What's wrong with the world?

I was talking to a guy here at work about the problem with the world. It was pretty entertaining because of his perspective. I was being particularly argumentative. His point was: people need to learn respect. I told him, because I was being argumentative, and now in hindsight because it was a better argument all around, what people need to learn is humility.

Note to the reader: what people need is the presence of Jesus Christ in their lives and to take that seriously, but that was not an option with this particular person - so I stuck with seemingly safe philosophical concepts. There's a clear parallel with Jesus Christ and humility, though.

My comrade made the point that if people respect each other they treat each other more civil. Moreover, respect creates a greater cross-cultural understanding and such benefits result in a more stable political climate and a lessened persistence of criminal behavior. I agreed. (sneaky)

Sure, I thought to myself, if Hitler had only respected the Jews. Sure, I thought to myself, if only big industry had only respected the citizens around their plants. Sure, I thought to myself, if only drug pushers only respected their victims more.

Respect is callous. That's the problem, I explained. Think of it like this: if a mistake occurs wherein a nuclear missile is mistakenly launched into the heart of a major Russian metropolis, is it "respectable" for them to reply with their own warheads? Yes it is. Would other countries respect Russia's sovereignty? Sure they would. Would even U.S. allies respect their right to counter strike? Probably. Their counter-strike is not a respectable cause of war, but our initial strike was. Would America like it? No. Would we say, "You don't have the right to respond!" No. Respect - especially taken to its logical extreme, dictates the nation of Russia, the families of the victims, and even the allies of Russia have rights to respond in a similar manner. This is because respect is callous.

Though mercy is respectable, it is not a by product of respect.

Humility, on the other hand, is a source of mercy. I don't throw the first stone because I know my own sin. Humility takes personal importance and intentionally lowers it below others. In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon do you remember the scene where the princess asked Bai who he was and he quickly snapped, "I am nothing." That's the logical extreme of my position. An individual should has self-worth, but choose position him or herself under the importance of others.

A note of clarification would be to say that humility is the act of lowering, not the act of rising up. Others are not over you in importance because you have exalted them, rather because you have lowered yourself. There's an importance there psychologically and in practice. We are not setting people up to fall and we are felling ourselves by choice. Another important point is that we have to humble ourselves, humility gained from others actions is rarely long lasting or genuine.

Humility is also not denial of self-worth. Each and every person is important, including you, and that point alone is the heart of humility-the recognition that all people have importance, and nothing makes you more so. it would even be fair to use the word "value" instead of "importance." This easily allows you to say, "All people have value, and I am going to subject my own worth to theirs."

When I worked at Kanakuk, we talked about the I'm Third concept where you place the impact on or to Jesus Christ first in priority when making a decision, then place other people second and follow with yourself. Thus, I'm Third. Others have called it JOY, meaning Jesus-Others-You. This is really what I mean with humility.

Ghandi said that whenever you make a decision you should consider the impact of that decision on the weakest, poorest, meekest person in your society. This is sort of like what I am think of here.

Now let's think about Hitler. Let's say he is an atheist, so he is practicing I'm Second. Now, how would his logic let him kill the Jews? In all reality, it would not allow him to even ascend to such a violent position in the first place.

Big business? Can you really see a humble CEO saying to his developers that the numbers show that the company will make more money in the profits than they could ever lose in a lawsuit, so continue on? Never. He would think about how important the plumber is on Elm Street and cancel the work.

Could a drug pusher actually sell a hit? Shoot, man, could any criminal ever commit a crime once he took into consideration the impact on the victim? No way.

So (and let me tell you that I know I am controlling the perception here) do you want a world of humility where people are looking out for the better interest of their fellow world citizens with an honest and meaningful reduction in all crime, abuse and neglect or do you want to look up in the sky and see the vindictive, yet respectable, retort of a Russian nuclear arsenal heading for City Hall? You choose.

Thinking about Satan

I was driving to the airport yesterday to pick up Kyndall, as she was coming home from California. I started a conversation (with myself) about an interesting concept that actually had me a little stumped. I stated, "All evil people think what they are doing is actually good." The concept is easy enough. Hitler thought he was doing the world a favor. Stalin thought he was doing his country a favor. Even Kavorkian thinks he is doing his victims good. They are wrong, of course, but they think they are right.

So came the retort, "Let's take Satan as our example of an evil person, do you think he feels he is actually doing good?" That was the stump. Of course I knew Satan was no man, but still, it was interesting to entertain. My gut reaction was that he knew how evil he was, of course; as the father of lies he was deceiving us intentionally for the sole purpose of his own insatiable blood lust.

That's when I started to think about his fall. He thought he could defeat God, and rallied a third of the angels behind him (an interesting point here is that this suggests that angels have a free will like man; another interesting point is that this is surely sin, and they were in heaven where sin is absent) and they must have believe that they could do it, and must surely have been convinced that it was the best thing to do - though I am stuck to conceive of a notion why.

Anyway, it's reasonable to assume that an angel that was up until then without any sin, was convinced not by the evil of the action but by the conceived good of it. Maybe he thought he could be more infinitely merciful - or maybe he wanted to create the earth in 5 days instead of 7, I don't know - and hey, this is all speculation anyway.

So, what motivates Satan? Is it is desire for revenge? This is pretty reasonable. Satan wants to spoil God's plan, but wait - God put Satan in the position of prince of earth, right? In order to foil God's plan, he would have to _not_ be evil, right? Being evil is fulfilling God's plan.

Let's move on. Did you ever wonder where Satan fell to? Think about it. He fell before the earth was around, that's for sure. In the beginning was the word, and it's reasonable to conceive that everything there after is part of God in a non-pantheist way of thinking. So, Satan was kicked out with a third the angels to where? Not to earth. Not to hell. Surely out of heaven - there must be someplace else, or maybe he was sent to hell and he is back for his attempted rule of the earth, I don't know.

Now, back to the original point. Does Satan think he is doing good or evil? There is a small part of me that thinks it is possible that, well, Satan really thinks he might still win. If that is so, the same thing that motivated him the first time in heaven probably still motivates him. Christians are trained to say that motivation is pride and greed. That's probably right, but that doesn't mean Satan thinks he is evil.

Here's my take. Satan _is_ indeed evil, but it's conceivable, even likely, that still thinks he will win, and he thinks that victory is in some way better - some kind of good, even if he has deceived himself. That means, when he messes up our lives, he is trying to foil God because he believes that if God is foiled some perverted good may result.

So, the question is begged, "Pity the devil?" The answer is easy, "No." When criminals convince themselves that something good comes from evil, punishment is earned. When children convince themselves that selfishness is not wrong, punishment is earned. How much wiser, more knowledgeable and experienced is one of God's highest ex-angels? Another easy answer, "Tons."

If Satan wants to be a fool, he can have it. If he wants to think he is a good guy, hey, go for it. But I am not deceived by his foolishness. He is a pawn of his own evils. He already fools me enough for me to go and start thinking "he has a good point" or "hey, he's not so bad" when all he wants is to destroy me - he is like a predator, prowling the earth in search of whom he may consume.

I think I will stick with the "He's out for revenge" concept that seems to keep things in line. It explains his motivation; it explains why he hates me so much. It explains why I will never pity or trust him. Not to mention, I know what comes next!

A seduction in sadness

A friend of mine and I were discussing something that I experienced while studying abroad in college. Sadness. The discussion focused on my thesis that "sadness has an unexpected seductive quality that consumes its victim." Almost immediately we agreed on the premise, and moved on to the cause of this appeal.

We discussed the uncommon emotional depth that sadness allows people to experience, and how this, typically illusive, level of passion is easily intoxicating. Basically said, people enjoy strong feelings, and they don't come around every day. I would go so far to liken its intensity to love; after all, all the victim need do is fixate on the motivation.

That brings us to our next cause: clarity. Revolutionaries have clarity; religious zealots have clarity; activists of all kinds have clarity, and in a romantic sense, they are all very appealing because of their clarity. They motivate us with their clarity. They seem to drive their own passions with it. Sadness, too, has clarity - clarity in emotion and clarity in subject.

Soon we moved into the idea that sadness is like a drug that society readily consumes. Music that is depressing sells spryly. Movies with sad overtones, books on tragedy, the nightly news - they all feed our sadness fix. People seem to dedicate themselves to sadness, while happiness (or at least gayety) is typically dismissed as fickle, and considered passing.

Finally, we discussed the concept of "is sadness is a good." Naturally we were built with the ability to experience it, but was that intended for us to have a clear contrast to a time without it? Was it a tragic result of a terrible fall? We were lead to agree that sadness had no place in time before the fall, and clearly has no place in time beyond the temporal.

That said, it is paradoxical that sadness has intoxicating qualities. Rather, something derived from disaster, and contributing to pain, has certain qualities that actually encourage its consumption. Society seems to be a junkie for sadness, while endlessly questing for peace, joy and happiness.

Or, perhaps, sadness is another characteristic intentionally endowed to man, to allow him to experience the full breadth of his potential. More than merely emphasizing happiness, sadness seems to serve us in too many ways to be discarded. It seems to have a value; it's difficult to say it is bad, but it just seems too far a leap to say sadness is a good.

Roughly, sadness serves us in mourning, lamenting, repentance, dissatisfaction, acceptance of the unexpected, even the unacceptable. Sadness seems to have medicinal qualities that induldged seem to mend us. The last thing I would want to say is that sadness is "good," but I think it would be safe to conclude that it seems to have a valid function.

A new month, now I'm thinking

Two guys where I work left to go on their smoke break. I have come to terms with the fact that smokers get more of an opportunity to slack off. But I had to run to the next floor and intercepted them both in the elevator returning from the lobby. I think I smoked a full cigarette myself over those next few minutes. Of course, they didn't smell anything - not to mention that they can hardly taste anything either. What I don't get is why addition to tobacco has remained so socially acceptable.

We visited our friends' church when we moved to Colorado. We continued attending for a while, even when we didn't go with our friends. One time, Kyndall and I sat behind this young couple and their child daughters. Into the worship time, I caught the eye of the mother as she secretly looked over her shoulder at her daughter, who was standing on the pew beside her father, singing the chorus with all her might. I could appreciate the feeling that mother must have felt observing her daughter in praise. When I noticed her tears as she watched, I understood that, too.

There's a lot of snow in Colorado, but the cold is offset by the humidity. Humidity makes Texas seem hotter in the summer, and the lack of it makes Colorado seem warmer in the winter. It's hard to beat - and explain. Sitting in my office one day, I looked out to see a clearing in the snow where a crew was digging conduit for some public wiring--all in wife-beater t-shirts and cut-offs. Watching anyone in real labor makes me glad I stuck out college.

My company laid people off a while back, not so long after I joined. I suppose I was unduly confident that nothing would happen to me. Fortunately, nothing did. But I felt a connection with management as I ran through the list and asked myself, "Stay or go?" More often than not, I agreed with their decision - and even began to expand the list to other employees (yikes). It was pretty harmless in my position, but I cut the exercise to an end when I got to my own name. (yikes, yikes)

When we began to approach Colorado for the first time, I was driving the moving van - pulling the car on trailer - Kyndall was driving the Camry. It was dark, but we could see the lights up on the mountains where too many had built their homes. I had a Sony Music Clip--a groovy MP3 player. I quickly found the track and played Rocky Mountain High, by John Denver. Then I realized the lyrics, "he was born in the summer of his 27th year, coming home to a place he'd never been before." That made me smile. I am/was 27 and I had never lived anyplace like this before.

One of the follies of web development is the unending desire to change. Seriously, you can hardly get finished with a project or web site before you utterly hate it and want to change everything about it almost completely. I don't know if our minds are tuned to the ever-changing nature of our culture, but nothing seems to stand the tests of time or short time anymore. To punish my tendencies, I usually spend more time reverting the "new" design back to the original.

It is somewhat trendy for people involved in technology to disclaim it from their lives. For example, I used to work with a guy who actually claims that he hated computers, and didn't have a computer or TV in his house. I have a feeling his claims were somewhat exaggerated, but the fact remains - kids and technology are funny, they super absorb it, but when you are part of it in your life and profession, and as you get older, the tendency to remove yourself from it - the tendency to start to use pen and paper again - the tendency to go "analog" is undeniable. Maybe it's a defense mechanism to not get too swept away.