Anderson, South Carolina
Throughout the world each year many of us become the least bit hopeful; wondering if this is the year Christmas finally ‘sticks’, if animosity, ego, willfulness, and violence of body and soul will finally be set aside for a better way. Epic tales abound from the harsh winter of 1914 in which trench warfare was set aside in the conflict devastating Europe. Soldiers tentatively emerged from their fox holes, wondering if this was going to be the year. Alas, command powers demanded soldiers return to the trenches, retake their arms, and continue killing those with whom they so recently celebrated Christmas. Some refused. Each year millions of churches try to add their tiny bit of polish to the luster of Christmas’ evanescent patina on our world.
Throughout chronicles of church history we find countless disquieting examples of violence being exacted upon others for the sin of thinking differently, for having different values. Great ‘heroes’ of the faith did everything from killing Irish women and children in the pillages of Cromwell to the gross betrayal and extirpation of the Aztec culture by Cortez, all in the name of some form of higher purer religion. Alas, one can easily second guess if religious practice in any form has positive net effect on our troubled world. There’s an ever-growing number of Westerners who doubt it. Plenty of Easterners are certain violent eradication of Western infidels will bring world peace, once everyone thinks and believes alike. Bifurcation of thought is rending the world into shreds of violence.
Here on the first day of the liturgical New Year, I again wondered, tentatively, if this is the year Christmas finally ‘sticks’, if animosity, ego, willfulness, and violence of body and soul will finally be set aside for a better way. On the first Sunday of Advent I wonder if Christmas is mostly myth, a hoped for re-emergence of Brigadoon from the dust of time. Will we move past the insane frenetic liturgical retailing of Jesus, instead granting the gifts of peace and serenity to one another? Will we embrace diversity of thought and sing carols of good will to each other, in the trenches of secular consumer life? At the end of the day, my optimism is feeling oxidized by strong whiffs of skepticism.
The powers that be in my church decided to celebrate the Advent season with a small exhibition of artwork created by parishioners. This montage of photographs, paintings, and drawings depicts The Peaceable Kingdom. In the ancient writings of Isaiah one finds in the ninth chapter a captivating image of life when Christmas finally ‘sticks’, when animosity, ego, willfulness, and violence of body and soul are set aside for a better way. The world is described as a place of ever increasing peace, justice and righteousness. Given what current events tell us this seems more the stuff of fantasy writers than crafters of inspired scriptures.
On this first day of Advent I made it my plan to contribute several bucolic images to the admixture hanging in the parish hall. While there I was to learn this is probably not the year Christmas finally ‘sticks’, when animosity, ego, willfulness, and violence of body and soul will finally be set aside for a better way. In the midst of casual conversation with parishioners pre-occupied with building advent wreaths, I was hanging my contributions to The Peaceable Kingdom. In the midst of this benign activity, violence was exacted upon me for the sin of thinking differently, for having different values. A casual comment from me about the folly of using legalized gambling as a way of supplying the public purse in the midst of declining tax revenues brought about a vitriolic outburst on the part of a parishioner that was stupefying in its spiritual and emotional violence. Was this really happening here in the parish hall of my little church on the first Sunday of Advent? Alas, it really was.
In a year’s time I’ve been in some of the most violent places on earth, including three cities cited by the State Department as ten places to avoid. The chaos that is the ruined capitol of Haiti, Port Au Prince is among these. Yet, in Port au Prince or in other precarious environments, I never felt violence of soul or person as I experienced this morning in our little parish hall, decorated with grand images of Peace. I was shaking like a leaf, close to meltdown. In my work this summer in at risk-environments I never once felt insecure or challenged. Is the violence exacted for my independent thinking any different than the violence exacted against Western infidels or the Aztecs? I am not thinking so.
Violence takes on many forms, some subtle, perhaps fertile ground for some of the more volcanic manifestations I seem to encounter. As one involved in community theater for years I know the dreadful feeling that comes when patrons get up and walk out on a performance, repudiating the talent and craft of those who dare to perform differently than they. It feels like an ultimate shunning, an act of violence, repudiation of everything we are about. Is it violent to walk out of a church service, leaving behind invited guests because the ‘performers’ don’t do it our way? Does legalistic adherence to one’s forms of religious practice supersede the warm accepting hospitality that might convince tentative inquirers this might be the year Christmas finally ‘sticks’, to embrace One called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God? Does insistence that others think, believe, and practice like me bring luster to Advent? I think not.
For thou shalt break the yoke of their burden and the staff on their shoulders, The rod of their oppressor, as at the battle of Midian. For every boot of the booted soldier in the battle tumult, and cloak rolled in blood, will be for burning, fuel for the fire. For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Coming Soon 11-26-10
Roper Mountain, South Carolina
As a child living in an unstable alcoholic home, we were always looking for something new, something different than drab stucco apartments to keep out the tsunami of nocturnal fears that wash over those caught up in addictions. Too many times night was ripped asunder and the revere of childhood dreams obliterated by realities of adult torments. Night time slumber still eludes me most of the time.
A bright spot in childhood was the fantasy that came with seeing a large sign declaring “Coming Soon” As a kid, not schooled in concepts of urban planning, environmental sustainability, ad infinitum, I clung to the idea something new, big, and bright was about to change my world, eclipsing our bleak stucco landscape with something epic. I still have clear recollections of stores being built near one of our non-descript apartments. Utterly entranced, I could hardly wait to walk to and from school, climbing about construction sites en route. In those days no one expressed paranoia about public liability or lawsuits. I was not taken to school in a fear-filled mini-van. No fences kept my brother and me from walking on top of sixteen-foot cinder block walls and cavorting on scaffolding. It was better than any tree house. Amazing is how much fun we had doing this and that we survived. Only once did I end up going to the hospital in a code three ambulance as a consequence of nefarious activity on the way to school.
“Coming Soon” is a declarative that something transformative is about to happen. Grocery stores, hardware stores, movie theaters, malls, most anything of a retail nature tell us life will be better and richer for their arrival in the landscape of our daily experiences. Retail anthropologists and sociologists can decide if “Coming Soon” fulfills expectation or constitutes empty promise.
One of the most powerful laments ever put to paper is King David’s Psalm 55, some three thousand years ago. In his testament to the toxic power of betrayal, he describes in vivid language premeditated efforts of his dearest friend to bring him emotional injury of the highest order. David wonders aloud how it could be that one he once held sweet conversation with, walked within God’s house in sweet fellowship with, could wage war in his heart, make his words as drawn swords, and do this evil thing to him. In the depths of despair, David wonders if life is even worth living. Those of us experiencing betrayal resonate with David’s pain. We find it surreal to think those once holding us in great affection would actually embark on a course of mutually-assured destruction. They know “Coming Soon” is about something coming our way, something anything but new, big, and bright. There is little more bitter in the human experience than betrayal. Premeditated pain is a difficult pill to swallow.
Recently I was informed of a church member’s intent to cause me premeditated pain, someone who once offered to take an important place in my life. I was told something was “Coming Soon.” I could expect verbal assault in a public meeting that would cause me emotional injury in front of my friends. As it happened I was not in the place of the intended attack and did not get waylaid. “Coming Soon” hasn’t happened, yet. Premeditation is often fired by incendiary emotions that don’t damp easily over time. It’s only a matter of time before a random encounter will allow me to experience this “Coming Soon” I’ve been promised. I have become an avid student of Psalm 55. Suddenly an ancient lament has become part of my post-atomic life. Some things never change under the sun; the nature of evil being one of them.
New Testament writers tell us of One who will be “Coming Soon”. The Apostle Paul tells us Jesus will come in the twinkling of an eye to catch us up in the air, even as a thief in the night. With no warning, no announcement board, those having placed their trust in One who can deliver shall find themselves caught up in the clouds, in a place clearly new, big, and bright.
In his dream visions on the Island of Patmos, John describes this new place in astounding terms, a city with streets of transparent gold, gates made of precious stones, a place where there’s no night, no gnashing of teeth, no tears, no death, no pain. David’s powerful lament will no longer have relevance to my life. Old things will have passed away and all things become new.
A most controversial theme in Christendom is the concept of the Rapture, of the possibility of avoiding the Tribulation. Conservative scholars interpret scriptures as foretelling a “Coming Soon” that makes my church member’s threat pale in significance. The Tribulation is described as a seven-year period during which the world will be struck with warfare and natural disasters, leaving the earth little more than a depopulated cinder, Some denominations obsess on divining the signs, attempting to deduce when this tribulation is going to take place, when the Rapture of the Saints is to occur. Many fear the Rapture will catch saintly believers in the air and leave the rest of us nefarious souls behind to suffer the agonies of the Tribulation. Countless scholars argue ‘pre’ and ‘post’ Tribulation scenarios. Some want to believe we can avoid Tribulation’s torments by right living and enjoying immediate Rapture. Others suggest we all have to go along for the ride. Others pay no attention to any of it. Many are agreed Jesus is coming soon, yet, after twenty centuries of waiting, it’s hard to know exactly what “Coming Soon” means.
What one can deduce from any interpretation of the Revelation of John or Daniel’s prophetic writings from Babylon is being circumspect about how we live our lives and how we treat those around us is of highest import. There’s simply nothing more compelling than living our lives in such a way that if “Coming Soon” happens before lunch today, we would be ready. Virtually all interpreters of scripture, of any ilk, agree these are powerful imperatives to right living. The urgency placed upon the idea of “Coming Soon” compels us to get our spiritual and relational affairs in order.
The Apostle Paul in his first letter to the church at Corinth suggest the non-negotiable nature of this imperative in stark language. He says, paraphrased, “If I do not have love, nothing else whatever counts.” There’s simply no room whatever for pre-meditated injury to others. If He’s really “Coming Soon”, I really want to be ready. Really.
Then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.
As a child living in an unstable alcoholic home, we were always looking for something new, something different than drab stucco apartments to keep out the tsunami of nocturnal fears that wash over those caught up in addictions. Too many times night was ripped asunder and the revere of childhood dreams obliterated by realities of adult torments. Night time slumber still eludes me most of the time.
A bright spot in childhood was the fantasy that came with seeing a large sign declaring “Coming Soon” As a kid, not schooled in concepts of urban planning, environmental sustainability, ad infinitum, I clung to the idea something new, big, and bright was about to change my world, eclipsing our bleak stucco landscape with something epic. I still have clear recollections of stores being built near one of our non-descript apartments. Utterly entranced, I could hardly wait to walk to and from school, climbing about construction sites en route. In those days no one expressed paranoia about public liability or lawsuits. I was not taken to school in a fear-filled mini-van. No fences kept my brother and me from walking on top of sixteen-foot cinder block walls and cavorting on scaffolding. It was better than any tree house. Amazing is how much fun we had doing this and that we survived. Only once did I end up going to the hospital in a code three ambulance as a consequence of nefarious activity on the way to school.
“Coming Soon” is a declarative that something transformative is about to happen. Grocery stores, hardware stores, movie theaters, malls, most anything of a retail nature tell us life will be better and richer for their arrival in the landscape of our daily experiences. Retail anthropologists and sociologists can decide if “Coming Soon” fulfills expectation or constitutes empty promise.
One of the most powerful laments ever put to paper is King David’s Psalm 55, some three thousand years ago. In his testament to the toxic power of betrayal, he describes in vivid language premeditated efforts of his dearest friend to bring him emotional injury of the highest order. David wonders aloud how it could be that one he once held sweet conversation with, walked within God’s house in sweet fellowship with, could wage war in his heart, make his words as drawn swords, and do this evil thing to him. In the depths of despair, David wonders if life is even worth living. Those of us experiencing betrayal resonate with David’s pain. We find it surreal to think those once holding us in great affection would actually embark on a course of mutually-assured destruction. They know “Coming Soon” is about something coming our way, something anything but new, big, and bright. There is little more bitter in the human experience than betrayal. Premeditated pain is a difficult pill to swallow.
Recently I was informed of a church member’s intent to cause me premeditated pain, someone who once offered to take an important place in my life. I was told something was “Coming Soon.” I could expect verbal assault in a public meeting that would cause me emotional injury in front of my friends. As it happened I was not in the place of the intended attack and did not get waylaid. “Coming Soon” hasn’t happened, yet. Premeditation is often fired by incendiary emotions that don’t damp easily over time. It’s only a matter of time before a random encounter will allow me to experience this “Coming Soon” I’ve been promised. I have become an avid student of Psalm 55. Suddenly an ancient lament has become part of my post-atomic life. Some things never change under the sun; the nature of evil being one of them.
New Testament writers tell us of One who will be “Coming Soon”. The Apostle Paul tells us Jesus will come in the twinkling of an eye to catch us up in the air, even as a thief in the night. With no warning, no announcement board, those having placed their trust in One who can deliver shall find themselves caught up in the clouds, in a place clearly new, big, and bright.
In his dream visions on the Island of Patmos, John describes this new place in astounding terms, a city with streets of transparent gold, gates made of precious stones, a place where there’s no night, no gnashing of teeth, no tears, no death, no pain. David’s powerful lament will no longer have relevance to my life. Old things will have passed away and all things become new.
A most controversial theme in Christendom is the concept of the Rapture, of the possibility of avoiding the Tribulation. Conservative scholars interpret scriptures as foretelling a “Coming Soon” that makes my church member’s threat pale in significance. The Tribulation is described as a seven-year period during which the world will be struck with warfare and natural disasters, leaving the earth little more than a depopulated cinder, Some denominations obsess on divining the signs, attempting to deduce when this tribulation is going to take place, when the Rapture of the Saints is to occur. Many fear the Rapture will catch saintly believers in the air and leave the rest of us nefarious souls behind to suffer the agonies of the Tribulation. Countless scholars argue ‘pre’ and ‘post’ Tribulation scenarios. Some want to believe we can avoid Tribulation’s torments by right living and enjoying immediate Rapture. Others suggest we all have to go along for the ride. Others pay no attention to any of it. Many are agreed Jesus is coming soon, yet, after twenty centuries of waiting, it’s hard to know exactly what “Coming Soon” means.
What one can deduce from any interpretation of the Revelation of John or Daniel’s prophetic writings from Babylon is being circumspect about how we live our lives and how we treat those around us is of highest import. There’s simply nothing more compelling than living our lives in such a way that if “Coming Soon” happens before lunch today, we would be ready. Virtually all interpreters of scripture, of any ilk, agree these are powerful imperatives to right living. The urgency placed upon the idea of “Coming Soon” compels us to get our spiritual and relational affairs in order.
The Apostle Paul in his first letter to the church at Corinth suggest the non-negotiable nature of this imperative in stark language. He says, paraphrased, “If I do not have love, nothing else whatever counts.” There’s simply no room whatever for pre-meditated injury to others. If He’s really “Coming Soon”, I really want to be ready. Really.
Then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.
Going Viral With the News 11-22-18
Anderson, South Carolina
One of the most compelling and challenging tasks facing ambassadors and Secretaries of State is consensus building; the formation of alliances of nations to accomplish mutually beneficial objectives. Across the spectrum of political domains robust alliances have formed to promote shared causes. Western Allies were forged into military alliances to combat the scourge of Nazi fervor overtaking Europe. NATO protected Western European interests in the Cold War era. The Warsaw Pact advanced Eastern Bloc causes during the same period. NAFTA is a more recent attempt to promote economic interests of North American states. Conceptually, alliances are good, providing a coherent voice to participating members; insuring all are reading from the same page.
Individuals also develop alliances, often immature, to promote self interest, to justify their actions. My childhood was replete with ephemeral alliances in which the kids next door would ‘be on my side,’ perhaps for a mere few hours. Fleeting were the moments of empowerment when I had alliances against the likes of my brothers. For so many of us socially marginalized nerds, childhood was a protracted season of facing alliances, often aligned against us.
Tragically these same childish behaviors often manifest in exaggerated forms in adulthood. Toy guns and pretend forts are exchanged for plutonium and battalions of real soldiers. Wars of words between children who never grew up have the ability to ravage the lives of millions. The 20th century saw the deaths of hundreds of millions of good people caught in the cross fire of people taking sides.
On a lower geo-political level I have been caught in the cross fire of people for several years, people who find conflict resolution in divorce, bankruptcy, reactivity, sarcasm, addiction, duplicity, ad infinitum. Thermodynamic disruptions as described by James Gleick in his classic 1991 work, Chaos, are easily portrayed by group dynamics seen in a group of perhaps two dozen people. Relationships form, relationships fail, alliances form, they collapse; individuals are ejected from the group. At any one time or another I found individuals in my group attempting to draw me into alliances of opinion, wanting me to be on their side. Alas, there was no effective ambassador or Secretary of State to mediate conflicts. I’m no longer connected to any of these individuals, ejected from the group. Nearly as important to ambassadors as building consensus is defusing misunderstandings and tempering explosive emotions. Without mediators, discord often escalates into open hostility and worse. Groups fracture.
Those with some sort of perceived injury or insult are inclined to broadcast their misfortunes with great animation to those around them. It’s an unfortunate quirk of human behavior that they are often believed. Years of prior positive experience with someone is often completely overwritten by reports of a single negative episode. Another reality is negative experiences are eventually reported to more than a hundred and twenty individuals, if academics are right about such matters. Positive reports travel much less extensively, perhaps a dozen listeners getting the message. In journalism, a long standing quip states, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Bad news goes viral in the human experience. We don’t hear about planes landing safely after a routine flight.
Today I found a voice message in my phone that was staggering in its venomous nature and the breadth of allegations it contained. The purpose of the message was to strongly encourage me to give up my loyalty to people I have known and worked with for twenty years. The impassioned imperative of the message is that it’s far more important for me to honor the offense of one individual by abdicating long-standing working relationships and loyalties with dozens of other individuals. False accusations were used freely to gain my mutiny of spirit. In a very real sense I was being asked to participate in a mutiny that could easily cause the collapse of an important volunteer community organization.
A friend of mine was recently accused of all manner of sexual misconduct, something inconceivable for a man with his high ethical standards. Today a long-standing friend reported being accused of using her sexuality repeatedly to gain favor in her workplace, again something simply inconceivable. While visiting a church recently for dinner, a member conveyed to me reports of my supposed sexual recreations with others in the room!
During my precarious attempts to survive childhood I would often remind myself that ‘stick or stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” The fallacy of this sound byte was borne out too soon in my alcoholic childhood. Words would prove more destructive to me than any kind of stick, and I had some pretty big sticks and rocks thrown at me, literally. Over the years devastating evidence would prove again and again their destructive potential. Only this week I am reminded again of the toxic power of misplaced words.
The Epistle of James describes the tongue as perhaps the deadliest thing on earth. It’s described as “a fire, the very world of inequity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell.” It would be difficult to imagine a more impassioned declaration as to the dangers of running loose with one’s mouth.
In recent weeks I estimate several dozen acquaintances and friendships have disrupted because of the loosed tongues about me. Fires do burn up many fine forests, and so often hundreds of homes with them. There is no chaos described in the annals of thermodynamics or quantum physics that compares to that which detonates when a malicious chain reaction is set off by venomous slander.
Nuclear reactions can only safely proceed in the presence of control rods, which sop up excess nuclear particles. In the absence of control rods in our mouths we will continue to set of cascade reactions destroying the character and spirit of millions.
If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless.
One of the most compelling and challenging tasks facing ambassadors and Secretaries of State is consensus building; the formation of alliances of nations to accomplish mutually beneficial objectives. Across the spectrum of political domains robust alliances have formed to promote shared causes. Western Allies were forged into military alliances to combat the scourge of Nazi fervor overtaking Europe. NATO protected Western European interests in the Cold War era. The Warsaw Pact advanced Eastern Bloc causes during the same period. NAFTA is a more recent attempt to promote economic interests of North American states. Conceptually, alliances are good, providing a coherent voice to participating members; insuring all are reading from the same page.
Individuals also develop alliances, often immature, to promote self interest, to justify their actions. My childhood was replete with ephemeral alliances in which the kids next door would ‘be on my side,’ perhaps for a mere few hours. Fleeting were the moments of empowerment when I had alliances against the likes of my brothers. For so many of us socially marginalized nerds, childhood was a protracted season of facing alliances, often aligned against us.
Tragically these same childish behaviors often manifest in exaggerated forms in adulthood. Toy guns and pretend forts are exchanged for plutonium and battalions of real soldiers. Wars of words between children who never grew up have the ability to ravage the lives of millions. The 20th century saw the deaths of hundreds of millions of good people caught in the cross fire of people taking sides.
On a lower geo-political level I have been caught in the cross fire of people for several years, people who find conflict resolution in divorce, bankruptcy, reactivity, sarcasm, addiction, duplicity, ad infinitum. Thermodynamic disruptions as described by James Gleick in his classic 1991 work, Chaos, are easily portrayed by group dynamics seen in a group of perhaps two dozen people. Relationships form, relationships fail, alliances form, they collapse; individuals are ejected from the group. At any one time or another I found individuals in my group attempting to draw me into alliances of opinion, wanting me to be on their side. Alas, there was no effective ambassador or Secretary of State to mediate conflicts. I’m no longer connected to any of these individuals, ejected from the group. Nearly as important to ambassadors as building consensus is defusing misunderstandings and tempering explosive emotions. Without mediators, discord often escalates into open hostility and worse. Groups fracture.
Those with some sort of perceived injury or insult are inclined to broadcast their misfortunes with great animation to those around them. It’s an unfortunate quirk of human behavior that they are often believed. Years of prior positive experience with someone is often completely overwritten by reports of a single negative episode. Another reality is negative experiences are eventually reported to more than a hundred and twenty individuals, if academics are right about such matters. Positive reports travel much less extensively, perhaps a dozen listeners getting the message. In journalism, a long standing quip states, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Bad news goes viral in the human experience. We don’t hear about planes landing safely after a routine flight.
Today I found a voice message in my phone that was staggering in its venomous nature and the breadth of allegations it contained. The purpose of the message was to strongly encourage me to give up my loyalty to people I have known and worked with for twenty years. The impassioned imperative of the message is that it’s far more important for me to honor the offense of one individual by abdicating long-standing working relationships and loyalties with dozens of other individuals. False accusations were used freely to gain my mutiny of spirit. In a very real sense I was being asked to participate in a mutiny that could easily cause the collapse of an important volunteer community organization.
A friend of mine was recently accused of all manner of sexual misconduct, something inconceivable for a man with his high ethical standards. Today a long-standing friend reported being accused of using her sexuality repeatedly to gain favor in her workplace, again something simply inconceivable. While visiting a church recently for dinner, a member conveyed to me reports of my supposed sexual recreations with others in the room!
During my precarious attempts to survive childhood I would often remind myself that ‘stick or stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” The fallacy of this sound byte was borne out too soon in my alcoholic childhood. Words would prove more destructive to me than any kind of stick, and I had some pretty big sticks and rocks thrown at me, literally. Over the years devastating evidence would prove again and again their destructive potential. Only this week I am reminded again of the toxic power of misplaced words.
The Epistle of James describes the tongue as perhaps the deadliest thing on earth. It’s described as “a fire, the very world of inequity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell.” It would be difficult to imagine a more impassioned declaration as to the dangers of running loose with one’s mouth.
In recent weeks I estimate several dozen acquaintances and friendships have disrupted because of the loosed tongues about me. Fires do burn up many fine forests, and so often hundreds of homes with them. There is no chaos described in the annals of thermodynamics or quantum physics that compares to that which detonates when a malicious chain reaction is set off by venomous slander.
Nuclear reactions can only safely proceed in the presence of control rods, which sop up excess nuclear particles. In the absence of control rods in our mouths we will continue to set of cascade reactions destroying the character and spirit of millions.
If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Like, Unlike 11-18-10
Anderson, South Carolina
In Roman arenas spectators of gruesome gladiatorial contests were granted rights to pass judgment on the merits of contestants’ performance. Thumbs up and fighters would be granted their lives. Thumbs down and gladiators would not make it off the field. Spectators, voyeurs of violence if you may, were granted life and death powers over combatants in the guise of enhancing the entertainment value of these grisly games.
During the past couple of years a curious phenomenon has swept the cyber world. Little blue ‘LIKE’ and “UNLIKE’ buttons are showing up all over cyberspace. We flat-screen observers are increasingly granted the ability to give a thumb’s up or down on most anything we encounter. Our friends ask us to view a U-Tube video of their children playing violin and vote for them. Scholarships are gained or lost in these public straw polls. Somehow our viewing a two-minute video clip is supposed to make us expert judges of musical ability. Studio audiences and TV viewers are granted rights of judgment over contestants in wide-ranging talent and reality shows. Careers and fortunes are made or lost according to the mercurial whims of the audience at hand. Increasingly, holders of high political office are subject to escalating levels of judgment by the rank and file.
We like or unlike everyone and everything around us. We move further into a behavioral dynamic where we are ever busy judging and critiquing everything. This has become so intense as to allow opinion to be more powerful than ethics or morals at guiding our lives. The opinion of a single person will make or break virtually every entertainer or author in the world, especially if her name is Oprah. Obscure authors are made into best seller millionaires in ninety seconds of ‘O’ time, even if by objective measures their work should remain obscure. One author sold millions of books because a copy of one of his works unwittingly ended up on Oprah’s night stand at the right time. Courses are offered, teaching wishful authors how to get their books noticed by Oprah.
Those of us teaching courses in universities are regularly subjected to student evaluations; often resembling little more than popularity score cards. Compiled results frequently demonstrate an amazing level of harshness among those given this sudden sense of power over authority figures. It’s most fortunate we are not gladiators.
Computer users pass judgment on the veracity of heartfelt comments made by people about events occurring around the world. Forums, chat rooms, social networks, and news sites provide opportunities to give thumbs up or down on content, reactions to content, and reactions to reactions. The venomous acerbic responses often rendered to perfectly reasonable comments are dumb founding. Have we really become this heartless, brazen in the anonymity granted us in cyber space? Is this any different than the increasing road rage than emerges as collective anonymity increases on the road?
Social networks have recently added the ability of users to declare their like or unlike for anything added, embedded, inserted, created or otherwise placed in the ethos of the cyber world. The ability for me to ‘like’ or ‘unlike’ your photographs, words, music, or your person is instantly available. Embedded links make it possible for users to declare their like or unlike your place of business. Enough ‘unlikes’ on a social network and a struggling restaurant will close its doors. Enough low user ratings and films will fail to regain their production costs; legendary studios will close. Delightful motels I’ve stayed in have been excoriated in cyber-space. Magnificent films that enthralled me have melted into obscurity.
Perhaps most sobering is what happens when people are “UNLIKED”. Recently a number of high school and college students have been subject to being unliked in the most extreme ways. Webcams, streaming, social networks, chat rooms, texting, and e-mail have been used to disparage the character and values of these victims; bullying so intense as to cause these targets to opt out of life via suicide. In America we now have a high school known as the bully school. An epidemic of large-scale school shootings suggest we have far more than one of these.
A young man living next door to me was much like a recent Rutgers University bully victim, profoundly gifted in music and visual arts, gentle and compassionate. For years Harold called me his ‘chosen father.’ Bullied in his governor’s school by faculty, he was wounded profoundly in his soul. Ultimately he opted for relief with a shotgun he bought at Wal-Mart. I saw up close what shotguns do to people at point blank range. I was on an assortment of psychotropic drugs for years.
I again find myself an unwitting victim of this LIKE UNLIKE culture I’m immersed in. Last night I was told I was on a “do not invite” list, a list being maintained by one who was once an important part of my life. A few weeks ago I was told publically by another I was now on such a list. As much as I want to tell myself it doesn’t matter at all to me, it matters a whole lot. Opportunities to spend time with people who have been important to me have been lost because I committed some perceived faux pas. This is pathognomonic of a throw-away culture in which we throw away our spouses, neighborhoods, friends, employers, churches, and our consumer goods, simply because they don’t behave and perform as we demand. It hurts. A lot.
Psychiatric disorders are catalogued in what is known as DSM-IV, a huge clinical book containing thousands of diagnoses along with descriptions and methods for diagnosing patients with these. Recently, Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) and Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED) have emerged as an objective diagnoses. Individuals with these are prone to explosive, even violent outbursts, when others do not behave as expected. RAD and IED are simply powerful ways to unlike someone in an extreme manner.
In the worlds of addiction and alcoholism I encounter these frequently. Alas, they crop up with regularity throughout the social landscape, in volunteer groups, churches, social clubs, work places, at birthday parties, and most recently in cyber space. Outbursts have been made socially acceptable in the cyber world with the advent of ‘unlike’, ‘un-friend’, and ‘delete’ buttons. It’s too easy to simply click and move on; leaving behind a contrail of bewildered wounded individuals and shuttered businesses.
For some, the emotional cost of living in a judging culture, devoid of loyalty or compassion, is too much. They go to ‘Sporting Goods’ in Wal-Mart and make their last purchase. They carry out the ultimate UNLIKE on themselves. When my neighbor ended his life he left behind an oil painting he had been working on. In the middle of the chaotic image was the phrase, “I hate myself.”
During the Cold War, the collective ‘we’ often wondered about who had his finger over the button that could cause a white flash to occur 8,000 miles away, immolating millions in atomic holocaust. Today I wonder who they are with their fingers over the UNLIKE button that can unleash emotional and financial holocaust in our lives.
It might be a good idea to shut down your computer and go visit your lonely neighbors across the street. They probably need you to LIKE them.
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.”
Not even the UNLIKE button.
In Roman arenas spectators of gruesome gladiatorial contests were granted rights to pass judgment on the merits of contestants’ performance. Thumbs up and fighters would be granted their lives. Thumbs down and gladiators would not make it off the field. Spectators, voyeurs of violence if you may, were granted life and death powers over combatants in the guise of enhancing the entertainment value of these grisly games.
During the past couple of years a curious phenomenon has swept the cyber world. Little blue ‘LIKE’ and “UNLIKE’ buttons are showing up all over cyberspace. We flat-screen observers are increasingly granted the ability to give a thumb’s up or down on most anything we encounter. Our friends ask us to view a U-Tube video of their children playing violin and vote for them. Scholarships are gained or lost in these public straw polls. Somehow our viewing a two-minute video clip is supposed to make us expert judges of musical ability. Studio audiences and TV viewers are granted rights of judgment over contestants in wide-ranging talent and reality shows. Careers and fortunes are made or lost according to the mercurial whims of the audience at hand. Increasingly, holders of high political office are subject to escalating levels of judgment by the rank and file.
We like or unlike everyone and everything around us. We move further into a behavioral dynamic where we are ever busy judging and critiquing everything. This has become so intense as to allow opinion to be more powerful than ethics or morals at guiding our lives. The opinion of a single person will make or break virtually every entertainer or author in the world, especially if her name is Oprah. Obscure authors are made into best seller millionaires in ninety seconds of ‘O’ time, even if by objective measures their work should remain obscure. One author sold millions of books because a copy of one of his works unwittingly ended up on Oprah’s night stand at the right time. Courses are offered, teaching wishful authors how to get their books noticed by Oprah.
Those of us teaching courses in universities are regularly subjected to student evaluations; often resembling little more than popularity score cards. Compiled results frequently demonstrate an amazing level of harshness among those given this sudden sense of power over authority figures. It’s most fortunate we are not gladiators.
Computer users pass judgment on the veracity of heartfelt comments made by people about events occurring around the world. Forums, chat rooms, social networks, and news sites provide opportunities to give thumbs up or down on content, reactions to content, and reactions to reactions. The venomous acerbic responses often rendered to perfectly reasonable comments are dumb founding. Have we really become this heartless, brazen in the anonymity granted us in cyber space? Is this any different than the increasing road rage than emerges as collective anonymity increases on the road?
Social networks have recently added the ability of users to declare their like or unlike for anything added, embedded, inserted, created or otherwise placed in the ethos of the cyber world. The ability for me to ‘like’ or ‘unlike’ your photographs, words, music, or your person is instantly available. Embedded links make it possible for users to declare their like or unlike your place of business. Enough ‘unlikes’ on a social network and a struggling restaurant will close its doors. Enough low user ratings and films will fail to regain their production costs; legendary studios will close. Delightful motels I’ve stayed in have been excoriated in cyber-space. Magnificent films that enthralled me have melted into obscurity.
Perhaps most sobering is what happens when people are “UNLIKED”. Recently a number of high school and college students have been subject to being unliked in the most extreme ways. Webcams, streaming, social networks, chat rooms, texting, and e-mail have been used to disparage the character and values of these victims; bullying so intense as to cause these targets to opt out of life via suicide. In America we now have a high school known as the bully school. An epidemic of large-scale school shootings suggest we have far more than one of these.
A young man living next door to me was much like a recent Rutgers University bully victim, profoundly gifted in music and visual arts, gentle and compassionate. For years Harold called me his ‘chosen father.’ Bullied in his governor’s school by faculty, he was wounded profoundly in his soul. Ultimately he opted for relief with a shotgun he bought at Wal-Mart. I saw up close what shotguns do to people at point blank range. I was on an assortment of psychotropic drugs for years.
I again find myself an unwitting victim of this LIKE UNLIKE culture I’m immersed in. Last night I was told I was on a “do not invite” list, a list being maintained by one who was once an important part of my life. A few weeks ago I was told publically by another I was now on such a list. As much as I want to tell myself it doesn’t matter at all to me, it matters a whole lot. Opportunities to spend time with people who have been important to me have been lost because I committed some perceived faux pas. This is pathognomonic of a throw-away culture in which we throw away our spouses, neighborhoods, friends, employers, churches, and our consumer goods, simply because they don’t behave and perform as we demand. It hurts. A lot.
Psychiatric disorders are catalogued in what is known as DSM-IV, a huge clinical book containing thousands of diagnoses along with descriptions and methods for diagnosing patients with these. Recently, Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) and Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED) have emerged as an objective diagnoses. Individuals with these are prone to explosive, even violent outbursts, when others do not behave as expected. RAD and IED are simply powerful ways to unlike someone in an extreme manner.
In the worlds of addiction and alcoholism I encounter these frequently. Alas, they crop up with regularity throughout the social landscape, in volunteer groups, churches, social clubs, work places, at birthday parties, and most recently in cyber space. Outbursts have been made socially acceptable in the cyber world with the advent of ‘unlike’, ‘un-friend’, and ‘delete’ buttons. It’s too easy to simply click and move on; leaving behind a contrail of bewildered wounded individuals and shuttered businesses.
For some, the emotional cost of living in a judging culture, devoid of loyalty or compassion, is too much. They go to ‘Sporting Goods’ in Wal-Mart and make their last purchase. They carry out the ultimate UNLIKE on themselves. When my neighbor ended his life he left behind an oil painting he had been working on. In the middle of the chaotic image was the phrase, “I hate myself.”
During the Cold War, the collective ‘we’ often wondered about who had his finger over the button that could cause a white flash to occur 8,000 miles away, immolating millions in atomic holocaust. Today I wonder who they are with their fingers over the UNLIKE button that can unleash emotional and financial holocaust in our lives.
It might be a good idea to shut down your computer and go visit your lonely neighbors across the street. They probably need you to LIKE them.
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.”
Not even the UNLIKE button.
Monday, November 15, 2010
A Strange New World 11-15-10
Anderson, South Carolina
Recently an elaborate survey completed by Forbes determined who the sixty-eight most powerful people on earth are, the one in a hundred million people who make the biggest difference in our lives. “The people on this list were chosen because, in various ways, they bend the world to their will. They are heads of state, major religious figures, entrepreneurs and outlaws.” Four criteria were used to evaluate potential candidates for the list. 1) Individuals must have influence over large numbers of people. 2) They should have substantial financial resources relative to their peers. 3) These leaders should be able to project their power in multiple ways. 4) Candidates should be actively wielding their power. Incredulously, a completely unknown twenty year old college drop-out went from obscurity to number 40 on this list by virtue of figuring out a way to connect his friends together with an obscure program he called Facebook. In six years his Facebook program went from connecting eight people to nearly six hundred million.
The influence of Facebook is staggering. The posting of comments by teenagers and young adults, berating others in cyber space, has provoked a rash of suicides. Employers nix job applicants because of things found in their Facebook news feeds. Friendships disrupt because users of Facebook forget the whole world is watching. It’s as if the whole world has turned into an audience of cyber-voyeurs. Personal material posted for 580 million users to see is stunning. Every non-profit agency and community organization is falling over itself to establish a clear Facebook presence. Most of us who write or do creative visual work would not have a possibility of success without a clear Facebook presence. Facebook is used as a screening tool by those considering relational involvements.
In the past year or so, a year in which a couple hundred million people have been added to the Facebook database, a number of my friends have been lost to the embedded games in the Facebook operating system. I once had vibrant daily interactions with individuals in the gym, over dinner, in church, in the community playhouse, even by phone and e-mail. A number of these have been lost to Farmville, Priestville, Lexulous, and other cyber-based games. Curiously, these very people lament not having time to keep up with life and friends.
The level of connectivity possible with Facebook has a sinister downside. Professional counselors are now often speaking of compromised marriages resulting from the ease of finding long-lost high school flames or other individuals at great distance in time or space. In my own experience I see married persons seriously jeopardizing the well being of their marriages and the security of their children by maintaining clandestine text threads with others in the cyber world. More than a few long-term marriages have been lost via Ethernet. It’s as if it’s too easy to get up close and personal in this strange new world without borders or rules.
Alas, it’s also a strangely impersonal way to find out about milestones in the lives of people we thought ourselves close to. More than once I’ve learned of deaths and funerals through ransom encounters with news feeds in Facebook. Only today did I learn of a good friend’s journey out of state for a funeral, through a FB newsfeed not intended for me. I discover the birth of grandchildren by following news feeds in this detached cyber world. Vacations and walks in the park with one’s dog seem to be celebrated on Facebook. The private, inane, and often crass doings of daily life seem to be celebrated here as well, often provoking an amazingly intense thread of commentary. I can put up a heartfelt missive about something and am rewarded with utter silence. Often I have published photo collections of the most sublime places on earth and not heard from a single individual. Recently a FB user commented about a crass personal toileting activity, spawning a thread of more than twenty comments. I no longer know what’s important to people in life.
My phone rarely rings any more. Even the amount of personal e-mail I receive has plunged; group forwards of jokes and PowerPoint shows don’t count. Individuals once part of my physical world have faded into one of hundreds of so-called FB friends.
In this strange new world, one also experiences the painful reality of exclusion; that one has been disenfranchised from parts of one’s community. A social group, once vibrant and important to me, has developed inner circles excluding some of us, marginalizing us to the ranks of the ostensibly uninformed. Before Zuckerman invented Facebook it was easy to have a party and not invite once-favored individuals, now cut from the short list. Ignorance was bliss. With Facebook I find out in real time of parties celebrated by people who no longer welcome me. Groups once playing into my decisions to stay put in my town take happy voyages and journeys to far flung places, without me. How strange it is to be working on publications, only to find on a news feed I’ve been delisted from another part of my world. More and more, people are exteriorizing their cyber lives and we unwitting voyeurs of these lives find our physical worlds shrinking, a birthday party at a time.
Ancient writings of the Apostles tell us of a time when people shared their worldly goods, meals, dreams, even their fears. Individuals were truly part of community, living mindful in the present in time and space. “Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
A recent AT&T ad proclaims, “Finally, a phone to save us from our phones.” It’s not likely the Apostles were speaking of people being saved from their phones, but there might be some merit in being saved from a murky cyber world devoid of rules and admitted into a world devoid of delete keys. It’s our choice to embrace a way of living where our life is recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life rather than the archives of Zuckerman’s Facebook.
Recently an elaborate survey completed by Forbes determined who the sixty-eight most powerful people on earth are, the one in a hundred million people who make the biggest difference in our lives. “The people on this list were chosen because, in various ways, they bend the world to their will. They are heads of state, major religious figures, entrepreneurs and outlaws.” Four criteria were used to evaluate potential candidates for the list. 1) Individuals must have influence over large numbers of people. 2) They should have substantial financial resources relative to their peers. 3) These leaders should be able to project their power in multiple ways. 4) Candidates should be actively wielding their power. Incredulously, a completely unknown twenty year old college drop-out went from obscurity to number 40 on this list by virtue of figuring out a way to connect his friends together with an obscure program he called Facebook. In six years his Facebook program went from connecting eight people to nearly six hundred million.
The influence of Facebook is staggering. The posting of comments by teenagers and young adults, berating others in cyber space, has provoked a rash of suicides. Employers nix job applicants because of things found in their Facebook news feeds. Friendships disrupt because users of Facebook forget the whole world is watching. It’s as if the whole world has turned into an audience of cyber-voyeurs. Personal material posted for 580 million users to see is stunning. Every non-profit agency and community organization is falling over itself to establish a clear Facebook presence. Most of us who write or do creative visual work would not have a possibility of success without a clear Facebook presence. Facebook is used as a screening tool by those considering relational involvements.
In the past year or so, a year in which a couple hundred million people have been added to the Facebook database, a number of my friends have been lost to the embedded games in the Facebook operating system. I once had vibrant daily interactions with individuals in the gym, over dinner, in church, in the community playhouse, even by phone and e-mail. A number of these have been lost to Farmville, Priestville, Lexulous, and other cyber-based games. Curiously, these very people lament not having time to keep up with life and friends.
The level of connectivity possible with Facebook has a sinister downside. Professional counselors are now often speaking of compromised marriages resulting from the ease of finding long-lost high school flames or other individuals at great distance in time or space. In my own experience I see married persons seriously jeopardizing the well being of their marriages and the security of their children by maintaining clandestine text threads with others in the cyber world. More than a few long-term marriages have been lost via Ethernet. It’s as if it’s too easy to get up close and personal in this strange new world without borders or rules.
Alas, it’s also a strangely impersonal way to find out about milestones in the lives of people we thought ourselves close to. More than once I’ve learned of deaths and funerals through ransom encounters with news feeds in Facebook. Only today did I learn of a good friend’s journey out of state for a funeral, through a FB newsfeed not intended for me. I discover the birth of grandchildren by following news feeds in this detached cyber world. Vacations and walks in the park with one’s dog seem to be celebrated on Facebook. The private, inane, and often crass doings of daily life seem to be celebrated here as well, often provoking an amazingly intense thread of commentary. I can put up a heartfelt missive about something and am rewarded with utter silence. Often I have published photo collections of the most sublime places on earth and not heard from a single individual. Recently a FB user commented about a crass personal toileting activity, spawning a thread of more than twenty comments. I no longer know what’s important to people in life.
My phone rarely rings any more. Even the amount of personal e-mail I receive has plunged; group forwards of jokes and PowerPoint shows don’t count. Individuals once part of my physical world have faded into one of hundreds of so-called FB friends.
In this strange new world, one also experiences the painful reality of exclusion; that one has been disenfranchised from parts of one’s community. A social group, once vibrant and important to me, has developed inner circles excluding some of us, marginalizing us to the ranks of the ostensibly uninformed. Before Zuckerman invented Facebook it was easy to have a party and not invite once-favored individuals, now cut from the short list. Ignorance was bliss. With Facebook I find out in real time of parties celebrated by people who no longer welcome me. Groups once playing into my decisions to stay put in my town take happy voyages and journeys to far flung places, without me. How strange it is to be working on publications, only to find on a news feed I’ve been delisted from another part of my world. More and more, people are exteriorizing their cyber lives and we unwitting voyeurs of these lives find our physical worlds shrinking, a birthday party at a time.
Ancient writings of the Apostles tell us of a time when people shared their worldly goods, meals, dreams, even their fears. Individuals were truly part of community, living mindful in the present in time and space. “Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
A recent AT&T ad proclaims, “Finally, a phone to save us from our phones.” It’s not likely the Apostles were speaking of people being saved from their phones, but there might be some merit in being saved from a murky cyber world devoid of rules and admitted into a world devoid of delete keys. It’s our choice to embrace a way of living where our life is recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life rather than the archives of Zuckerman’s Facebook.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Since 1984 - 10-7-10
Anderson, South Carolina
As a high school student in the 1960s I was enthralled by the mythos surrounding a small paperback assigned in English class. For sixty years, George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty Four, has haunted literature students with its portrayal of totalitarian society, where even autonomy of one’s own thoughts is an affront to the State. In the end, the protagonist is arrested, tortured, and converted to the State’s way of thinking. Is it possible society could advance to this level of control over the individual? Has it? In the context of upper class white society in 1960s America, it seemed farfetched we could ever experience such quantum change. Having read the book first in 1965, two decades were given to wondering if Orwell would prove prophetic; 1984 seemed so far in the distant future.
From the vantage point of 2010, the year 1984 seems consigned to the dustbins of ancient history. So much water has passed under our collective bridges as to occlude clear memory of what occurred in those distant days. Quantum change occurred in ways Orwell barely imagined. What remains to be seen is whether individuals can retain autonomy of their own thoughts. In some parts of the world this freedom appears to have been lost. In North America the jury has yet to return a verdict.
A large granite marker fronting a vacant lot near our local hospital declares simply, “Since 1984.” Is culture changing so fast that “Since 1984” constitutes some sort of moniker of timeless stability and durability? Since 1984, two different buildings have occupied this land, now filled with nothing but weeds, piles of waste rock, broken cement, and this marker of time. This land once contained a medical arts building. Ten years later the building was completely reconstructed into an opulent facility for physical rehabilitation. This facility too failed to pass muster. Some years ago a broad spectrum of weeds emerged from the red clay where people once rebuilt their strength.
Robert Ornstein wrote his ambitious book, New World, New Mind, only five years after Orwell’s date of infamy. The thesis of Ornstein’s work is human minds are hard-wired to be responsive to fast-acting stimuli and refractory to slowly-occurring ones. Throughout biological history, excepting the near present, natural dangers were by nature fast acting: bears looking for dinner, flash floods, lightning strikes, earthquakes. Virtually no slowly developing phenomenon with significant danger existed. Ornstein has proposed in his on-going work that slow phenomenon such as global warming, nuclear proliferation, national debt burdens, rising crime rates, urban sprawl, and population increase constitute far greater risk to the human collective than occasional bear attacks, isolated flash floods, or lightning strikes. He proposes we need to develop a new consciousness giving us awareness of our contributions to slow phenomenon that may well put us all in great peril.
The more recent work of Daniel Quinn, Beyond Civilization, describes cultural laws or memes embedded in group think, which in themselves exert powerful influence over the thinking of individuals. Unwritten social rules and preferences can exert as much or more influence over individuals as totalitarian state policy. Slowly changing cultural rules can easily move us to a precipice, unnoticed.
What was enough in 1949 when Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty Four is now considered spartan, even indicative of near-poverty. In 1950 the average American house was 950 square feet, most likely sans garage or car. Families of six to eight members successfully achieved adulthood in tiny three bedroom one bath houses on an eighth of an acre. Slowly increasing sizes of American houses has resulted in a deadly state of affairs, with many houses exceeding ten thousand square feet, millions of them suddenly in foreclosure. In the span of a few hours this slow phenomenon resulted in near collapse of the American banking system. Consumers bought into ever-increasing demands for environmentally and economically unsustainable standards for house size. Millions now have no house. Economic flash floods washed over the land; the waters have yet to recede.
Churches, hospitals, schools, and even operators of medical arts buildings bought into cultural memes declaring, “Bigger is better.” Since Ornstein wrote his seminal work, the local medical community has emigrated from modest brick offices into structures not unlike the Taj Mahal. Hospitals have become the largest landlords in some counties. Structures built on this vacant lot near the hospital failed to conform to ever more demanding cultural memes about size and glitz. Perfectly serviceable structures have been lost to cultural memes demanding ever more from us. Virtually every school in my county is undergoing some kind of major rebuilding, despite fiscal realities causing loss of teaching staff and academic ratings placing school performance near the bottom for all fifty states.
The nearly mythic city of Dubai in the United Arabs Emirates has only recently learned than even copious oil money cannot maintain demands of a cultural meme mandating ever higher building into the sky. A recently completed Dubai reflection pond with fountains cost over $250 million. Failure of the state financing agency has caused major perturbations throughout world security markets.
Slow phenomenon described by Ornstein seem to be subject to rapidly unfolding economic and social consequences. Dubai is having to stop building its towers to heaven. Americans are confronting a new realty of renting rather than owning. Rates of residential abandonment in American cities are more surreal than anything Orwell might have alluded to in his haunting images of oligarchical society. Widespread abandonment of Mayan cities a thousand years ago suddenly seems more understandable.
As an amateur archeologist it’s haunting to realize many great civilizations have left little behind except potsherds or stone rubble. Virtually all written history of the Aztecs, Incas, and Maya has been lost. What we know of these civilizations derives mostly from scratchings found on some of those stones. Ancient writings in Ecclesiasticus offer sobering reminders of great civilizations that are lost entirely to the human memory; it is as if they simply never existed; not even a potsherd is to be found. Perhaps one of the most sobering images of a lost city is that of Jerusalem as found in the ancient writings of Lamentations, dating from the sixth century BC. This once vibrant center of the ancient world was reduced to piles of rock in the desert in the great destruction of 586 BC.
How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations! She that was a princess among the provinces has become a vassal. She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has no one to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they have become her enemies. Judah has gone into exile with suffering and hard servitude; she lives now among the nations, and finds no resting place; her pursuers have all overtaken her in the midst of her distress. The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to the festivals; all her gates are desolate, her priests groan; her young girls grieve, and her lot is bitter. Her foes have become the masters, her enemies prosper, because the Lord has made her suffer for the multitude of her transgressions; her children have gone away, captives before the foe. From daughter Zion has departed all her majesty. Her princes have become like stags that find no pasture; they fled without strength before the pursuer. Jerusalem remembers, in the days of her affliction and wandering, all the precious things that were hers in days of old. When her people fell into the hand of the foe, and there was no one to help her, the foe looked on mocking over her downfall.
In AD 79 Roman legions swarmed the city, reducing it to dust. Jerusalem tragically experienced quantum change far exceeding those of Orwell’s predictions. It simply ceased to exist, barely a blemish on the desert. Embedded cultural laws and attitudes as articulated by Quinn led to slowly developing phenomenon as described by Ornstein; leading to the destruction of Jerusalem, twice.
Embedded cultural laws and attitudes have led to the destruction of an increasing number of American cities, from within. The catastrophic collapse of Detroit, once American’s industrial powerhouse, is not unlike the ancient collapse of Jerusalem. The collapse of community in a thousand thousand American neighborhoods has been precipitated by long standing buy-in to the belief that disconnected McMansions are better than vibrant neighborhoods where our kids play with the neighbor’s. Social accountability and safety were frayed by armies of investors flipping houses to achieve the Holy Grail of their own McMansions.
Is it really going to matter how big our houses are if memories of our cities are little more than a blemish on the sands of the desert?
I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired men and women singers and a harem as well—the delights of the heart of man. I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. In all this my wisdom stayed with me. I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labor. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.
As a high school student in the 1960s I was enthralled by the mythos surrounding a small paperback assigned in English class. For sixty years, George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty Four, has haunted literature students with its portrayal of totalitarian society, where even autonomy of one’s own thoughts is an affront to the State. In the end, the protagonist is arrested, tortured, and converted to the State’s way of thinking. Is it possible society could advance to this level of control over the individual? Has it? In the context of upper class white society in 1960s America, it seemed farfetched we could ever experience such quantum change. Having read the book first in 1965, two decades were given to wondering if Orwell would prove prophetic; 1984 seemed so far in the distant future.
From the vantage point of 2010, the year 1984 seems consigned to the dustbins of ancient history. So much water has passed under our collective bridges as to occlude clear memory of what occurred in those distant days. Quantum change occurred in ways Orwell barely imagined. What remains to be seen is whether individuals can retain autonomy of their own thoughts. In some parts of the world this freedom appears to have been lost. In North America the jury has yet to return a verdict.
A large granite marker fronting a vacant lot near our local hospital declares simply, “Since 1984.” Is culture changing so fast that “Since 1984” constitutes some sort of moniker of timeless stability and durability? Since 1984, two different buildings have occupied this land, now filled with nothing but weeds, piles of waste rock, broken cement, and this marker of time. This land once contained a medical arts building. Ten years later the building was completely reconstructed into an opulent facility for physical rehabilitation. This facility too failed to pass muster. Some years ago a broad spectrum of weeds emerged from the red clay where people once rebuilt their strength.
Robert Ornstein wrote his ambitious book, New World, New Mind, only five years after Orwell’s date of infamy. The thesis of Ornstein’s work is human minds are hard-wired to be responsive to fast-acting stimuli and refractory to slowly-occurring ones. Throughout biological history, excepting the near present, natural dangers were by nature fast acting: bears looking for dinner, flash floods, lightning strikes, earthquakes. Virtually no slowly developing phenomenon with significant danger existed. Ornstein has proposed in his on-going work that slow phenomenon such as global warming, nuclear proliferation, national debt burdens, rising crime rates, urban sprawl, and population increase constitute far greater risk to the human collective than occasional bear attacks, isolated flash floods, or lightning strikes. He proposes we need to develop a new consciousness giving us awareness of our contributions to slow phenomenon that may well put us all in great peril.
The more recent work of Daniel Quinn, Beyond Civilization, describes cultural laws or memes embedded in group think, which in themselves exert powerful influence over the thinking of individuals. Unwritten social rules and preferences can exert as much or more influence over individuals as totalitarian state policy. Slowly changing cultural rules can easily move us to a precipice, unnoticed.
What was enough in 1949 when Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty Four is now considered spartan, even indicative of near-poverty. In 1950 the average American house was 950 square feet, most likely sans garage or car. Families of six to eight members successfully achieved adulthood in tiny three bedroom one bath houses on an eighth of an acre. Slowly increasing sizes of American houses has resulted in a deadly state of affairs, with many houses exceeding ten thousand square feet, millions of them suddenly in foreclosure. In the span of a few hours this slow phenomenon resulted in near collapse of the American banking system. Consumers bought into ever-increasing demands for environmentally and economically unsustainable standards for house size. Millions now have no house. Economic flash floods washed over the land; the waters have yet to recede.
Churches, hospitals, schools, and even operators of medical arts buildings bought into cultural memes declaring, “Bigger is better.” Since Ornstein wrote his seminal work, the local medical community has emigrated from modest brick offices into structures not unlike the Taj Mahal. Hospitals have become the largest landlords in some counties. Structures built on this vacant lot near the hospital failed to conform to ever more demanding cultural memes about size and glitz. Perfectly serviceable structures have been lost to cultural memes demanding ever more from us. Virtually every school in my county is undergoing some kind of major rebuilding, despite fiscal realities causing loss of teaching staff and academic ratings placing school performance near the bottom for all fifty states.
The nearly mythic city of Dubai in the United Arabs Emirates has only recently learned than even copious oil money cannot maintain demands of a cultural meme mandating ever higher building into the sky. A recently completed Dubai reflection pond with fountains cost over $250 million. Failure of the state financing agency has caused major perturbations throughout world security markets.
Slow phenomenon described by Ornstein seem to be subject to rapidly unfolding economic and social consequences. Dubai is having to stop building its towers to heaven. Americans are confronting a new realty of renting rather than owning. Rates of residential abandonment in American cities are more surreal than anything Orwell might have alluded to in his haunting images of oligarchical society. Widespread abandonment of Mayan cities a thousand years ago suddenly seems more understandable.
As an amateur archeologist it’s haunting to realize many great civilizations have left little behind except potsherds or stone rubble. Virtually all written history of the Aztecs, Incas, and Maya has been lost. What we know of these civilizations derives mostly from scratchings found on some of those stones. Ancient writings in Ecclesiasticus offer sobering reminders of great civilizations that are lost entirely to the human memory; it is as if they simply never existed; not even a potsherd is to be found. Perhaps one of the most sobering images of a lost city is that of Jerusalem as found in the ancient writings of Lamentations, dating from the sixth century BC. This once vibrant center of the ancient world was reduced to piles of rock in the desert in the great destruction of 586 BC.
How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations! She that was a princess among the provinces has become a vassal. She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has no one to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they have become her enemies. Judah has gone into exile with suffering and hard servitude; she lives now among the nations, and finds no resting place; her pursuers have all overtaken her in the midst of her distress. The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to the festivals; all her gates are desolate, her priests groan; her young girls grieve, and her lot is bitter. Her foes have become the masters, her enemies prosper, because the Lord has made her suffer for the multitude of her transgressions; her children have gone away, captives before the foe. From daughter Zion has departed all her majesty. Her princes have become like stags that find no pasture; they fled without strength before the pursuer. Jerusalem remembers, in the days of her affliction and wandering, all the precious things that were hers in days of old. When her people fell into the hand of the foe, and there was no one to help her, the foe looked on mocking over her downfall.
In AD 79 Roman legions swarmed the city, reducing it to dust. Jerusalem tragically experienced quantum change far exceeding those of Orwell’s predictions. It simply ceased to exist, barely a blemish on the desert. Embedded cultural laws and attitudes as articulated by Quinn led to slowly developing phenomenon as described by Ornstein; leading to the destruction of Jerusalem, twice.
Embedded cultural laws and attitudes have led to the destruction of an increasing number of American cities, from within. The catastrophic collapse of Detroit, once American’s industrial powerhouse, is not unlike the ancient collapse of Jerusalem. The collapse of community in a thousand thousand American neighborhoods has been precipitated by long standing buy-in to the belief that disconnected McMansions are better than vibrant neighborhoods where our kids play with the neighbor’s. Social accountability and safety were frayed by armies of investors flipping houses to achieve the Holy Grail of their own McMansions.
Is it really going to matter how big our houses are if memories of our cities are little more than a blemish on the sands of the desert?
I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired men and women singers and a harem as well—the delights of the heart of man. I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. In all this my wisdom stayed with me. I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labor. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.
The Next Right Thing – Building Dreams 10-1-10
Anderson, South Carolina
Pulitzer Prize winning author Tracy Kidder has written incredible books about lives lived largely. In Mountains beyond Mountains, he describes how a physician, Paul Farmer, makes a difference in the lives of thousands of the disenfranchised in Haiti. Farmer’s model of empowered development is becoming a model around the world. My journey to Farmer’s mountains beyond mountains left me dumbfounded at the difference one life could make. In his Among School Children Kidder describes the wonders that happen when a committed teacher reaches into lives of ghetto children. Kidder wrote a book, House, which describes the emotional and engineering challenges that come from building a new house. Irwin Winkler directed a magnificently crafted film in 2001, “Life as a House”, depicting the healing process that takes places between a terminally-ill architect and his misanthropic son. This architect learned the value of time in vivid ways; ways only terminal illness can teach.
In recovery, those struggling to find their bearings in life have very short time horizons; having learned something very different about time as well. Those of us doing well in our lives have the luxury of planning next year’s vacation, committing to dinner with friends four days from now, agreeing to walk the neighbor’s dog tonight, planning an epic project overseas. In recovery, one often allocates every bit of emotional and physical resource to simply getting through the next five minutes without imploding or resorting to those chemical adjuncts that caused our lives to disintegrate in the first place. As one hears often in recovery, ‘there is no drug or drink that makes a life challenge any better.’
Those in recovery often hear the sound bite, ‘just do the next right thing.’ A series of ‘the next right thing’ might even lead to a whole hour of good decisions and success at staying clean and sober. An hour might turn into a day. Eventually days turn into weeks and months, even years for those who take life and recovery seriously. As is often said in recovery, ’Half measures availed us nothing.” One has to go all the way in working a good program of recovery. With the aid of a Higher Power, life can indeed become miraculous and filled with wonder once again.
One of the great miracles of recovery is one’s ability to have long time horizons, to commit to obligations progressively further out on a time horizon. At one time committing to something past a few minutes seemed impossible. One also learns to take on progressively greater responsibility – even to building a house for someone. Like Winkler’s fictional architect or Kidder’s real one, building houses for me is therapeutic.
In building Habitat for Humanity houses I came up with a personal life mantra, ‘Helping to build dreams for those who have forgotten how to dream.” A series of life choices and circumstances have led many to find themselves in substandard housing, even homeless. In Habitat we make it our mission to help rebuild lives by building affordable houses with volunteer labor.
In recovery one learns to sustain recovery by taking the message to others who still suffer. An effective sustainable life in recovery requires one to live a life of service. For certain, one always gets back more than one gives. So it is with building houses for those who have forgotten how to dream.
Some six months ago I learned through a mutual friend in another country of a woman in a distant state who faced a set of life decisions and circumstances that left her in a precarious state emotionally and financially, at risk for having no place to live. For me the next right thing was to drive a couple thousand miles and go build a house for her. There was nothing to think about, to ponder. It was black and white for me – this was my next right thing. I think of how other people extended a hand to me when I so desperately needed it. Living sustainably requires me to always do the next right thing. So it was that I spent a lot of very long hot days in June, July and August during the hottest summer on record gutting a seventy-three year old house and attempting to make it habitable; my salary consisting of a daily run to Burger King for buck burgers. With no central heat or air, no running water, and open to the weather, others wanted to tear it down. This old forlorn house that used to house cocaine addicts had possibilities, just like our ship-wrecked lives.
It became a personal challenge to make this little 668 square foot house into someone’s Taj Mahal. This small cockroach-guano infested splinter pile had possibilities, just as every life, no matter how beaten down has possibilities. Every one is worth saving. This house built of full dimension lumber, had the most amazing exterior siding of clear hardwoods, materials one can barely find at any price in an era of vinyl and particle board. Like our lives, we sometimes have to reach bottom before we can begin to live a new way. Hammers and wonder bars were used to remove everything from that house than didn’t need to be part of it anymore, termite damage, piles of cockroach dung, rusted pipes, frayed wires, things that don’t need to be in any house or any life. As in recovery, one removes things gently,
Over a couple months, insulation, wiring, plumbing, and structural changes were made. Holes in the outer walls were filled with rebuilt historic window sashes. All the original door casings, window casings, base boards, ad infinitum were carefully removed, re-milled and reinstalled. Joists strengthened sagging floors; new oak planks made the floor fit for a waltz. New walls, ceilings, light fixtures, cabinets, counters, plumbing, and buckets of paint were transformative for this little house. Far more important, this little house was transformative for a life that was almost torn down.
Perhaps one more homeowner will be reminded every day that the universe is a friendly place, if we choose to see it that way. Beauty is an infinitely renewable resource. The odds are 100% you will find it, if you but look for it. It might just be inside your neighbor’s front door.
Are you doing the next right thing with your life?
Pulitzer Prize winning author Tracy Kidder has written incredible books about lives lived largely. In Mountains beyond Mountains, he describes how a physician, Paul Farmer, makes a difference in the lives of thousands of the disenfranchised in Haiti. Farmer’s model of empowered development is becoming a model around the world. My journey to Farmer’s mountains beyond mountains left me dumbfounded at the difference one life could make. In his Among School Children Kidder describes the wonders that happen when a committed teacher reaches into lives of ghetto children. Kidder wrote a book, House, which describes the emotional and engineering challenges that come from building a new house. Irwin Winkler directed a magnificently crafted film in 2001, “Life as a House”, depicting the healing process that takes places between a terminally-ill architect and his misanthropic son. This architect learned the value of time in vivid ways; ways only terminal illness can teach.
In recovery, those struggling to find their bearings in life have very short time horizons; having learned something very different about time as well. Those of us doing well in our lives have the luxury of planning next year’s vacation, committing to dinner with friends four days from now, agreeing to walk the neighbor’s dog tonight, planning an epic project overseas. In recovery, one often allocates every bit of emotional and physical resource to simply getting through the next five minutes without imploding or resorting to those chemical adjuncts that caused our lives to disintegrate in the first place. As one hears often in recovery, ‘there is no drug or drink that makes a life challenge any better.’
Those in recovery often hear the sound bite, ‘just do the next right thing.’ A series of ‘the next right thing’ might even lead to a whole hour of good decisions and success at staying clean and sober. An hour might turn into a day. Eventually days turn into weeks and months, even years for those who take life and recovery seriously. As is often said in recovery, ’Half measures availed us nothing.” One has to go all the way in working a good program of recovery. With the aid of a Higher Power, life can indeed become miraculous and filled with wonder once again.
One of the great miracles of recovery is one’s ability to have long time horizons, to commit to obligations progressively further out on a time horizon. At one time committing to something past a few minutes seemed impossible. One also learns to take on progressively greater responsibility – even to building a house for someone. Like Winkler’s fictional architect or Kidder’s real one, building houses for me is therapeutic.
In building Habitat for Humanity houses I came up with a personal life mantra, ‘Helping to build dreams for those who have forgotten how to dream.” A series of life choices and circumstances have led many to find themselves in substandard housing, even homeless. In Habitat we make it our mission to help rebuild lives by building affordable houses with volunteer labor.
In recovery one learns to sustain recovery by taking the message to others who still suffer. An effective sustainable life in recovery requires one to live a life of service. For certain, one always gets back more than one gives. So it is with building houses for those who have forgotten how to dream.
Some six months ago I learned through a mutual friend in another country of a woman in a distant state who faced a set of life decisions and circumstances that left her in a precarious state emotionally and financially, at risk for having no place to live. For me the next right thing was to drive a couple thousand miles and go build a house for her. There was nothing to think about, to ponder. It was black and white for me – this was my next right thing. I think of how other people extended a hand to me when I so desperately needed it. Living sustainably requires me to always do the next right thing. So it was that I spent a lot of very long hot days in June, July and August during the hottest summer on record gutting a seventy-three year old house and attempting to make it habitable; my salary consisting of a daily run to Burger King for buck burgers. With no central heat or air, no running water, and open to the weather, others wanted to tear it down. This old forlorn house that used to house cocaine addicts had possibilities, just like our ship-wrecked lives.
It became a personal challenge to make this little 668 square foot house into someone’s Taj Mahal. This small cockroach-guano infested splinter pile had possibilities, just as every life, no matter how beaten down has possibilities. Every one is worth saving. This house built of full dimension lumber, had the most amazing exterior siding of clear hardwoods, materials one can barely find at any price in an era of vinyl and particle board. Like our lives, we sometimes have to reach bottom before we can begin to live a new way. Hammers and wonder bars were used to remove everything from that house than didn’t need to be part of it anymore, termite damage, piles of cockroach dung, rusted pipes, frayed wires, things that don’t need to be in any house or any life. As in recovery, one removes things gently,
Over a couple months, insulation, wiring, plumbing, and structural changes were made. Holes in the outer walls were filled with rebuilt historic window sashes. All the original door casings, window casings, base boards, ad infinitum were carefully removed, re-milled and reinstalled. Joists strengthened sagging floors; new oak planks made the floor fit for a waltz. New walls, ceilings, light fixtures, cabinets, counters, plumbing, and buckets of paint were transformative for this little house. Far more important, this little house was transformative for a life that was almost torn down.
Perhaps one more homeowner will be reminded every day that the universe is a friendly place, if we choose to see it that way. Beauty is an infinitely renewable resource. The odds are 100% you will find it, if you but look for it. It might just be inside your neighbor’s front door.
Are you doing the next right thing with your life?
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