kids these days

I've heard several people near my age make negative observations about younger generations.  I'm talking about the typical, "Kids these days just don't have to go through what we did," to, "Those lazy Millennials don't know how to hold down a job."  I don't understand when I hear this.  A mere decade or two ago people were saying this about this individual and his or her generation, but now he or she is willing to forget that and do the same to a younger generation?

I may have shared this before, but one incident from my teenage years that has stuck with me was an interaction I had with someone when I was working in a grocery store.  One of the jobs that needed to be done some nights was to vacuum up the carpet in the main entryway, and that night this was one of my responsibilities.  A guy who was probably in his fifties walked by and asked if I ever vacuumed at home.  I acknowledged that I sometimes did, and he responded that he thought I was lying.  He had three or four kids and none of them ever vacuumed at home.  Then he made some comment about kids today being lazy and walked out with a demeanor that indicated he had made the point he intended to make.

Obviously, this guy was not representative of fifty-something-year-old guys.  He was obviously bothered about something else that was happening in his life (or had already happened) and found this an easy situation to—well, I'm still not sure how to properly finish that sentence.  I had more than my share of faults, and it was true that I was not keen on doing chores, but vacuuming is about the easiest of the chores there are to complete.  I couldn't believe that he singled me out on that one specifically.  If you're going to call me lazy call me out for a chore that there's a solid chance that I don't actually do.

I actually didn't take it too personally.  I had a solid reputation around the store as a hard worker so I didn't need this guy's validation.  I did get irritated that he would judge my entire generation so quickly, however.  What bothered me the most was that he did not see that what he said was more an indictment on his ability to parent than it was on my generation.  I personally worked with both hard workers and sluggards in my age range in that store already, so I knew both existed.  Even then I figured that, if this guy's experience with teenagers had been exclusively bad, his problem was probably with the man in the mirror.

If I am ever tempted to make generalizations about people in another generation as I age, either older or younger, I always remember that guy walking out of the grocery store attempting to give a seventeen-year-old kid what-for.  Is what I have to say about kids these days (or maybe about septuagenarians these days) going to sound like that man's words?  If so, is that an opinion worth holding, let alone sharing?

I will sometimes point out something about my kids' childhoods that makes theirs easier than mine.  I will with regularity note that I don't get music/humor/movies that is popular (or was popular) in specific decades.  I will often have a hard time connecting with people from specific generations.  However, I will not make sweeping statements about people of a certain age.  I will not do it now, in twenty years, or in fifty years.  This is something that I am committing to now, and it is a standard that I expect to hold myself to forever.  As such, I will always be a little uncomfortable when I hear others making those statements in my company.

the real facebook temptation

Facebook is a constant siren.  Not just to check everyone's statuses, though that is tempting too.  No, Facebook constantly taunts me to jump into debates that will ultimately be meaningless.

It comes at me from all angles.  I see absurdities in all sorts of bold positions that people take, but my fatal flaw is that I don't usually see the absurdities in my own positions.  "Of course that's a ludicrous position to take," I think as I start whipping out a brilliantly witty remark at my friend's (or worse, a friend of my friend's) expense.  Then, I usually (and thankfully) realize that maybe I shouldn't comment like that.  At first it's usually out of concern for the obvious faux pas, but then it starts impossibly sinking in that maybe I'm also somewhat wrong.  Maybe my comment isn't as bulletproof as I am imagining it to be, impossible as it seems right now.

Many times I have dialed myself back in time to avoid being, if only temporarily, yet one more idiot shouting an opinion on Facebook.^*  While I do not always feel in my gut it is the right decision at the time I always feel that it was a day or two later.  Sometimes with my bolder friends I don't dial myself back as much as I should.  The only times that I don't feel bad about that later are when I was correcting obvious and egregious doctrinal errors from a proclaiming Christian.  That caveat scenario doesn't happen too often.

So, why is that temptation always there?  I know better.  I just don't know better in the moment.

^* I'll always be an idiot shouting an opinion here. 

inevitable failure

One of the main topics in the news lately has been the troubled roll-out of the healthcare.gov website that is the main portal for people in the thirty-six states that did not create portals of their own. Amid all of the grandstanding, excuses, and political showmanship from both the Right and the Left on this I have one question that keeps coming up in my mind. Wasn't this to be expected with a major website roll-out?

I understand as I am reading news reports that most people have not been a part of a major IT roll-out like the healthcare.gov website.  A significant minority of the population has, though, and the news reports are notably silent on the inevitability of these outages which should be obvious to anyone who has taken part in them.  Simply put, large IT projects with immovable release dates, extraordinary load requirements, and multiple complex inputs do not usually roll out successfully on the first try.  Many times I have seen roll-outs pushed back months due to unforeseen circumstances, and with a complex roll-out it is almost guaranteed that something unforeseen will occur.

As I have been reading over the last year about the impending go-live date for the website I was always inwardly thankful that I was not involved with what was obviously going to be a failed release.  The idea that major bugs would be addressed, security and load testing completed, and all of the unforeseeable issues that plague any roll-out by a very public unchangeable date was absurd.

While there will be calls for heads to roll, and many probably will, this whole thing smacks of a misunderstanding of how major websites are rolled out.  Few of the people sacked or called out publicly will have deserved it.  This was a failure in the planning stages of the project, and it will be the implementers who take the heat.  That is typically how the project blame game works.

If there is a lesson to be learned it is that something like this should be slowly phased in, lessons learned, then changes made based on those lessons.  The website target date should have been July so that necessary changes could be made when the roll-out inevitably failed.  Those running the project could have crowd-sourced the testing process and had individual volunteers try to overload and break the system, then used that feedback to know which issues needed addressing.  Also, to reduce load, the thirty-six states portals could have been phased in week-by-week.

That's just me being an armchair IT guy, though.

sports praise

As a full disclosure before I get into this I want to note that there are a handful of famous athletes that I look up to, so I'm a bit of a hypocrite with what I am about to say.  One justification for this is that in most cases I do not admire an individual simply for his athletic ability.

Women are judged by their appearance, and men are judged by what they accomplish.  Neither of these are right, but both will be the way things are for a long while.

I have been astonished by the number of people I have seen lately who have gone out of their way to lavish praise on specific sports players in ways that they might not do the same for a Joe nobody.  This has been especially noticeable with Mariano Rivera retiring, Peyton Manning having a career year, and a lot of people wanting to compare Michael Jordan to LeBron James as of late.  While the players praised play at a level that indeed requires incredible dedication, I have to believe this praise is somewhat absurd.

Are any of these people ever going to hear most of the accolades bestowed upon them?  They'll hear a tiny percentage of it for sure, but is there any real value in arguing about who the best basketball player in recent history is or waxing eloquently over a quarterback who impresses you?  Ultimately, it is pontificating about arbitrary information that does not meaningfully affect anyone in earshot.

I have been thinking about this due to the value statement I opened this post with.  Those sports figures are valued because of what they have accomplished (and may still accomplish) through their physical and mental abilities, as well as their willingness to train, and due to the efforts of countless coaches.  Does that change their value as people, though?  Is Peyton Manning worth more than a gas station attendant because one has accomplished a lot in the sports field and the other works a low-prestige job?  Would I be as excited to have the gas station worker's signature or autograph as Manning's?

I am sure that the allure of celebrity is relevant in every culture, but I believe in the West we especially look up to sports figures because we value individual accomplishment in men.  While you have to have won the genetic lottery to have a chance at being a professional athlete, you also typically have to have a strong work ethic to succeed.  Since everyone knows that great effort is necessary to perform at that level it makes those sorts of celebrities admirable.

The same sort of thing happens with women as well, but in regard to appearance.  As an example, Marylin Monroe gets quoted a fair bit, but few would have originally cared about her were it not for her appearance.

My real point is simply that I wonder if the human tendency to praise celebrities more than everyday people points to a deeper issue that we as humans do not know how to value ourselves or others appropriately.  There are some really valuable people in low places, and athletic ability and looks seems like a lousy measure for determining how valuable they really are.

80/20

I have often heard the 80/20 rule referenced in several different contexts, and mostly where most work is voluntary, but especially in church.  Twenty percent of the congregants do eighty percent of the work I've been told many times.  This may be true, but I think there's more to it.  I think my own personal experiences in college mirror what causes the 80/20 phenomena.


Partly due to a scholarship I had, partly due to a sense that I would need school activities on a resume one day, and partly due to a need I had at the time to feel important, I became overly involved on campus.  I had a work-study job, as many did, but was also involved with student government, residence hall government, leadership in my dorm floor, a weekly weather report for the school newspaper, and a few other things, all while maintaining a serious relationship with Golden.  For a while I did not know how to tell someone, "no," if they wanted me to contribute effort to something.  One specific semester I was in danger of losing my largest school scholarship when my GPA slipped simply because I was at my physical limit of what I could do.  I learned a lot about priorities during those years.

After that experience of being close to burnout for an extended period of time I became more willing turn down activities.  As an ardent introvert, I have struggled with where the line is and so have gone through busy and non-busy stretches.

I see the same behavior at work in church and in other volunteer situations.  It is not that twenty percent of the people are doing eighty percent of the work.  It is that twenty percent of the people are doing the work right now, and a huge portion of the other people are actively removing themselves from activities after having been burned out by being part of the twenty percent at some time in the past.  For whatever reason, volunteer situations cause people to get overworked when they have volunteered, and somehow encourage the view that, "I've put in my time."

Right now I feel on the busier side at church since I teach a class and do a few other things, but I have actively resisted a few different opportunities, and I suspect that I will actively resist others.  I know others who were very involved, got burned out, and completely and utterly removed themselves from teaching and administrative responsibilities as a result.  Maybe if I don't try to do too much I will not feel like I need a sabbatical from all responsibility in short order.

Perhaps organizations that rely on volunteers could learn from this and manage their resources more effectively so that the 80/20 rule doesn't have to continue being a thing.

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.