in a handbasket

"Do not say, 'Why were the old days better than these?' For it is not wise to ask such questions." — Ecclesiastes 7:10

One pet peeve I have is to listen to people go off about how society is going downhill, especially when it is presented in a church setting.  This is not an annoyance because I think society is in great shape, but rather because it presents an idealized view of where society has come from. A person talking like this is frequently encouraging his or her audience to adopt the social rules of a bygone era rather than encouraging the audience to truly look to Christ.  Prayer is encouraged and the speaker may state that our society's only hope is to turn to Christ, but my experience is that what the speaker interprets as turning to Christ and what the Bible indicates as becoming a slave to Christ as two different things.

I have mentioned the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14) when I discussed a similar topic before, but this is a very instructive story here as well.  In that parable a person who everyone of the time would have viewed as a saint prays thanks to God that he was not put in the circumstances of the obviously sinful tax collector.  I can imagine sermons at the local synagogue rightfully decrying the sins of people who call themselves Jews who aggressively take from their own people while working in conjunction with a pagan empire.

"Our modern world is becoming more and more sinful," someone might point out, "because we cannot even trust those trained by our own rabbis in the Law of the one true God to treat their own brothers fairly.  Can you believe how horrible the world has become?  Can you believe how wretched tax collectors are who dare to number themselves among Abraham's children?"  Such a statement would be true on its face, and I can imagine the audience getting worked into a fervor.  The speech would endear the speaker to most of the audience, because it would build solidarity and would make the audience feel a bit righteous for not being one of those sinners benefiting from his selfish actions.

The key to this parable that Jesus taught, though, was that the person who focused on his own righteousness and others' sins was not justified, but the tax collector who was painfully aware of his sin and approached God with humility was justified.  The sins of Pharisee in the story were not forgiven, but the sins of the tax collector were.  Isn't focusing today on the evils of the times rather than the evils of my own nature doing the same thing that the Pharisee did in the parable?  Does not that sort of speech or sermon sound more dangerous than beneficial when viewed from this perspective?

On a related note, most of the people who talk about how bad things have gotten get their facts wrong, and that is a big part of what bothers me.  Some forms of crime have increased in recent years, but most violent crimes, property crimes, and many other various types of crime have been on a steady downswing in the United States since the early 90s.  A chart on the FBI website indicates that this trend, in violent crime at least, has continued through recent years.  All this does is validate my primary point that, while people are sinners in need of a Savior today, people have always been sinners in need of a Savior.  The times are evil, but the times have always been evil.

love at first sight

I watched Warm Bodies this past weekend.  I did not love or hate the movie.  It was interesting enough.  The movie was a love-conquers-all zombie flick regarding the transformation of zombies back into something more resembling living humans.  That's not really a spoiler, as that's the selling point of the movie's trailer.  Also, the plot is directly influenced by Romeo and Juliet to the point that the main characters are named, "R," and, "Julie."

The storyline relies more on the power of relational love than most other movies with a romantic bent that I have seen.  It's love that drives the zombies' change after all (also in the trailer).  Part of that relational love thing was something that annoys me in most love-conquers-all stories—that initial romantic puppy love is the powerful love that conquers all.  In the movie it is not only puppy love that drives the change, but the main plot follows what I consider a puppy love relationship.

I know it seems only lightly related, but as long as I can remember a common question in movies and TV shows has been whether a character believes in love at first sight.  Frequently, some character's arc then sends them through a love-at-first-sight scenario.  In Warm Bodies, there is a love-at-first-sight scenario, but the writers built in some rules for how zombies work to make it not really love at first sight even though it totally is.

I have long wondered at the appeal of love at first sight for two reasons.

1. It seems like a lot to throw into a (potential) relationship way too early.  Love—real love—is wonderful, but also burdensome.  Real love involves willingness to sacrifice even when sacrifice is not reciprocated.  It is selfless.  That's a huge deal.  People are human, and being in a real romantic love situation before you have any idea what that person's strengths, weaknesses, quirks, and flaws are is a recipe for pain and disillusionment.  Will you choose to sacrificially love someone if you find that your life goals and priorities conflict?  Is that willingness something you want based solely on initial physical attraction?
2. Since loving at first sight implies severely limited knowledge of the other person does this mean that the person who idealizes love at first sight is attracted to people who make impulsive and unwise relationship decisions?

My guess is that the people who dream of love at first sight are not actually thinking about love when they dream.  I suspect that most people who long for love at first sight fall into one of the two following categories.

1. They want a serious relationship rather than a casual one so bad that they dream of someone skipping the important initial stages of the relationship.  Those initial stages of the relationship are the part where each person finds out about the good and the bad things about the other before putting their heart on the line.  Maybe this person does not figure that he or she will get past that stage if it is not short-circuited?
2. They want the self-esteem boost that comes from the knowledge that they are so hot they can cause someone else to stop thinking rationally.

Now, there are things that I do believe in at first sight.  I think strong physical attraction (mutual or otherwise) can appear at first sight.  Disgust or disdain can occur at first sight.  Intrigue frequently occurs at first sight.  Most frequently, I believe that indifference occurs at first sight.  One thing that I do not believe ever occurs at first sight, however, is true love.

instagram novelty

For a while now there have been two jokes about Instagram pictures that have really been circulating long enough to become very tired by this point.

1. Too many people use the sepia filter and crop their pictures to make them look like they came from the 60s or 70s.
2. Too many people take pictures of their meals. This one isn't limited to Instagram, but it's a recurring joke.

I don't use Instagram, though I could see myself using it at a different stage in life.  I'm certainly not intending to pick on the people who use Instagram just because they are the sort of people who use Instagram.  However, since almost everyone who uses the service knows of these two tired jokes or should have noticed that the novelty of these two actions has worn off, what I don't get is why I still see pictures that fall into one of these two categories on my Facebook feed.  I won't begrudge the urge to use those features on occasion, but I see both with regularity.

I used to think the same thing in the late 90s and early 2000s when someone put too many actions in their PowerPoint presentations or used Comic Sans anywhere.  It screamed, "Guess who just started using MS Office for the first time."  Only this feels like people aren't distinguishing that the features and behaviors have the most value when they are used as infrequent novelties rather than the normal way of doing things.

As an example, taking a picture of your meal makes a lot of sense when your meal is novel.  As "novel" implies, this is truly rare.  Are you eating the face part of the food?  Snap a picture and post it, because I don't see that every day!  Is there a finger floating in your soup?  Post that picture so that I can say I saw it before the lawsuit happened!  Has this happened ten times, and you've posted pictures of the last nine?  In this case it's not novel any more.  Did you make a salad for yourself without anything particularly special in it and want to post a picture to brag about your salad-making skills or the fact that you're eating healthy?  Honestly, it isn't a deep secret that most people simply don't care. It just comes across as a cry for help.

open office design

A design and architecture firm recently performed a survey to illustrate the problem with open office designs.  The conclusion was that these sorts of office configurations, where cubicle walls are either very short or non-existent, make it difficult for employees to focus due to noise and visual distractions. While that firm has obvious reasons to want to encourage businesses to change their employee workspace layout, this is sort of a no-brainer conclusion, and makes me wonder why open offices are popular.  The article mentions a new and large open office being built for Facebook employees with the implication that this is the popular thing to do now.

The driving force for this sort of layout are cost and improved collaboration, but I do not believe that these benefits come near to outweighing the costs.  I do agree with the idea that the ability to collaborate is a good thing, but is it so bad that someone would have to walk a few steps to do that?  Is gaining that ten seconds worth losing the ability to escape distractions long enough to complete something?  Is the space and materials cost savings worth a less productive and more frustrated worker?

Many years ago in one of my less enjoyable roles I worked in what was essentially a large cube or bullpen with eighteen other people.  This arrangement lasted about nine months, and I do remember accomplishing things during that time, but I also remember not being able to focus on the task at hand.  It was a noisy environment, and at any given time there could be two or three speakerphone conversations going on at once.  Given how stressful the job was, there were frequently people tossing a ball or something else of the sort to let off some steam.  The nature of the job did not reward focus as much as speed and efficiency, though, so maybe that open office made sense there.

Now, I am very happy to work in more of an enclosed space.  In fact, even when I was in a bona-fide cube that was a welcome relief.  I like anything that gets rid of my distractions and let me focus on the task at hand.

milestones

Apart from this past week being the 237^th anniversary of the signing of The Declaration of Independence it also marks two other anniversaries, one joyous and one sad.  I am amazed that at what I still consider a young age there are so many milestones that I notice every year of significant things that happened.  Births, deaths, weddings, and all sorts of other things.  Every part of the calendar beckons to memories that are not all of that long-past.

This makes me wonder what milestones are ahead.  Are they largely going to be good?  How difficult will the bad ones be, and who will feel the brunt of the pain?  Is there something that I should be doing at this stage of life to appreciate what I have or to appropriately set up the good milestones?

know-it-all

I struggle with when to correct people online.  This has been exacerbated in the last few years by Facebook.  When is the right time and wrong time to correct friends, family, and acquaintances on factual or grammatical errors?

Generally speaking, I don't correct people on politics.  There have been some noteworthy exceptions where I have called someone out on what I thought was a blatant error, but I do not look back on those incidents with pride.  Even then, those incidents have been very few and far between. Like most people I generally bite my tongue and move on when I see political statements that I believe are based on errors.

I correct grammar and spelling even less than I call people out on political issues, but I regularly notice specific errors that annoy me.  The most annoying errors are the ones I find in my own typing.  Some grammatical and spelling errors drive me more crazy than political errors do.

The issue that snags me the most, and far more than politics or grammar, are rumors that have been discredited elsewhere.  As an example, a few months ago a couple of my Facebook friends who do not know each other posted information like what is detailed here to their feeds.  I tried to resist pointing out the mistake, but I knew it would bother me more than most errors since might damage the ability of specific non-profits to do their jobs.

The problem I have is there is no good way to correct someone without coming off like an arrogant know-it-all.  The very act of correcting someone is blatantly telling them that they are wrong and you are right, which causes most people to get defensive and feel like you are attempting to assert your superiority in some way over them.  I don't like it when others correct me, even when I know deep-down that I am in the wrong.  I don't expect anyone else to be different.

I need to learn to better differentiate the situations where correction is called for.