This happens in almost all other mediums of art:

A novel written about a novel writer. Self-portraits. Songs with lyrics about writing songs. I'll go one step further:

A novel written about the process of writing that particular novel. A self-portrait of the artist as he paints the self-portrait. Songs with lyrics about the song that they are in. These are the standards of post-modern art. Self-reflection. Self-awareness.

The "joke" part of the joke is usually the punch-line. The ending. The reason for telling the story. One of my favorite versions of meta-humor is the Shaggy Dog Story. It can be any story that is incredibly dull, that shoots off into tangents, that has no point. It's all in the mastery of telling it. The joke is not the joke itself, but the way the joke is told - and eventually, the joke becomes the audience, the fact that they are still listening intently waiting for a joke that will never come.

Here's where I need you to follow me a bit. Just for a little while.

Have you ever met someone who spoke about reading the Bible as if it were some great achievement? As if they'd climbed Everest by slogging through to Revelation? Like he's dashed himself upon the very rocks of literary challenge to sit down for a few hours a night? It's pretty absurd to think about. It's, after all, just a book. Just a few hundred pages to read. It's really not a difficult task to undertake. Yet there are programs that help people read the thing in a year. A year. Seriously. There is, to my knowledge, no such program for War and Peace, and it's longer.

So how many times have you read it?

(Imagine my haughty philosopher voice) In my philosophical training, I was forced to engage the ancients through their writing. To do so, we had to read and re-read what they wrote several times. One of the funniest things to me when someone learns my degree is in philosophy is when they ask if I've read such-and-such book. "Have you read Locke's Second Treatise?" In my head I'm thinking, "Yes. 8 times. And I've underlined 1/3 of it. And written in all the margins." I usually just nod my head.

The thing is, that most of us (definitely myself) don't re-read the things we need to. Just like our friend who thinks he's done because he's finished the Bible - we feel like we've assimilated the knowledge, and we can move on. The truth is, we need to return to writings from time to time to refresh our understanding of them. I went back and re-read some of my older thought emails, and (other than the spelling errors) I was actually surprised at what I was thinking or that I was thinking it. I even learned a few things from myself.

The same can be said, I think, about most personal writings. Journals, old term papers, letters and notes to friends, emails long forgotten. Remember that report you did on the heart in 5th grade? Can you tell me the chambers? Of course not. It was 87 years ago that you did that project, and you haven't gone back to relearn from it.

So (how's this for meta-analysis) I'm going to go back and revisit this very email and critique it. It's long winded. Rambling. It has some interesting facts about the history of American comedy that seem not at all relevant to the greater point of learning by returning to old knowledge. The transition to the part about the Bible is a little slapdash. The author seems to really think highly of his own opinion, though, and what's more troubling is that there's a critique of the email embedded in the email itself. Perhaps even more strange than that is the mention of the critique within the critique. A critique on the critique during the critique.

And now, some fun facts about this email:

1) Meta is the Greek word for "after", meaning that the first sentence of the email labels it as an "after thought". Thus, it is both the primary and secondary thought.

2) Because it's rambling, you have to wonder whether the email itself is a Shaggy Dog Story. Thus, making the readers, the joke. Plus, since the author is also a reader, the joke teller is also the joke.

3) Congratulations on making it this far.

4) There are at six Biblical references slyly hidden in the email. I'm just glad I'm not the Publican who seeks to find them all. Alright, that's seven. Or does the fact that there are seven references count as a reference itself? Thus making it eight references and negating the whole seven thing in the first place?

5) There is an inordinate amount of lists in this email. I would make a list of all the lists, but that would lead to infinite regression.

6) The true main point of it, is that we should all be incredibly self-aware.

Approaching a Continuum

2007-09-11T17:53:00.000-04:00

We tend to connect to things on the micro more than the macro. Things need to be personal in order for us to care or remember them.

Think back one hundred years. What would you have been doing? What would have been important to you?

The year is 1907. The Kingston Earthquake that kills over 1,000. The weeks worth of financial crisis until a few of America's richest saved the stock market. The Boy Scouts are founded. Oklahoma becomes a state. A coal mine explosion takes the lives of over 200.

How can something so important, not be important? Think honestly about your reaction to some of these events. Do they really matter to you? Would you have ever thought about them unprompted on a daily basis? Did you even know about them?

And yet they were important, status-changing events for that year. The people close to those in Jamaica and in the mines of Virginia remember. Those who nearly lost everything on the markets remember.

Does anyone still remember? For us, they are just words on a page, maybe not even important enough for a general history class. But what about other major events? How do we really respond to reading about the first Great War, Pearl Harbor, the invention of the Printing Press, The Battle of Hastings, The Boxer Rebellion?

Sympathy? Probably. But a meaningful connection? I have to admit I don't have one. I can listen to my grandfather talk about fighting in the Korean War, but since it didn't affect me on a micro level, I have trouble really concerning myself with it.

Part of it is the past - we humans deal more in the present and future than the past. We do not strive to learn the lessons of the past because they are too large for us. They involve too much abstract. Too much foresight. It's much easier to deal with the tasks of today, of this week, of this month even than to deal with the tasks of the year, or what we need to accomplish in 50 years.

We can't even imagine what we need to achieve in 50 years - not in any tangible, concrete way.

These events that I've listed were important in the moment they occurred. They were tragedies, triumphs, and they've been forgotten or marginalized. We just can't live our lives thinking about the past in a significant way.

It all makes me wonder what people will be thinking about on Sept. 11, 2101.

On Laurels

2007-09-11T10:56:00.000-04:00

We don't learn very much from our mistakes. It's only the wisest of us who actually dwells in their own errors without being consumed by them and without losing focus of the lesson held inside.

Most of us avoid our errors at all costs. It's much easier to walk through life with the sunshine of our achievements beaming down on our shoulders. The problem with that sunshine to our backs is that it does little to illuminate the way ahead. It provides us with a lot of warmth, though, and that's much easier to live in than the cold shadow of our own inequity.

But triumphs don't teach us anything. At their most basic, they are actually successful exhibitions of what we already know. The difficulty of a test is directly proportionate to the amount of information we don't know. Some tests allow us to use prior knowledge to deduce the solution - others are simple tests of whether we know the correct response or not. None of us ever scores perfectly, though. Not in any meaningful way.

A friend of mine from high school named Eli almost threw himself a party when he broke the 1500 mark on the SATs. He was beaming, and rightfully so. It was a major accomplishment and he worked hard for it. He ended up going to a state school instead of the Ivy league for whatever reason (the graduating class before me sent top students to Yale, Harvard, Princeton, UPenn, while my class sent top students to ATM, UT, and Tech. I'll never understand it), so it's been easy for me to keep in touch with him.

Eli and I spent some time together in Corpus right at the tail end of college - the usual sort of get-together for people entering the 16th grade. There was some alcohol, a random old friend strumming aimlessly on a guitar somewhere and the string of conversation that flowed around the room like the smoke from our cigarettes. And somehow, John managed to steer the conversation toward the SATs and his triumphant score. We'd talked a lot about what we'd done in college - I was about to start my term as student body VP, another friend was rounding out his med school applications and crossing his fingers, but Eli hadn't really done much of anything.

He'd been resting on the laurels of his past. If I had had the foresight then, I would have asked him what he'd failed at over the years we'd been apart. I'm guessing, now, that the answer would have been nothing. I'm sure he sailed through most of his classes, and it seemed like he just hadn't tried anything to fail at. And he still wanted to talk about those SATs.

Achievements can become a ball and chain. They can weigh us down more than help us. The sound of applause and the feel of a pat on the back do little to further who we are as people. On the flip side, though, failure only works as a teacher if we're a willing student.

If we dwell in our failure - truly mire ourselves into the horror of imperfection, we can lose sight of the lesson. If we avoid the memory of our failure, we will never have that sight to begin with.

What's the last triumph you had? How long ago was it? Are you still resting on its laurels? Are you still tied down by it?

Dare to fail. Life will become a lot more clear when you do.

I Saw Your Message that You Wrote in the Sand

2007-09-07T15:51:00.000-04:00

You might not like that I'm going in these directions.

I've been thinking about the big questions. The biggest ones, lately. Some of them are tricky subjects - like death and love.

As a rider to my thought yesterday: no one really knows why we die. There are a ton of theories, scientific ones that is, dealing with cell death, the loss of telomeres or chromosome caps, etc. More interesting though, is the ecological phenomenon of heart beats. I've been joking for years that everyone gets an allotted amount of heartbeats per lifetime to show that working out - a process that speeds up the heart rate - will actually kill you faster since you'll use up those beats faster. It's a good joke that keeps me on the couch, and it's not completely untrue. The part about working out killing you is, but the standard amount of heartbeats isn't.

It seems that all animals get approximately the same number of heartbeats in a lifetime - something just over 100 million. Small animals' heart beat like crazy. Gigantic animals - like elephants - have much slower heart rates. Thus, it takes about 2 years for a mice to use its allotted beats and takes a whale something like 80. There's no proof of cause-and-effect here, but there is proof of a correlation. Humans, even though we're smaller than elephants, get to live longer because (no one really knows) we are so evolutionarily awesome. We're the most advanced animal, we create medicines, we don't have any really predators, etc.

I've been thinking a lot about love lately as well. From a chemical standpoint, love is an addiction to another person (that doesn't seem too far off from other definitions of love, either). When we meet a person that we connect with on that level, the brain makes a note of it and releases awesome amounts of drugs into our system - dopamine, serotonin, etc. that increase the activity in our brain's pleasure-center (that's what it's really called) and raise our heart rate (which may or may not be killing us faster). It's what makes our heart beat flutter (thanks John) when she calls or he smiles or she winks or he holds your hand or she wears cute shorts or he opens the door for you.

The chemicals make you irritable, excited, lose your appetite, lose sleep, crave the person's attention. When we see the person again, we get that rush of chemicals again, and we get dependent.

All this to say - in my usual roundabout way of getting to things - that scientifically showing the backdrop of death and love does nothing to take away from the romanticism of either. Science is interested in the "how", not the "why" so the big questions still remain. Where do we go when we die? What happens to us? Why do we fall in love with whom we fall in love with? How we get them to love us? Even if we can explain what's going on with us physically, how does that factor into the creation behind the action? To the plan behind it?

Some of you may notice that my facebook profile under religious views reads: Second Law of Thermodynamics. It's a bit of a joke, but it actually applies to two concepts here. One, death is the second law of thermodynamics. Heat and energy cannot travel from a colder to a warmer body. That's why the ice melts in your warm drink. Nature is irreversible. Once a cell begins dying, or a person, they will reach that goal. And we start that process from minute one.

But I also see it as a way to deal with other people - thus, why it's my religious view - heat cannot travel from a colder body to a warmer body. I think it's important to always strive to be that warmer body to pass energy onto others. Energy and heat are just scientific ways of saying love, friendship, kindness, warmth. You cannot emit love if you are not imbued with love; you can't energize others if you aren't energized yourself; you cannot give kindness without having it to give. Where you get your energy from, your love from, your sense of kindness is one of the bigger questions - does it come from God? surroundings? nature? DNA? but I think it's important to be aware of that need.

And maybe sometimes it's alright to be the one that takes some energy and warmth away from someone else. We can't, after all, always be the shining light in the room.

I'll Take the Million in Pennies, Please

2007-09-07T10:52:00.001-04:00

No one knows why we sleep.

After all the scientific advancements that we've made as a species - like the robot that can grab a wine bottle from a human and learns from it's mistakes, mapping the genome, etc. - there are still a whole host of questions that seem incredibly easy, but aren't. Sleep is just one of them.

But we sleep to rest, right? Well, yes and no. Your body can undergo the same amount of resting while watching the television as it does while sleeping. Plus, that fitful rest that you achieve during sleep is always broken up by the long periods of hyper-activity known as REM - the dreaming stage. So perhaps dreaming is important. It's been suggested that dreaming aids in long term memory storage, but studies have also shown that people who's REM is inhibited have no loss in ability for such storage. So we're back at the drawing board.

At the end of the day, we have ideas, but just don't know at all why we sleep. Plus, not sleeping will kill us - faster than not eating or not drinking water - so it must be crucial to our being. We just don't know what we achieve by doing it. I know this all sounds silly in the face of common sense. I sleep when I'm tired, and I feel refreshed. It seems easy to explain sleep. It just isn't.

Some other things we can't explain:

How did the universe begin?
How does the brain produce consciousness? (some of you may know this is one of my favorites; the brain is literally just meat; meat + electricity = who we are; crazy right?)
What causes gravity?

There are many others. Things that we experience everyday that we just do not know. Maybe cannot know. Cannot figure out. Think about how that applies to your daily life. How much you leave to chance, to faith. How much you accept without knowing. Even in a non-religious sense, the list of things we have faith about is incredible. We have no choice but to live lives of faith every time we go to sleep, drive a car, get on a plane (no one understands turbulence yet), have blood pump through our veins (turbulence, again), experience time, give birth (no one quite understands how an egg turns into a human), and the list goes on and on.

We basically, don't know much of anything.

Oh, and if you have some spare time, try to solve (prove or disprove) the Riemann Hypothesis. It has implications for prime numbers - the building blocks of all numbers since all numbers can be created by multiplying primes together - and will net you a cool million dollars if proven (or disproven). Plus, the fame and adulation of math nerds everywhere.

Who wouldn't want that?

Taking Another Pass at It

2007-09-06T11:05:00.000-04:00

I was once told to make a list of things that I would never accomplish. A sort of anti-to-do list. It was an exercise in honesty and limitation.

To the outside world, we are unstoppable. Especially us. Those of us who walked into our middle school guidance counselor's office to ringing endorsements or have had the benefit of rising just far enough above the average to be marveled at. It's interesting how our culture does that. Raises us up constantly. As an interest side note (whether or not I ever have side notes is up for debate) the concept of self-esteem didn't really enter into the public consciousness until the 1970's - meaning we've lived all but 40 years of our existence as humans without it. Now it seems impossible to throw away.

Before it existed, there was work ethic, the public eye. How good a person you were rested on how others in polite society viewed you. Oddly enough, it basically still does with the twist that we can always fall back on our own self esteem. And have you ever noticed how much "self esteem" is formed from the opinions of others? The bottom line is, we feel good ourselves because of outside forces. It's an incredible feat to feel strong about yourself without having any back-up. Without facts. Without "proof".

This leads me in two directions. I'll head in both of them if you don't mind.

For one, what's going to happen at the end of the day when we head home? What's going to happen when we get back from our jobs or our schools to a one-bedroom apartment and no one there to exist for? I've lived alone several times in my life, and after the first few months of awkwardness, it's one of the few truly liberating things on this earth. To be truly alone. So much of our lives is made up of acting. Scenes. Lines of dialog that we rehearse in our heads just moments before speaking them. But there can be no play without an audience. So who are we when we're alone? I would be surprised to find that we're much more uninhibited alone. I'm pretty sure we basically act the same way save for a little outlandish singing in the car/shower or dancing like nobody's watching.

My second direction may seem more direct, or at least more fruitful.

How hard is it to believe that we're loved for no reason other than we are?

Franny Glass

2007-09-05T12:29:00.000-04:00

"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

The Jesus Prayer. The Prayer of the Heart. It comes in different forms, one as short as simply saying the name "Jesus", "Lord have mercy" or the longest version that appears above. It's a staple of Eastern Christianity, and incredibly seductive force, the purpose of which is to create a lasting, constant prayer within the heart of the believer.

It's featured in Franny and Zooey (probably my least favorite book from one of my favorite authors) when Franny decides to give up her normal middle-class life for one involving the mystic Jesus Prayer.

It stems from 1 Thessalonians 5:17 where Paul tells followers to "pray without ceasing", and takes the comment quite literally. The prayer works like this:

The follower utters the prayer as a mantra, over and over until she gets into the natural rhythm of the words. This could take days, weeks, months, years. The follower has to pray without ceasing until the prayer matches her heartbeat - a sort of "feeling", a nirvana of sorts - and then, the follower's heart continues the prayer on its own with every beat, thus making the follower pray with every breath and every new burst of blood traveling through the body.

It's a way to be constantly mindful of God's presence.

I was thinking about this in terms of every adopted ethos. It certainly raises question for Christianity - are you as consistent and mindful of your chosen faith? Is your life itself a prayer to God? Does your heart beat the words "Jesus Christ" or is prayer a quiet time half-an-hour a day before bedtime?

But it could be applied to any way of life. The fact is, most people just don't adhere to the principles they aspire to with any consistency. Most are content to live their lives on auto-pilot. Some have never even thought of the driving factors that move their lives along. Why are they here? What direction are they heading? For the most part, they get into a car, start her up, and have no clue what their destination is. Or the route.

How many of us keep the grand scheme of things within sight on a daily basis? on an hourly basis? every minute? every heartbeat? Who among us lives with an eye constantly pointed toward the guiding principles of humane existence?

Repeating a single phrase until it's tattooed on our heart seems a bit radical. But isn't life pretty radical?

The Space Between

2007-09-05T09:45:00.000-04:00

Have you ever looked up, almost woken up from a waking dream, and wondered how you got somewhere? Tried to trace the footsteps that led you to where you stand?

Our lives aren't as linear as we'd like to believe - at least we don't experience them that way. We have moments where we zone out, where aren't paying attention, just going through the motions, or just in full-fledged sleep mode. Our brains are not capable of taking in everything that our surroundings have to offer.

My father cites this phenomenon as his reason to stop drinking (alcohol is certainly a purveyor or "lost time"). When he was in college, he drank fairly heavily - not out of the ordinary for any collegiate, let alone one at UT Austin - but it wasn't the antics of a wild night that made him stop. It was when he woke up one morning, safe in his bed. The sun was creeping into the room in soft beams through the blinds, and my father opened his eyes without a hangover. Feeling more than fine, he got dressed, went outside, and saw his car parked in the driveway. Everything was as it should be.

But he didn't remember how he got there.

The fact that he couldn't remember driving home spooked him. Everything was fine, but the night could have had a far different outcome. To this day, he still can't link together the events between the party and waking up the next day. What could have happened on the drive home? Had anyone else been in the car with him? Had he endangered himself and others?

I think you'll find that there are many times in life that exist in the unconscious that aren't ruined by alcohol or other drugs. Our minds work primitively some times. We break down things into mindless routines in order to make them simpler. How many times have you woken up, showered, gotten dressed, etc. without even "thinking" about it? How many other things do you do the same way every time?

The two points I'm making with this illustration are that 1) we go through life unconsciously about some things that should be given great consideration. Our friendships. Our families. Perhaps even your relationship to God. We get so used to them, that we do them all without really thinking about them. We have no idea how we got where we are. Looking back, tracing the steps is one good way to be mindful of how and why we do what we do.

and B) doing things in a new way - like brushing your teeth with your left hand (right hand for lefties) - opens up new neuro-paths in your brain. Challenging yourself to do things differently makes you smarter.

Like waking up from a dream, we can wake up from being awake. Regain consciousness after zoning out. Look around and realize we've been half-heartedly living.

I'd be curious to know how you got where you are. What road you took. I think you'd be curious to find that out, too.

Without a Net

2007-09-04T11:01:00.000-04:00

First times.

I'm fascinated by them. The incarnation of someone testing something out and either failing or discovering something new about their world or themselves is an unmatchable feat.

Think of all the inane things humans do. The things beyond nature - the things beyond our evolutionary need to survive. Some examples: The Trapeze: Who was the first person (or persons) to build a contraption that could kill you or make you soar through the air with exhilaration? What would drive someone to invent such a thing? And then make it an everyday thing?

Drinking cow's milk: Who was the first person to go up to a cow and say, "Whatever comes out of these things when i squeeze 'em. . .i'm drinking." ?

There are more examples of course, but the main point is one of human indulgence. We've gotten so far beyond the need for food, water, and shelter (most of us anyway) that we've begun inventing ways to entertain ourselves that seem to go against our own survival. Think about crack cocaine...there are over 20 steps in the process for making it. How did someone figure that out? Trial and error? It's not like brewing beer, where it took centuries to create and melded from one thing to the next. It took less than a decade and all the steps in between lead to something that can kill instantly. How does something like that get made?

We are endless beings. Completely creative.

Mankind (read: man and womankind) is so incredible.

What are some other things that humans do (or that you do) that seem ridiculous or against our survivalism?