like edison

When I was a kid I dreamed of being an inventor.  The idea of taking materials that weren't all that valuable on their own and assembling something valuable out of them was extremely appealing.  As a result, stories like that of Thomas Edison's were very appealing.

I remember hearing about all of the things Edison created, with over 1000 patents to his name, and the underlying philosophy that was part of his persona.  He is credited with the assertion, "Genius: one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration."  I remember visualizing him sitting in a dark room trying material after material in his light bulb until something worked.  This whole ideal perfectly fit the philosophy of a nation where most would at least claim to believe in meritocracy.  Intelligence is just hard work, and intelligence that doesn't work can't be called genius.

While I don't fault the focus on effort, as it is a necessary ingredient to success, this philosophy misses a ton of what made Edison successful.  Because the story has historically stopped here many have been led to believe that his secret was simply trying hard, when there was a bit more to it.  Edison brought a bit of intelligence and a lot of elbow grease to the job, and that's all it took to get all of those patents.  So, all that is stopping you is the elbow grease.


In more recent years Edison's reputation has taken a bit of a beating due to what is viewed as his mistreatment of Nikola Tesla.  While I don't know enough to know whether this new reputation is deserved, what I do know is that it shines light on where that perspiration came from.  Edison was right that the genius of his success was in hard work, but it is not appreciated that he hired a lot of that work.  There isn't anything wrong with this, except that the team and their work is always forgotten in order to give credit simply to the guy who hired them.

Also, this illuminates (Ha!) that sometimes one guy working really hard isn't enough.  Some jobs require a team to be successful.  This doesn't fit into a narrative that celebrates our individualistic ideals, so it is scrapped.

I wish I understood all of this earlier, because this is extremely helpful to understanding how the world works today.  If you're fortunate you could be successful as some guy working by himself, but it's unlikely.  You're certainly not going to emulate Edison levels of success that way.  To be successful like Edison isn't just to work hard, but to get others to work hard as well toward that same goal.

I don't actually feel the need to be as successful in this world as Edison today, but since I did aspire to that in my youth I wish I understood what that really meant.

teaching in church

"Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly."- James 3:1

I have been the primary teacher in our Sunday School class for just short of four years now, along with rotating through teaching a men's class on Wednesday nights for the past couple of years.  Many of the classes I have taught have been very thin in attendance (I've taught a solitary person more than once), but many have been well-attended by very intelligent people.  That might sound like bragging, but what what has struck me over and over the past few years is how unqualified I am, and how ridiculous it is that I presume to be able to teach many of the people who regularly fill the seats.  I don't have more knowledge or experience.  All I have is that I put in time to research and prepare a lesson every week.  Just about anyone could do that.

The reason I teach is not skill or a love for teaching.  I'm not a great speaker.  What drives me is the fact that it seems like a waste of time if everyone takes the time to show up and the topic of discussion is either shallow or not well researched.  Why even show up, then?


In light of the statement above from James, it is scary what I don't know.  How can I teach when there are so many questions that I don't know let alone the answers?  There are passages of Scripture that flat-out confound, and there are realities of life I am not close to grasping.  People ask hard questions in class and pose difficult scenarios, as they should.  There is a limit to my knowledge, and the a big theme of the last five years for me has been realizing how much I still need to understand about the Bible and doctrine.  This being the case, how do I keep from leading people down wrong paths on this issue or the next?

Really, the only thing I know to keep myself in line is something I mentioned in class a few months ago.  If I get to the end of class and haven't mentioned how the passage we're looking at points to Christ, then something is wrong.  I pray that there aren't other things that I state wrongly along the way.

conspiracy theory, take 2

Years ago I wrote a blog post where I was very sarcastic toward people who held to conspiracy theories. That is not something that I would write again today, as I have realized in retrospect that the tone was somewhat detestable and more than a little self-righteous. If I haven't repented of this before, consider this my repentance now. That was a vain approach, and it wasn't the only vain thing I wrote in that era.

I have given a lot of thought to conspiracy theories since, however.

My issue with conspiracy theories has long been that they are intellectually lazy. The approach takes the form that I believe the world is a certain way, but the objective evidence suggests otherwise, so I decide that the objective evidence is just what some secret and powerful group of people want everyone else to believe. It exchanges a logical approach for storytelling, and it implies that anecdotal evidence is more valid than quantitative evidence.  It also appeals to the human desire to be superior to others since I get to be part of the small group of people who have figured out the way the world really works.

The mathematical take on this is that a true conspiracy with many members would be difficult-to-impossible to maintain, but as the number of people involved shrinks the potential for a secret conspiracy to be maintained increases.  So, a secret cartel in some industry that requires ten or twenty people to keep a secret is logically feasible, whereas a secret but huge cabal of thousands necessary to convincingly fake the moon landing or hide the fact that the earth is flat from the populace is not logically feasible.

The problem is, a lot of people whose opinions and intellect I respect do buy into specific conspiracy theories. The list of people I respect who I know believe in some conspiracy theory or another has grown significantly in the past few months. I don't know what to do with that fact. It bothers me because my respect for them is challenged, but then I still see the other areas of their lives and intellect that are worthy of respect. It's a difficult thing to reconcile.

So, the way things are now, if I hear someone relay their opinion that some conspiracy theory is true my reaction is one of two things. If it's a small conspiracy it is to consider the greater-than-zero odds that the theory is accurate. If it's a large conspiracy it is to do my absolute best not to let that theory tarnish my respect for that person. So, I'm doing my level best not to hold Fox Mulder in disrespect, but it's a serious challenge!

karma and schadenfreude

Every once in a while I will hear someone say that they believe in karma or that they get enjoyment out of karma.  In some instances I will hear of someone getting their just desserts as karma exacting revenge on that person.  This usage of "karma" is not technically accurate.

First, I should note that since I am Christian I do not believe in literal karma, no matter how it is defined.  It is important to understand what I am disagreeing with when someone declares karma, however.

The real definition of karma comes from the Hindu religion.  The idea is that good deeds, thoughts, actions, etc. eventually result in good outcomes for people, and that bad deeds, thoughts, actions, etc. eventually result in bad outcomes for people.  The key is that this is supposed to be experienced in a person's next life.  Someone's karmic state is intrinsically linked to his or her reincarnation, and so payback would probably be in the quality of someone's next life, which would be lived without an understanding of the evils committed in the previous life.  Based on my understanding of the concept, which is admittedly imperfect, karma would have to be experienced a long time later, and probably in a future life rather than in this one.

I believe that a better word for what people mean when they say, "karma," is, "schadenfreude."  It's also a much more fun word to pronounce!  I believe that most of my audience knows what it means, but for the uninformed the dictionary.com definition is, "satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else's misfortune."  I have mostly heard it used in conjunction with enjoying someone else's misery because one believes that misery is deserved.  So, when I hear that someone believes in karma, or enjoys seeing examples of karma, I understand that they simply like seeing the suffering of those they believe to be immoral.  This is more accurately the practical definition for schadenfreude.

Christian believers are not permitted to believe in Hindu karma or partake in schadenfreude.  Real karma is in direct contradiction to Heb 9:27, which states that people are destined to die once, and then to face judgment.  Schadenfreude is founded in a desire for vengeance that violates the spirit of Rom 12:17-21, fun as it is to say.

I'll certainly grant that both concepts are interesting, and have some allure.  At the very least, they can make you sound intelligent to adeptly use them in conversation.  However, a Christian believer shouldn't revel in either.

powerball

Recently, the Powerball lottery got up to some ridiculous level that causes a lot of people to want to gamble.  Usually when that happens someone in my office decides to buy a pool of tickets, and whoever contributes gets a share of any winnings.  I always go in for the price of one ticket for one reason and one reason only: insurance.

Like most things, my view on gambling is that it is not sin, but the attitudes a person brings into it are frequently sin.  So, for a lot of people gambling is sin because of why they gamble, or what gambling brings out in them.  In fact, I do believe it's difficult to gamble without a sinful attitude.  If I were to find myself daydreaming about never working again, or longing for whatever luxury items something like that would afford, or risking my family's stability, those would likely indicate underlying problems.  I hope in that instance I would avoid participating, because that would be a sign of something wrong with my motives.

What I don't want to happen, and what I am genuinely concerned about, is for everyone else in my office to win then quit on the same day.  Being the last guy left in the department would be an absolute nightmare.  So, I throw in the minimum so that if that sort of thing happens I have a little more freedom to decide what to do.

Truth be told, I don't really want to win the lottery.  Sure, I would love the money, but the problems that would come from getting the money in this way would probably outweigh that.  There are a number of people in my life who have moral issues with this, so it would open multiple uncomfortable conversations.  Then, there would be pressure to contribute to specific causes, and while it would be great to have that opportunity, it would open up a lot of saying no to disappointed people as well.

Another concern I have has its basis in pride.  The odds of winning the lottery are outlandish, and I don't want people to think I that I bought tickets with a serious hope of winning.  The joke goes that the lottery is a tax on those who are bad at math, and a prideful part of me doesn't want others to associate me with that.  How could I not if I were known to have won the lottery?

So, while I try to make sure I'm technically covered from the bad results of everyone winning the lottery at a cost I'll gladly pay, I'm not actually hoping for us to win.  The good news is that, unlike most people playing the lottery, the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of what I am hoping for.

tabula rasa

Several years ago I learned about the concept of tabula rasa, which asserts that a baby is born with a mind that is largely a blank slate.  Personality, behavioral tendencies, intellectual capacity, etc are all things that spring out of the environment a child is raised in rather than from genetics.

I have heard from various sources that research done in the last two or three decades has largely discredited the idea of tabula rasa to the point where it is not a seriously held position in academic circles now, though not long ago this was not the case.  Having had two kids I have to strongly question how anyone who raised more than one child ever believed in tabula rasa.

While our kids are still young--just seven and nine--it is striking and unavoidable to see where specific aspects of our kids' drives and personalities are not only unique, but have been that way from birth.  In fact, I have a very difficult time believing that someone could have kids and not notice this, as I see this uniqueness in a lot of the other kids I am occasionally around as well.  Kids with strong personalities always had strong personalities, and they often have siblings with completely different personalities, though they grew up in the same household.  Things like birth order play a part, but only as an outgrowth of what they were from the start.

If it is obvious to a parent that the foundations of our kids' personality is due to nature rather than nurture--and I have definitely heard other parents observe this as well--why was this not obvious to the academic world for a large percentage of the twentieth century?  Do (or did, since this idea is no longer widely held) academics in psychology/psychiatry simply not spend time with and observe their own families?  It's baffling!

boredom

When I was seven I remember wondering how I would ever outgrow Sesame Street.  I knew it would happen.  I could see that my parents, and other adults for that matter, only had a passing interest in it, but for the life of me I could not grasp what would change about me such that the show would no longer hold my interest.

A few years later my parents worked for a school on an Indian reservation (no one--even Native people--ever called it a "Native American reservation" in my recollection) they used to have a week of sermons at the school called spiritual emphasis week.  Something that those who have not spent much time on a reservation might not know is that time has a different meaning there.  Starting and ending times for a lot of events on the reservation are more generalizations than rules, and so many of the sermons would go hours long.  I distinctly remember sitting through a two-hour (or three-hour... they did occasionally go that long) sermon at nine years old wondering what would change about me for me to be as interested as my parents appeared to be in the sermon's contents.

Even today, I am often struck by how some forms of entertainment that others genuinely enjoy are painfully boring to me, and how many things that deeply fascinate me hold no interest in most anyone else.  What is it that drives fascination and boredom?  That question has been in my mind for at least the last thirty years.

I think there are three things that cause things to be boring.

1. Something is too simple.

Why do I find most kids' entertainment boring?  Easy, it's because there's nothing unexpected or engaging in it.  Bar none, if a children's show or movie is entertaining to me it is because something has been added to it that goes beyond it's primary audience.

2. Something is too complicated.

Many subjects are boring to me merely because I don't even possess the knowledge necessary knowledge to know how to be engaged.  By definition, it is difficult for me to provide good examples because the moment I have enough insight to cite an example I have stepped toward the issue not being so complicated. I do suspect that this is the main reason I am bored by much of what is considered high literature.

3 (or 2b). It doesn't speak to my experiences in life or the needs I have that drive me.

This is sort of like #2, but the reason for lacking understanding is not due to how complicated the issue is, but rather my not being equipped with fundamental background to appreciate the thing.

The best example I have of boredom from a lack of fundamental understanding is Pride and Prejudice.  I tried very hard to care about the book and the movie about ten years ago, but I just couldn't.  I lost interest in the book about four chapters in, and I could not connect with the characters on the most basic of levels simply because I had no fundamental understanding of what drove the main character.  I even got the sense that the things I sort of understood about the main character I understood wrong.

One of my pet peeves is when I am expected to enjoy something when I do not have the underlying drives or experiences that lend value to that thing.  I suspect that most other people feel similarly.

So, in order for something not to be boring to a person it has to reside in their window of knowledge where it isn't too dumbed-down to drive engagement or too complicated to make sense.  It has to also have some basis in the audience's experience and fundamental needs.

So, what do you think?  Are there other things that cause things to be boring?  Have you been as fascinated with this as I, or do you find this whole line of thinking boring in and of itself?  What is so boring to you it is painful?

wars versus trek

For whatever reason, many of those who love either Star Wars or Star Trek seem to have either disdain or condescension for fanboys of the other franchise.  Throughout the years I have heard many arguments between those who think that Star Wars is the epitome of storytelling and those who think that Star Trek provides great intellectual depth and something to aspire to as the human race.  I don't understand the debate at all, though, because neither series really should be considered part of the same genre.

Can you imagine for a moment people arguing about whether The View or Sportscenter is better?  They're both popular shows where hosts sit behind a desk, present news, and pontificate upon it's significance, right?  So that has to mean their comparable enough to debate which one is qualitatively better.  Of course that's ridiculous, and I think it's equally ridiculous to argue about Star Wars versus Star Trek.

While both franchises are Science Fiction story lines that have garnered rabid fan-bases, that is where their similarities end.  Their central purposes for being are entirely unrelated.

Star Wars is, and always has been, meant to be classic archetypal story that happens to be set in a futuristic setting (yet in the past and far, far away).  The setting is not supposed to be what drives the story.  The setting simply provides the surrounding details for a story that could just as easily, though less entertainingly, be set in a less exotic locale.

Star Trek is, and always has been, an optimistic view of what humanity could achieve, and what humanity could discover through those achievements.  The setting not only drives the story, it is the story.  An episode of Star Trek (or one of the movies) is presented with a hint of, "See what the crew of The Enterprise is discovering and experiencing?  We could discover and experience that too if we commit to technological advancement and supplanting Capitalism!"

The primary reason I have been thinking about this is that I have always been torn when people argue about these two franchises.  There have probably been times in my life when I would have favored one over the other, but never by much.  I greatly enjoy both of them on the right day and in the right mood, but I have never been a fanboy of either.  Both have great strengths and both have extraordinary flaws.  There is very little appropriate way to compare them, however, and do either justice.

foreign policy

I am thirty-five now, and I will be thirty-six later this year, so I cannot use age as an excuse any more as to why I haven't become president of the United States yet.  The only excuses I have left are simply not wanting it enough and not having a strong enough get-out-the-vote machine built up in the swing states.

On a more serious note, this is the sort of thinking I actually had in my middle elementary years.  I remember as a kid thinking that maybe I would some day run for president.  In third grade my teacher asked the class who wanted to be president some day.  I was surprised when I was one of only four or five in a class of twenty-five who raised their hands.

I remember ticking off the requirements as a kid.  I was born in Arizona, so I met the most obvious requirement.  I knew I'd be an ancient thirty-five some day, so I'd meet that requirement one day.  Everything necessary to become president checked out.  Well, everything checked out except money and the depth of my ambition.

Now, at my current age, I wonder why anyone would possibly want to be president for one very important reason—foreign policy.  Domestic policy is polarizing and a political tightrope walk, but it is far more comparatively easy.  Foreign policy is a loser's game now matter how it's played.  In foreign policy the choice is rarely between the good and bad option, but rather a selection of whatever horrid option is the least so.

How bad are the options?  Most significant decisions will result in people dying or being badly injured.  Everyone seems to have opinions about what the obvious solution is to certain issues, and they are almost always stupid, because sometimes there aren't any good options.  It is frequently difficult to tell the difference between a mistake, a tactical decision, and treason.  The nation-states you are dealing with are largely run by the most intelligently psychopathic people on earth.  Decisions have to be made based on incomplete or inaccurate intelligence.  Success usually depends on implementation details that are completely out of your control.  Every decision is a gamble, and every decision is a gamble with huge consequences for failure.  What's not to love?

I cannot fathom wanting to be the person who has to decide whether to deploy a nuke.  I cannot fathom wanting to be the person who has to decide what level of existential threat necessitates torture.  I cannot fathom wanting to be the person who has to decide whether to embroil the nation in a military quagmire to stop an impending genocide.  I cannot fathom constantly dealing with hostage situations with terrorist groups.  Why would you wish that on yourself?  What sort of person thinks that is something worth pursuing?  Losing a presidential election must be such a gift in disguise.

the agreeable idiot

This is a short post as I do not intend to call anyone out and this is not really about a specific person or incident.  It's just something that gives a hint to what's important to me.

Possibly the thing that annoys me more than anything else is when I find that I agree with someone and that someone is either obnoxious or an idiot.  When it happens in matters like politics or philosophy it makes me feel equally unpleasant or stupid.  When it happens in matters of faith my core is rocked in a way that few things can affect me.  I typically feel a bit betrayed in that moment.

I know I am being hypocritical because I have been obnoxious and I have been stupid many times throughout my life.  I am sure I have made many, many people cringe and feel intellectually betrayed throughout my life.  Even so, these situations bother me deeply when they happen to me.

So, if everyone could decide to disagree with me when they are feeling particularly unpleasant or unwise, that would be great.  I'll do my best to disagree with you when I sense I'm coming across as belligerent and unintelligent, and we'll call things even.

all that jazz

For one reason or another, one data point that some people have determined is valuable in determining whether someone else is intelligent or has artistic taste is what that person's opinion of Jazz music is.  If you can appreciate Jazz it somehow establishes that your brain works in ways that are superior to normal brains in certain functions.  Perhaps this is true, but if that is the case I cannot count myself among those superior thinkers.  I simply do not like Jazz music.

The reasons for my disinterest in Jazz are numerous and detailed below.

Jazz is played in 7th chords.  I do not generally like 7th chords.  An example of what I am talking about is below.



Jazz focuses on improvisation.  This shows up both in the instrumentals and in "scat," which most people know is the "boop-diddy-bebop" that some singers throw into the improvisational sections of songs.  All of this improvisation sounds random, as it is supposed to.  I think this randomness and unpredictability is appealing to a lot of people, but it does not do anything for me.

One of the main instruments utilized in Jazz is the saxophone, and for reasons that I cannot currently articulate, this is one of my least favorite instruments.  I think I have a weird mental association with the instrument because I largely find saxophone music to either be depressing or boring.

Finally, and probably more importantly, Jazz is different from most other forms of music in that there is little or no focus on resolution.  Most music follows a pattern of question and answer.  Two or more musical phrases will be put together where the first phrase or group of phrases builds tension, like a question in verbal communication, and the final phrase will resolve the tension by concluding on a note or chord that answers the previous question.  So, where most music sounds to my mind like a question and response, Jazz sounds to me like a run-on sentence that, even for its length, never completes its thought.

I am sure that a lot of my distaste has to do with the fact that I have not put enough effort into understanding Jazz to appreciate it.  I do think that I have some valid perspectives for an art form that is intended to be subjective anyway, though.  Sometimes people are just not wired to be able to enjoy specific things.

six-word stories

Ernest Hemmingway once wrote the following six-word story on a challenge.

"For sale: baby shoes, never used."

The six word story sounds like a conquerable challenge to be sure, but this example illustrates what is involved for a good submission.  How do you place so much back story into so few words?  The sentence has to be structured in a way that pushes the reader to fill in the blanks, and in this case most of the blanks are filled in and they are all sad.  In Hemmingway's story, the classified ad device perfectly trims what would otherwise be sentences to six words.  Honestly, seven words would be orders of magnitude easier.

A few I thought of, but don't quite provide the back story depth that Hemmingway was able to generate are below.  Like Hemmingway's example, they are mostly a bit dark.  That's more indicative to what makes an interesting story than how dark my thinking is, though.

"Meet John, my twin half-brother."
"We danced under mushroom cloud lighting."
"Mute button broke. Now seeking employment."
"Neighbor found dead after eight weeks."
"She got Draco in the divorce."
"Vegetarian salad, please. Also, steak. Rare."
"Eviction: three days. Death in four."
"My love concurred all. Couldn't disagree."
"Not interested in interest. Soon bankrupt."
"She was a rock. He paper."
"Pyrrhic victory. Opponent's suffering exceeds mine."
"He on one knee. She gone."
"Doppelganger not the evil twin. Surprise!"
"One sacrifice required: everything. Now complete."

There are some decent submissions here, and most are far beyond what I have written. Do you have any ideas for a six-word story?

goals in marriage

This indirectly builds off a short post from earlier about communication in marriage.

I should note that this is not about some specific discussion or argument that Golden and I are having.  This is about me reflecting on how our approaches and motivations have been very different throughout our lives together, and we have not always identified that fact.

When I was seventeen, a Holiness pastor and general contractor I worked for told me something that irritated me at the time, but I have grown to understand.  He told me that romantic relationships at my age at the time were unwise because someone that age doesn't even know what he wants.  While I believe that God intentionally designed people to be very interested in the opposite sex at that time in life, I think my former boss was right about not knowing what you want at that stage of life.

I think the most difficult lesson that I have learned in marriage that has been that different people have different goals in life, and aligning them can be difficult or impossible.  It sounds so straightforward and easy to address, right?  Goals seem like obvious things that can be discussed with a future spouse and potential landmines diffused very early in the relationship.  It isn't so simple, though.  Goals like wanting a house or a certain number of kids by a certain age, or to make a certain amount of money or to own certain big-ticket items are only the tip of the iceberg when compared to the wants and motivations from which they are derived.

I'll pick an example that doesn't apply to Golden and me.  A couple may agree that they want to buy a house by a specific age.  While it will appear to both parties that they are in significant agreement, there is still far more not agreed on than agreed on.  What type of house do you agree you are going to buy?  Does one spouse want to buy a fixer-upper and fix it up and the other not want to spend the time?  Does one spouse prefer to spend on form and the other to spend on function?  Do the spouses agree on how much they will put down and who is ultimately responsible for coming up with the down payment, mortgage, upkeep, insurance, and taxes?  Does one spouse expect new furniture and decorations for the new house?  How hard and fast is that age limit?

This is only scratching the surface, but where one spouse assumes that they agreed to a smaller house with a big yard and a two-car garage that both spouses would work to save on until they got a 50% down payment even if it takes a few more years, the other might think they agreed to buying a split-level in a specific color with four bedrooms, two baths, and a good-sized kitchen with a 10% down payment or whatever they happen to have in savings at the age in question.  No one is more at fault than another in this scenario, but all of these little assumptions that one party had that the other did not will lead to both parties feeling like the other is not holding up their end of the agreement.  "He said we could buy a house when I turned thirty," and/or, "She said we would both sacrifice until we could afford a nice house," will lead to arguments and resentment.

So, all we need to do is be ultra-detailed in laying out our life goals, then come to a consensus about how to get there, right?  That's much better than before, but it's still not enough.

As I noted before, at least in my personal experience, even when you know what you want in life, you don't really know what you want in life.  You may think you want to be rich, but what you really want is peace, and what is necessary to reach a specific salary by a specific age causes more net anxiety than being moderately poor.  You may think you want to have a house full of kids, but you really are just drawn to always nurturing a baby, and when your kids get older you feel less fulfilled and more and more exhausted.  You may think you want to continue learning or improve your marketability, but you really want the honor and respect that comes from a graduate-level degree and letters after your name.  The long and short of it is that if you do not really know what you want your spouse does not know either, and any discussion about life goals without self-awareness is going to be incomplete.

Another pitfall is that it is easy to ignore potential differences in what you want in everyday life because any rational person would agree that it's important.  This is where I place the whole women want to talk about their day and men want to mentally shut down at the end of their day.  She thinks that, of course, any rational person would want to talk about their day; and he thinks that, of course, any rational person would want some down time. Any rational person would agree that spending time with the kids is more important than working overtime, and any rational person would agree that working overtime to pay the mortgage to put a roof over the kids' head is more important than a game of catch.  Any rational person would lease a car so as to always be able to drive something nice and classy, and any rational person would purchase and own a car for ten years or more to avoid constant car payments.  Any rational person would agree with you about a plethora of things.

Something further that I am still grasping is that, while spouses should work on goals together, it is not one spouse' responsibility to assure that the other spouse's goals are all met.  This is hard for me for a number of reasons, some of them rational and some not.  It seems to make sense that if you put all of your relational eggs in one basket for life, so to say, that the other person has some responsibility to help you be fulfilled, but this can in reality be a horrible burden to place on someone and a horrible burden to accept.  Some life goals simply are not possible, or impose too great a burden on the spouse or family.  Some goals will be mutually exclusive with the other spouse's goals.

All of this comes back to the inability to communicate when you are both speaking different languages, and the importance of learning the other person's language.  I think that God devised relationships in this way to help us grow in ways that we could not otherwise, and the effort necessary to learn the other person's perspective and language is a big part of that growing process.  Either that, or all of this relational confusion exists for His amusement.  I'm going with the first option, though.

the good and bad from yoda

If you know any of the quotes from Star Wars' Yoda, these should be familiar.  They're the two that stuck with me the most since I heard them, and I had a negative reaction to both.  Obviously, Yoda's character was not written to align with my personal beliefs and doctrines.  However, after much consideration I was able to conclude that I was wrong about one quote and right about the other in light of my understanding of Scripture.

The Good: Fear, Anger, Hate...

"Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."

When I first heard this I kind of wrote it off as standard Eastern philosophy, but there is more Biblical here than I would like to admit.  Even before looking at Scripture, the Fear → Anger → Hate linkage is fairly obvious.  Most acts of hate can be traced back through anger issues to fear.  Looking at Scripture, though, puts this in a new light.

Fear (other than fear of God) is a sign of a lack of trust in God.  Godly love does not coexist with fear.

"There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love."

- 1 John 4:18

The purpose of Yoda's statement is indeed far different from John's.  Yoda is pointing to the danger he sees in a specific character's future and the political and physical implications of that danger.  In context, John is providing an internal litmus test for whether someone truly has God's love.

The Bad: There is no try

"No, do or do not.  There is no try."

I think this is supposed to make sense in the context of the force, but I have never been sure.  Regardless, this philosophy is a perfectionist's recipe for disaster.  The sort of person who takes, "there is no try," to heart is the sort for whom effort is of no value and only results matter.  That sort of person is a nightmare to appease, and I would suspect is a nightmare to be as well.

An observant person might make the argument that we are to be perfect in the same way that God is (Matt 5:48), and so this idea of results being what matters is right.  Another observant person might point out that God performs the work in us (Phil 1:6), and so the idea that we can try to be better is futile.  I would respond that our path to perfection is one during which we are still imperfect, and that the work in us is incomplete, so the best we can do is live from the level that God has helped us reach.  Beyond that, we try to emulate the examples we are given with God's help and mercy.

"Only let us live up to what we have already attained. Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you"

- Phil 3:16-17

The Ugly

"When 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not "

Ha!

As a final note, it is a little bothersome that the same person who voices Yoda also does Fozzie Bear's voice.  I keep expecting a, "wocka, wocka," after everything Yoda says.  Annoying it can be.

temptation

Recent news regarding research performed at the USC Marshall School of Business indicates that positive reinforcement is more effective at getting people to avoid temptation than guilt. It doesn't sound like the research was extremely thorough, but the conclusions make a lot of sense to me.

An example of this that was mentioned in the story dealt with people's ability to resist eating cake. Three different groups of people were left in a room individually with a piece of cake and told they that they could eat it if they wanted to. One group was informed that they should contemplate their pride at resisting this temptation, one group was informed that they should contemplate their shame at eating the cake, and one group was the control group who did not receive positive or negative reinforcement. The group of people who were told to contemplate their pride at resisting temptation did better than the other groups, especially the one told to focus on shame.

The article gives three reasons why guilt is ineffective.

1. Guilt focuses thoughts on the temptation rather than on self-control. If you're thinking a lot about the object of your temptation you are more likely to cave to the temptation.
2. Guilt makes you feel bad in general, and this damages your resolve to fight the temptation.
3. Guilt makes the tempting thing seem more pleasurable, and therefore makes it more difficult to resist.

This aligns well with how I have learned that you are supposed to guide small children to right and wrong. For example, rather than yelling at your kids not to run inside, it is better to tell them that they should walk. This concept is very difficult for me to implement as a parent because I don't always know what behavior I want in my kids as quickly as what behavior I don't want. This concept goes further than parenting; though, and seems like it is very relevant to addictions.

I have never been to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, but if the movies are to be believed, people who share with the group tend to open with a positive: "Hi, my name is Dust and I am an alcoholic. I have been alcohol-free for seven months." While it may sound like a downer, the focus is on acceptance within the group despite your weaknesses, and pride in the success of resisting temptation for a period of time. Obviously, there is more to Alcoholics Anonymous than this, but if the meetings consisted merely of visiting speakers berating them for their weaknesses instead of allowing people to think about their successes I'd bet it would be far less successful at what it does.

I think this points to an area where much of the church is ineffective. The churches that I am used to are good about doling out the guilt for things that are wrong. I have started asking myself the last few years whether this truly does any good, though. Certainly sin should be called sin, but if spiritual nagging makes people more apt to fall to temptation, then there has to be a more effective way of helping people get out of their addictions. Of course it is through God's strength that we have freedom from sin, but we are to help bear each others burdens (Gal 6:1-2). If that is the case, then we have a responsibility to assist in the most effective way we know how.

So, if you are helping someone avoid temptation how would you go about doing it? Here are the steps I would follow.

• Pray.
• Praise successes.
• Maintain humility throughout the process (Gal 6:3).
• Praise successes.
• Encourage the person to visualize success and imagine how good it will feel to overcome than the temptation.
• Praise successes.
• Analyze failures to see what went wrong, but don't dwell on them.
• Praise successes.
• Encourage the person to listen for the Spirit's guidance (Gal 5:16).
• Praise successes.

journey

I can't believe I was so naive when I was a teenager. How stupid I was in my early twenties. I can't believe the issues I had five years ago. It seems like as I look back in my life I always feel myself superior to my prior self and am a bit embarrassed of what a numskull I was then. To be sure, I have done, said, typed, and thought a lot of unintelligent things in my time. It seems crazy that my future self won't look back in five years and think the same thing of me now.

When I was a kid I never really appreciated the description of life as a journey. What I am today may resemble what I am tomorrow, but I am still slightly different on those two days, for better or for worse. Before, time was so short that I had not changed much. Now, I see my past (still short) life as a meandering path of discovery (and a fair amount of stupidity). People who knew me at one stage of that path might not really know me now.

When I hear anecdotes about famous or non-famous people or read what they wrote or said, I don't always appreciate the context of where that person is in their life. Actions they may perform or positions they may take when they are at one stage in their journey may not be what they would do or believe at a different stage in their journey. Luther in 1510 was a different person from Luther in 1530. Lincoln in 1850 was a different person from Lincoln in 1865. Einstein in 1920 was a different person from Einstein in 1950. However, in each of these situations if I hear a quote from one of these men I expect it to be from the later version of them that has gone through the life-changing experiences rather than the less-experienced versions of themselves.

The Christian take on this is that life's journey is part of what God uses for sanctification. We're given time on earth to allow Him to break us and begin His work in us so that what we are at the end of the journey is what He intended for us to be. Christianity is not the only belief system to take into account the fact that experience changes us (for example, the Buddhist belief in slowly improving toward Nirvana is similar), but it is the only one that puts the responsibility for the changes squarely in God's hands.

The current me is still on the journey to perfection and nowhere near there. That leaves me having to look forward to the work that will be done rather than take pride in already being at the end of the journey.

structured learning

This past week I joined a few people in my church in starting a schedule of chronologically reading through the Bible in 112 days. This is something that I resisted at first, but that I decided I would start with the caveat that I would drop it if it became too much of a burden. So far the reading has been less involved than I expected, and it has required less time overall than the reading and homework I had to do most semesters when I was taking MBA classes. Life is busy, though, so I am not entirely convinced I will complete this.

The last time I tried a structured Bible reading program I was in junior high. I don't believe I finished, but my memory of the process is spotty. I have never been an extremely fast reader, and it was very hard to catch up when I got behind (which will happen at some point during every reading program if you don't read ahead). It was hard enough to focus on the content of what I was reading when I did a day's reading, but if I tried to read multiple days' worth of reading speed was a higher priority than understanding what I was reading. Even then I knew this defeated the purpose of reading through the Bible. This is a big reason why I am wary of structured reading plans.

The first time I actually read all of the way through the Bible and understood most of what I read was around my sophomore year in high school. I took more than a year going through it at that time and I used a study Bible so that I would have a better context for what I was reading. Furthermore, when I did spend a large block of time reading the Bible it was because I was interested in what I was reading rather than because I had to complete the scheduled reading for last month, so I retained what I read better. The success I saw with the more unstructured reading further influenced my opinions regarding the best way for me to read the Bible.

Because of this experience, I am actually a bit wary of the other ways that I have heard pushed to read the Bible as well. Reading the Bible a little each day is a great way to stay on top of reading if your life can be structured in that way. I think that saying that that is the standard for Bible reading is ridiculous, though. Bible reading is important if it is effective, and if a specific structure or plan for reading the Bible does not work for someone then pushing it on them is not helpful. It will only discourage them from reading Scripture in the future.

Ultimately, the reason I decided on this Bible reading plan was that I found I was coming up with excuses not to read a lot of the passages in the Old Testament, so I figured if I had the motivation of discussing what I was reading with others who were reading it the reading might not be so much of a burden. I do not want to diminish the value of the Old Testament, but much of it can be dry and difficult to trudge through, such as Exodus, Leviticus, and stretches of the two books of Chronicles (which open with nine solid chapters of genealogies).

I found a story in the New York Times today that I felt paralleled this a bit. The College Board is in the process of revising the coursework associated with advanced placement classes because some of the classes had so much material the classes were more focused on memorization than discovery. If you know my philosophy on education, which was formed based on experiences like what I just described, you know that I like these changes. Allowing the student to learn through self-directed means rather than forcing him or her through a rigid set of steps will ultimately cause that student to retain more knowledge and discover how to learn new things. For people like myself, if you take the discovery process from Scripture reading, then they will not want to read it and they will only learn what they have to. That is true for all other learning as well.

how not to review

I spent a couple of hours this weekend doing something I truly enjoy—reorganizing and cleaning up my Netflix queue. When I do that I typically glance through user reviews of some of the movies that I am on the fence about to see if I can get an indication if I would like the movie. Very frequently there is a review that provides very good details about why I personally would or would not like a movie. There are a few things that show up quite a bit that are less than helpful to me, though.

No Reasoning

Why do people think a review that basically says, "This is the greatest film ever," or, "They should have shot everyone involved in this film," but says little more is worth publishing? Tell me why you loved or hated the movie so I know if I am likely to agree or disagree.

Arrogance with Vagueness

A few reviews are kind of preachy regarding the type of movie the reviewer seems to think I should want to watch. The following is not copied from any specific review, but it could be.

"This is an intelligent film that takes its time to develop the plot and the characters, unlike a lot of the more popular mass market films that are nothing more than special effects. If you need an explosion every five minutes, then this movie is not for you."

Aside from the reviewer sounding arrogant, all I get from the review is that the pacing is slow and it may or may not be due to something that I care about. I want characters to be developed, but I don't want two hours of poorly-paced back story for a 135-minute movie. The following would be a better review.

"This movie is not for everyone because it is paced a bit more slowly than the average. While most of the slow pacing was necessary, there were two or three scenes that were unnecessary to the storyline. This did not bother me because I appreciated that they erred on providing too much detail about the main character rather than not enough. It was the right decision because the story is character-driven rather than effects-driven."

The above review is better because it tells me what I need to know. If the movie description sounds interesting I can get through the three pointless scenes without irritation. If it doesn't, I will probably be put off by having to watch meaningless scenes.

Not Scary

I like a lot of movies in the horror genre, but it splits about 50/50. I am interested in movies that have twisting or intelligent plot lines, and about half of horror movies fit into this mold. I do not really care one way or the other whether a movie is scary or gory, so when people use that as their only criteria it is not useful for me. I know I shouldn't complain about this for horror movies, but people do this for other genres such as thrillers as well.

Political, Religious, or Philosophical Reasoning

This does not happen too much, but sometimes people review a movie based on whether they agree with the message or not. This is not typically helpful, except in very narrow genres like Christian documentary.

Have not Watched the Movie

This is the most surprising. I hate when I see a review that says something to the effect of, "I am so excited that I am going to see this movie next week." No one cares about that.

Attractiveness of Actors/Actresses

That I can recall, I have never watched a movie because I thought someone in the movie was attractive. I would rather watch a movie with a plot I liked but with ugly stars than with a lousy plot and attractive stars.

Disc Was Damaged

I understand why someone would be irritated that they got a cracked or scratched disc and want to take it out on someone. It really only hurts other users who are looking for valid reviews to post a review that simply whines about getting a bad copy of the movie, though.

I am sure there are more, but those are the pet peeves I have had tonight.

penguins and polar bears

Several years ago some of my coworkers and their spouses played Cranium at a casual get together. One of the guys I worked with at the time, and someone who was generally very intelligent, had to answer a true/false question that asked roughly, "Do polar bears eat penguins?" He said they did not and provided an elaborate explanation. If I remember correctly, his reasoning was that penguins are protective of their young and travel in groups, so that they would be dangerous to hunt. While he was correct that polar bears do not hunt penguins his reasoning was faulty. The real reason is that polar bears live in the Northern Hemisphere and penguins live in the Southern Hemisphere. The phrase, "Penguins and polar bears," immediately became metaphor in my office for being right despite faulty logic, and I have come to love the concept.

One application of the concept is intellectual. Is a person who has a lot of the right answers, but who makes a lot of logical mistakes intelligent? What if that person is right only because he or she learns the right people to listen to even if he or she does not properly understand those intelligent peoples' logic? Is this person intelligent or not?

One application of the concept is ethical. For example, can a person with seemingly random ethical code be considered ethical for rightly considering murder wrong if he or she has no solid rationale for that belief? To further illustrate this, if a person decided that shooting people at close range was wrong because there is a chance that a splatter of blood will stain his or her clothes, is this person thinking ethically in that he or she believes that shooting someone at close range is wrong? Is the entire value of an ethical code the actual rules or is there significant value in the rationales behind the rules?

One application of the concept that I have posted on before is spiritual. If someone has faith in what is true for all of the wrong reasons is it true faith? As an extension of this question, is it inevitable that the person's false reasoning will undo his or her faith?

There are other applications as well, but they all boil down to the value of the work to get the answer versus the accuracy of the answer. I value the work more, but maybe that is so I can justify being wrong on occasion.

intelligence and religion

"I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure." - Jesus Christ (Matt 11:25-26)

"Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him." - Paul (1 Cor 1:26-29)

A recent study established a correlation between higher intelligence as measured by IQ and the belief that there is no God. As someone who believes very strongly in God and who cares probably too deeply about intelligence, this was definitely something that I had to give some thought. Things that I think about have a strange tendency to show up on this site, so here it is.

There is one thing that I believe should be noted before I go much further. One of the sacrifices that God expects is the willingness to be considered a fool. I know of no place in Scripture where having a reputation for intelligence is portrayed as Godly. There are places where we are instructed to be wise and intelligent. The difference is that wisdom as detailed by Scripture may not have an actual correlative relationship with intelligence as it is popularly measured. This is part of why I included the Scripture passages above in this post.

There are actually two things that I should note now that I think about it. Statistically speaking, using a mean score is often a great way to skew results. For example, at the time of this writing Wolphram Alpha has the mean income for an individual in the U.S. at $43,460, but the median as $33,190. What accounts for the difference? In this case, the mean is skewed by all of the income made by billionaires and multi-millionaires, but the fact that there are relatively few of them keeps them from strongly impacting the median, so the median is more representative of the population as a whole. Likewise, I expect that the ultimate explanation for the IQ difference is simply that only a minuscule percentage of the very low IQ people are atheists and the rest of the very low IQ people drag down the mean IQ score for those who believe in a god. I would bet that a difference would exist in the median scores, but that it would be notably lower than the difference in the mean scores.

While I am sure there are more, I can think of two potential reasons that atheists and agnostics would score higher on IQ tests. The first potential reason is that the tests are imperfect and incomplete measures of intelligence and the second potential reason is that people who believe in God tend to skew less logical.

Argument #1: IQ Tests Are Imperfect

While IQ tests have correlation to intelligence, I do believe that they are imperfect gauges of intelligence. For one, there are too many types of intelligence for any one test to properly capture. One person I spoke to over the summer while Golden and I were on vacation talked about working at Sandia National Laboratories. He joked about how some of the people there with PhDs could understand Quantum Physics but lacked the practical knowledge to tie their shoes. How do you measure those different types of intelligence? Is the PhD really smarter on the important measures, whatever they may be? Just because the PhD understands abstract concepts better, does that make him or her more qualified to know whether there is a god than the average Joe or Jane?

Also, the results of all tests are colored by any number of factors. For example, I would suspect that visual learners would do better on an IQ test than an auditory learner would. If there are multiple people in the room where the test is given people who have anxiety issues or who have ADHD may score lower than they should for their intelligence level. People who prepare for the test and have a strategy would probably score higher than those who do not, even though those factors may not be strong indicators of relevant intelligence.

Finally, I do not know my own IQ, but I am sure that my score would benefit from the fact that I have always been a good test-taker. If someone is not a good test-taker, he or she will not get the score boost that I would get. This is a natural weakness for any test in properly grading someone's intelligence.

Probably the strongest argument that IQ tests are imperfect are is that there are statistical differences between how people in different ethnic groups perform on the tests. At the least, it should give us pause that a statistically significant number of people of certain ethnicities score higher than people of other ethnicities. If it is bigoted to use IQ tests to assert that one race is less intelligent than people of another (which I believe it is), then it is bigoted to use the IQ tests to assert that people of one religious persuasion are less intelligent than people of another religious persuasion (or lack thereof).

Argument #2: People Who Believe in God Skew Less Logical

Remember that I am a Christian as you read this.

There are a few reasons why people who refuse to believe in God would skew more logical. For one, more people today grew up with parents who believed in a god of some sort than grew up with parents who did not. It takes a certain baseline of logic to reject the foundational religious beliefs that you grew up with, so that means that the people at the very lowest end of the IQ spectrum are most likely to believe what their parents believed. They in turn will drag down the average IQ score for people who believe in God (remember, mean versus median).

Second, a huge reason that someone would become atheist or agnostic is because they cannot find enough empirical evidence that God exists. Scientific types, who would be expected to have higher IQs on average, want to have extensive proof for what they believe in, and the evidence for God is not empirical evidence. God is discovered spiritually or relationally rather than empirically.

Third, in many religious circles an inquisitive mind is a liability rather than an asset. High IQ people are most often inquisitive types who want to challenge things to determine truth. The natural questioning that an inquisitive person will do is rarely encouraged in religious settings unless very specific bounds are placed on the questioning. Many inquisitive people eventually determine that they don't fit in with people who believe in God as they seem more interested in maintaining the status quo than in understanding truth, and so they leave to prop up the IQs of those who do not believe.

Conclusion

In the end, I think there are a lot of little reasons for the IQ difference, but I think the biggest is an issue of self-selection. People tend to congregate with and share the beliefs of those who are like them.

While I do think this study is an indictment of the anti-intellectualism that pervades a lot of elements of the church, our wisdom is supposed to be the kind that comes from God, which often will not show up on an IQ test. God's wisdom is about trusting Him and a high IQ is about which object is the next in the sequence. They just don't always relate to each other.

Update (10/5/2010): There is one further point that I cannot believe that I missed, but could have a strong effect on the average IQ scores for those who believe in a god or the God. Religions, and Christianity in particular, actively target groups of people who are likely to have low average IQs. This is partly because those are the people most likely to be in need. This is also partly because it is easier to create a tract that targets the lowest common denominator than it is to truly tackle difficult issues.