nhjcfnhfc January 26, 2008
Posted by rengawman in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
Sometimes I have that REM song go through my mind- not the one about “Shiny Happy People,” (which caused me to lose respect for REM) (And it was so sugary sweet that my teeth hurt… I do like that lady from the B-52’s though), but that other one, “Everybody Hurts.” Here is the video of it: It is a great song, because, well, it is true, and it is something that we can all relate to- at one time or another we all hurt, we all grieve, and we all lose. It is simply a part of life, and a part of life that nobody wants, but in the transitory life that we lead, where everything comes to an end, that means that we all have to deal with loss.That loss that causes grief comes in several forms, and by various means. Maybe someone dies- that final good-bye is always a hard one. Maybe we grieve because we never got to say that good-bye and there is unfinished business. Death is not the only way that grief comes into our lives. We can grieve the loss of a job, or an opportunity- we can grieve the end of a relationship- we can grieve the loss of one thing, when we have made the choice for another. People can disappoint us, and we can disappoint others- we can even grieve that someone is in our presence that we would rather see go somewhere else!Grief is a slippery subject- it is hard to deal with because it is an emotion that requires a lot of time to work though, and a lot of energy to endure. When we are grieving it touches everything that we do, and affects the very way we live our lives.There is a funny thing about us human beings though that I noticed. I am by no means a psychologist, but I have lost people, jobs, opportunities, had to move- and I have had the privilege of being there for people when they undergo the same thing, so I have had some experience on both sides of grief. That funny thing is how we are built to handle it.I have to say that how we deal with grief is somewhat dependant on two things- the first is our common human nature, and the second is our culture. For instance, there are common ways that everyone deals with grief that are universal- common chemical reactions etc. But having lived in Italy for a few years, I know that there are expressions of grief that vary from culture to culture as well. For instance, a funeral here in the United States is always somber and quiet- an air of dignity. In Italy, the funerals I attended are always passionate events- crying and wailing, falling down. In some ways I think that is a healthier way to deal with grief rather than supressing it like we are encouraged to do- we are supposed to “remain strong.”I always worry when someone is “taking it well,” or “keeping a stiff upper lip.” One way or another that grief has to come out.There is an analogy that I like to use when it comes to grief- that of a septic tank vs. city water.Some people have city water when it comes to grief, but most of us, especially in the US, have septic tanks when dealing with grief. That’s right, I am comparing grief to… poo.A lot like grief, everybody produces it- nobody likes to, but we all have to, and it has to go somewhere. When we flush the toilet, I am sure we often don’t think about where the waste is going, but it has to go somewhere. (By the way, if you are thinking a lot about where it is going when you flush, you have a lot more than grief to worry about my friend!)The people that have city water flush, and it is gone forever- goes down the pipe, into the sewer, and far far away, to wherever the pipes go. People with city water never have to worry about it again- they just pay their taxes and move on with life.For the rest of us, we have septic tanks, when we flush that stuff down, it doesn’t go far away, it simply goes underground, behind our house. Certainly, it seems like it goes away, but in reality the waste is still there, and only buried underground. Left by itself, that septic tank, large or small, will fill up, and eventually overflow, filling your back yard, your basement, and smell up not only your house, but the rest of the neighborhood as well. If you don’t call the guy to pump out your septic tank, all that waste you produced in the last year or so will come back to haunt you.When we grieve, a lot of us have septic tanks. I wish I had city water, but I don’t. It is real easy for me to take whatever is bothering me, big or small, and just flush it down, hoping it will just go away. In reality, if I don’t deal with grief now, I will have to deal with it sometime, when my tank overflows.But the screwy thing is that this is how we are trained to deal with grief- to “be strong,” and to “take it well.” I think the Italians have something on us there, because there is absolutely NO repression when it comes to their grief. They deal with it then and there.What happens when we just flush it down into our septic tank is that one way or another we are going to have to deal with it, or it will eventually overflow, and stink up our lives. Even if we try and take measures to sit on the lid of the tank to prevent the overflow, it will eventually seep out the sides and over take our lives.Dealing with grief is tough though- nobody, and I mean NOBODY wants to take the lid off the tank and see what is really in there. It would be way too much- this is why we flush it in the first place.The septic tank is not a bad thing though- there is a reason we are built like this- namely the tank gives us time to think and to plan about what we are going to do and how we are supposed to react to that grief. I have heard it said that nobody should make life changing decisions after a major event in their lives- who knows to what extent the grief is affecting them. The septic tanks allows us to “store” our emotions and get our lives in order, so that we can deal with them later. The septic tank of grief gives us time to stop and think- to plan and to be rational- and then call the guy to pump out the rest of the tank. We are built this way so that we can take care of ourselves and love ourselves and others the way that we need to. Amazing how we are built huh?The fact is though, we have to deal with it sometime. No amount of alcohol, food, spending, work, or whatever, is going to keep the lid on that tank. It is going to come out eventually.So what do we do? In the same manner that we cannot (and would not) clean out the septic tank by ourselves (YUCK!), and would call in an expert to haul that stuff away, we need to seek help outside of ourselves to help us deal with grief. This returns us to our original problem though in our culture- somehow we think it makes us look weak.We are relational people- relationships are what make us human, and makes us imitate God. Only God and people are capable of entering into relationships- angels, monkeys, dogs- nothing else in the created order can do what we can in terms of relationships- it is one of the things that make us in the image and likeness of God Himself. (I will have to write a post sometime as to why angels don’t enter into relationships the same way we do, so save your questions for later).We have to rely on those relationships to help us pump out our tank- and before it overflows we need to sit down and find out if the relationships we have are enough to help us deal with what is in our tank, or if we need to form new relationships to help us. Maybe our friends and family members are dealing with their own grief about the same situation, and we can help each other to get it outside of ourselves. Here are a couple of ideas for relationships.1. Family and friends- hold a meeting with friends and family members who you trust, and who might be going through the same thing. Don’t be afraid to laugh or cry about something- it doesn’t make us weak, it actually helps to share the strength in the room. I have heard it said, share the bad and it is cut in half- share the good and it is doubled. Basically, form a support group using your friends and family.2. A support group- there are support groups for everything now- losing pets, loved ones, jobs, girlfriends, husbands- whatever. They are often free, and if you don’t have the ability to share with friends or family, there is nothing like getting some people who have gone through it, or are going through the same thing to help. Plus, if they are strangers who are they going to tell?! 12 step groups like AA or OA (or any variety of groups) are especially helpful if the way you are dealing with grief is through addiction.3. A professional- sometimes to clean out our tank we need a professional to come in with a truck and a hose. They have seen it all before folks- we have a lot of fear often that they will judge us, but a good pastor, counselor, or therapist can mean a world of change. Sometimes you just need someone who will listen.4. Writing a letter- no matter what we are grieving, the emotions are swirling around inside of us like a whirlpool- try and get your hands around it, and you will just get wet. It is as futile as trying to grab water. We need to get those feelings outside of ourselves, make them tangible and real, so that we can really see what is going on inside of us. We may be surprised at what we find when we open the tank and look in. Writing a letter is like pouring a bag of concrete into the whirlpool. Eventually it hardens, and you can get your hands around it, and even see what is going on. Writing a letter makes it real- you don’t need to send the letter (in some cases I wouldn’t recommend it if you are particularly resentful about something or other). If the people involved are alive, burn the letter after a week so they don’t ever find it. Maybe the person is dead- you can still write them a letter. Be honest above all… you will be suprised at what you might find!Some of these things seem like common sense. But when we are grieving, common sense doesn’t always apply! That is sort of my point- the reason we have these septic tanks in the first place is so we can be rational about how to deal with what is inside, even if it isn’t pleasant. The grief tank isn’t a final solution, but a stop gap so that we can develop healthy coping mechanisms, and live a life with a clean basement and a fresh smelling house! I am sure your neighbors, the people in your life and work, will appreciate it as well.
Keep your Focus January 19, 2008
Posted by rengawman in Humor with a point, Motivation, life, philosophy.Tags: inspiration, life, Motivation
1 comment so far
Diversity is death… that is a saying that I heard once at a conference a few months ago. lack of Focus is dangerous… It got me to thinking about a professor I knew in Rome. I can’t remember her name (which is probably a good thing) but I knew that she taught philosophy in English to a few English speaking students in town. I never had her myself as a teacher, but met her in a coffee bar in one of the universities I attended in Rome.
I was startled to hear how badly she spoke English- I knew she taught in English, and as I tried to strike up a conversation with her, her english just seemed to get worse and worse. Her accent wasn’t quite Italian, and it wasn’t quite German, nor could you say it was Spanish or French. I couldn’t figure this lady out really, even though her blond hair gave her away as something of the Teutonic variety.
Me fail English? That’s un-possible!
I asked her if it would be better that we spoke in Italian, as I figured maybe since she lived in town, her Italian would be better than her English. Just about anything would have been better than her English. So we switched gears into Italian, and I was started to find that her Italian was just as bad as her English. Finally, we switched into some broken Spanish (my Spanish was rusty at this point) and again, I was amazed to find that I spoke better Spanish than she did!
It turns out that she spoke 8 lanuages! And none of them well! I asked where she was from and she said Germany, but that her German wasn’t even all that good. I asked her what she spoke well, and she replied that English and Italian were her two best languages. She had apparently moved around a lot as a kid, and picked up a bit of everything as she moved.
I guess we can all be like that at times- Jack of all trades, master of none. But it is an expectation in our culture that we multitask- that we keep as many plates spinning as we possibly can without letting any of them fall. And there are plenty of people who are waiting for our plates to fall! The expectation is that we are supposed to be good at everything we do- be good soccer moms and executives- be good dads and football coaches- be members of the church and work and community- have a thousand friends who we write thousands of Christmas cards to. It can be maddening I tell ya!
But I often think of that professor in Rome- she couldn’t really speak any language well, and our conversation turned into a mismash of English, Spanish, and Italian. If we lose our focus, we will certainly be destroyed, simply because we can’t keep all those plates spinning at once.
Um… what a strange passtime
I once had a similar experience- I once took 22 credit hours one semester in college- studying 3 lanuages (Latin, Greek, and Spanish) in addition to all the philosophy credits I was expected to take. I didn’t learn any of those languages well, and I would have to say that by the end of the semester it was even hard to get my English straight! (I remember my friend jabbing me with a friendly insult, and all I could do was stare at him, because no coherent English words were going to come out.)
If we lose our focus and diversify our life so much that we spread ourselves thin, all we are going to be able to do is to stare at someone when they need a response. The same is true in our professional occupation as well- McDonald’s used to have good hamburgers, until they spread out into salads and chicken and cookies and all the other things that they do. If they focused on being the number one hamburger maker, maybe it wouldn’t turn my stomach so bad when someone suggests it as a nice pit stop on a trip.
Yuck… sorry Ronald
We can simply keep pulling the lever and hope for a jackpot- the reason slot machines work is because it is hard to take three diverse things and line them up!
So the solution is that we need to streamline our lives a little- understand what is important to us so that we can be a good focused person, and help the people around us. That means saying “NO” sometimes- that means drawing and keeping our boundaries with people and with ourselves. It means cutting out the fat and not sticking too many “irons in the fire.”
There are five areas of our life that we need to maintain- Spiritual, Intellectual, Physical, Professional, and Social. Those are the five necessary components to being a happy person, and yet we have to prioritize even those areas. Setting short term easily attainable goals in each of these areas, and cutting out the fat when necessary will make us a well rounded person. Even then, there are times in which one of these will take president over the others. We have to make sure that we are maintaining a balance in all of our lives.
Think of it like food- when I get a plate of food I might have a piece of meat, a potato, and a vegitable. Rarely do I try and eat all three at once- I like to enjoy the individual flavor of each- to mix them takes away from the flavor of each part of the meal. In the end we have to know where to quit and when to say yes. I would recommend a book by Seth Godin called “The Dip.” You can find his blog here: http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2123/17470696
If we stop trying to spin 10 plates, it may be easier to spin 5- now we just have to decide which plates to stop from spinning.
The Flabbergasted Philosopher is moving! January 8, 2008
Posted by rengawman in Blogroll, Events, Motivation, Theology, philosophy.Tags: blog, life, Motivation, moving, philosophy
3 comments
I have enjoyed wordpress so much folks that I have installed it into my own domain (thanks to the help of “the Shadow,” a guy who works for wordpress). So for now I will be moving my blog over to www.totalpossibility.com/blog. The new posts will be there, but I will let the old posts remain here until wordpress.com gets tired of me. (I will find some way to move them over.)
18,500 Visitors!
As of today, January 8th, 2007, I have had over 18,500 visits to my blog. Not too shabby for a blog that is less than 6 months old! (totalpossibility.com isn’t far behind that!)
This blog has brought world peace! (OK that is a lie)
So far this blog has reunited me with old elementary school classmates, introduced me to new and exciting people, solved world hunger, and eliminated the threat of nuclear war. Who knew a blog could do all that?!
I am also changing the name of the blog to simply “Total Possibility,” to stay with my website’s theme. (Don’t worry, I will eternally be Flabbergasted… I hear there are pills for that…) There will be more exciting changes to www.totalpossibility.com as well. (As you may have seen if you are a regular visitor there.)
I will update the main website when I update the blog, so there will be regular updates to both totalpossibility the website as well as archives in the blog, so you can go to either.
MORE EXCITEMENT?!?!?!
Some other exciting stuff coming is that I am going to expand my blog out to some other, hand picked contributors so that there can be more of a variety to the blog on some various topics.
In addition to that, I am planning to start a podcast, which is one of the reasons that I am moving the blog. (wordpress.com doesn’t as easily support podcasting vs. if I have it installed myself. That podcast will not only be me yakkin’ but other contributors as well.
So go and visit www.totalpossibility.com, and help me out by clicking on some of the google ads that I have there. (I don’t pick that content by the way… google puts up there what it dang well feels like, so if there is something weird, blame google) (I try and find some way to blame google for all my problems) It’ll only take a second of your time!
Tell all your friends and neighbors, cats, and dogs, heck, tell that creepy guy you saw at the movie theater last week! There was a guy who used to come into the movie theater that I worked at in High School who looked like Elvis. Mean guy actually. Cool hair though.
Joshua Wagner S.T.B., M.A.
Founder, CEO, President, Mail Clerk, and Dog Trainer to:
Total Possibility LLC
(OK there aren’t any dogs) (There are a couple of stuffed monkeys).
The Cartesian Compromise and Its Problems January 4, 2008
Posted by rengawman in philosophy.add a comment
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So I thought I would return to a little more hard core philosophy after all this talk about ducks.
I read a little philosophy every day. I read just a little simply because I want the concepts to be able to sink in that I might be able to think about them and examine them. I would still have to say that for the most part I remain an Aristotelian and Thomist, although a few of those views are beginning to change. That is simply the paradigm by which I approach most philosophical concepts.
So these days, I am doing a little self review of philosophy in the modern period. I am doing that by simply reading 5 pages or so a day of Copelston’s History of Philosophy every day. Again, I only read so little because I like to read every day, and I want to make sure that I don’t miss any concepts. It is sort of like doing math or logic too quickly and leaving out a tilde or a negative sign.
These last 2 weeks or so I have been reading about Des Cartes. To sum up Des Cartes in a nut shell, he began his philosophical inquiry by denying knowledge about anything- he did not deny knowledge per ipsum, but he denied anything that could not be proven without absolute certainty. This is where the “cogito” statement that everyone knows comes from. Cogito Ergo Sum to be exact. The only thing that Des Cartes could not deny was that whether or not I know what I know to be true, whether or not I am being deceived by some greater power, like a demon or an unjust God, the fact remains that I am here to be wrong or to be deceived. That, for Des Cartes, was an incontrovertible fact. From there he built a metaphysics which was based on the certainty of Mathematics, of God, who must be the source of our concept of infinity (since we ourselves must be finite, the idea of the infinite must come from somewhere itself infinite, which must be God).
Some of the things that Des Cartes had to contend with was physical matter and its relationship to the metaphysical beings, such as mind, or God. I think this has been a problem for every philosopher who admits a metaphysics, whether you be Platonic, Cartesian, Aristotelian or Thomistic. How does the immaterial interact with the material? That is the simple question. I think it is a fascinating question myself that has ramifications into ethics, epistemology, as well as politics and society.
For the Thomists and Aristotelians, they (I guess I have to make a qualified “we” there) talk about the interaction in terms of causality. We look at the four causes, efficient, formal (metaphysical), material, and final causes. Causality is what links the material to the metaphysical in this system. Basically, in the substance of man, the soul and body are one thing with logical distinctions. The soul is the formal cause of the body, and when the two are separated by death, the body ceases to be animated. The material cause, or the mechanism which works on the material end, is the body itself. In this system, the formal and material causes are intrinsically linked. It is almost as if to say that there is only a logical distinction between the two. The key word here is substance. In the substance which is man there is a unity between formal and material causes, which is the thing in itself. For these philosophers, the body and the soul are really only complete and functional when they are together.
For Des Cartes, however, as for the Platonists, we seem to be souls stuck in bodies. This process of learning something for both of them, is simply a rediscovery of innate knowledge that we already have. There is a sort of hostile relationship between body and soul for the two of them- and for St. Paul in Romans Ch 8 by the way. (Paul was a Platonist). For these two philosophers, one could conclude that the soul is more at home when it is by itself and not weighed down by the body. It is then free to remember all the things that are innate to it.
For Des Cartes, his compromise was to say that the human person (however you might define it) is really two substances. There is the immaterial substance of the mind, and the material substance of the body. So instantly, he changes what was traditionally thought by the Aristotelians and Thomists as substance.
So how does a substance without extension (i.e. immaterial) interact with a body with extension (i.e. material). For Des Cartes he says, for some odd reason, that the point of interaction was the pituitary gland. Why there and not the brain or the body?
In reality, I believe that this is a problem for the Thomists and Aristotelians as well, although because of their definition of substance, it isn’t as much of a problem.
For the next couple hundred years, the philosophers tried to figure out this interaction between mind and body, and I think we are still working on it today. Why is it that when I will to move my finger, my finger moves? How are the perceptions that I am recieving though my senses getting transferred to my mind? Are they getting transferred? Am I really percieving anything? What is it then, that I know?
One of my favorite follow ups to the Cartesian Compromise, and its subsequent problems is the philosopher Malebranche. (I wrote a paper on him in College). Malebranche basically states that our willing to move our finger is simply the occasion for God to move the material finger. For him there is no interaction between body and mind, rather the point of interaction becomes God himself. This is called occasionalism. In occasionalism, if there is any interaction it is simply God allowing the movement that we will. There are two problems with this: one- if we do something “immoral” with our bodies, it is because God made it happen. Moral implications there! Second is that you have the same problem- if God is immaterial, how can HE interact with the material to move it? That must mean God himself is part material.
Hobbes takes the extreme approach and says that there is no metaphysics- everything is just motion without any real rationality. But experience tends to tell us that there is immaterial things, like mind and spirit.
These days I am rethinking some of my previous notions of metaphysics and substance. While I still claim to be a Thomist and Aristotelian, I believe that what Des Cartes has done (and what philosophers have been contending with ever since) is to raise a very important question about the nature of… well… everything.
The mind is very very powerful- when it is focused, it can make the physical body do just about anything. It can move mountains! I think that there are a lot of ways that the interation between the material and immaterial are being explored through fields such as quantum physics, which has opened the doors to all sorts of new theories and philosophies of the interaction between mind and matter.
I think that the material and immaterial interaction problem has been a constant one since the beginning of philosophy. As I have said in previous posts, I believe that the solution is to return to an exploration of being itself. Of course, the question must be asked if it is even possible to know being in itself and its “nature.” (I guess therein lies the problem). I am not sure how to do this at all.
Any ideas?
The Big Red Button (Accepting the Consequences of our Actions, the 5th Duck) January 3, 2008
Posted by rengawman in Humor with a point, Motivation, life, philosophy.Tags: computers, humor, life, Motivation, stories, story
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Recently, that is, in the last few years, Staples, the paper and office supply company, had an advertising campaign where whenever someone pushed a big red “Easy Button,” office supplies would magically drop from the ceiling. Whenever I see those commercials, and the big read button, I curl up into a ball and fall on the floor. Maybe I even cry a little bit. See, I have a thing for giant red buttons… PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).
When I was about 12 years old, my Dad got transferred with IBM from our lush, expansive, peaceful, serene, and tranquil farm in Elida, Ohio, to the big bustling city of Dallas- Ft. Worth Texas, where IBM had its education center, and a hub for a big portion of its computer network.
I’ve Been Moved
Routinely, I would go to work with my Dad, and I would either spend hours playing with hole punches and staplers, or he would set me up at a computer where I could enter the world of computer role playing games, like Space Quest, or King’s Quest, which were popular at the time. World of WarCraft has nothing on King’s Quest III if you ask me.
One of these times, we were in the big mainframe room at one of the centers in Irving, Texas, where the IBM education center was. This room was expansive- so much so that if you threw a baseball, I doubt you could get it from one side of the room to the other. OK, I can’t throw a baseball from home plate to first base, but you get the point!
This room was filled with huge mainframes, tape machines, terminals, and always had these gigantic air conditioners on keeping the whole place nice and cool. My dad found me a workstation and I began to solve the puzzle which was King’s Quest IV. I didn’t like that one because you had to be a girl, unlike the previous couple of King’s Quests, but I was content to play it anyway.
I got into the game, and began to realize that I needed to go to the bathroom. I waited for as long as I could, and the pain told me that we had a critical situation brewing. So I went over to my Dad and told him of my dilemma. He pointed out that the bathrooms were around the corner outside of yonder door (pointing to yonder door). He told me that when I wanted to get back in, I had to push the button beside the door (which was probably some kind of door bell.)
I had to go to the bathroom so badly that my brain was floating, and some of the instructions that he had given me may have been misinterpreted… so I walked over to the door and saw a button. All I could remember was to push the button. The button was large, and red, and had a plastic cover over it… kind of like the kind used to launch nukes in a movie.
I shrugged my shoulders and lifted the plastic cover, and pushed the big red button. All of sudden, the lights in the big room went off, as did all the computers, as well as the air conditioners, terminals, coffee pots, Ferris wheels etc. I had pushed the emergency cut off switch for the room. Not only that room, but three of the buildings it was connected to.
All I remember is my Dad looking up in horror and asking me what I did.
I still had to go to the bathroom, so my Dad walked me down to the bathroom where I stayed for the next couple of hours. You would be surprised at how much flushing toilets can entertain you after awhile.
To this day when I see big red buttons, I feel nervous and anxious like I did that day. Shortly after, IBM issued a memo that family members were not to be in the building. Luckily, it was a Sunday, so it didn’t disrupt commerce too much, although several guys had to be called in to reboot the buildings I had shut down. (Dad didn’t get fired by the way, although he came awfully close.)
Whether we mean it or not, choose or not, intend it or not, we have to learn to live with the consequences of our own actions and choices. As creatures of free will, we are given the ability to make hundreds of big and small choices every day, one choice affecting the next. In our culture, it is very easy to try and escape the consequences of our own choices. That is a choice in itself, and eventually, we will have to face up, one way or another, to the choices that we have made.
It is impossible to escape consequences. We can’t simply wait for things to work themselves out, as inactivity and indecision is itself a choice that we make. Living with the consequences of our actions can have both positive and negative effects. However, we are not ever bound and determined by choices we have made in the past. That is just because we made a choice that got us here, or into a particular situation, or set of circumstances or consequences, doesn’t mean that we have to make those same decisions in the future.
Nor does it mean that we have to be determined by the consequences of other people’s actions. What it means is that we must take responsibility for every choice we make, both good and bad, active and inactive, and work within the particular outcomes of each choice.
I didn’t mean to push the wrong button that day, but I did. I had to accept and live with the potential consequences of that action. I could have either faced them, or run away from them, but either way they would have caught up with me.
It is easy in our culture to try and run from consequences. We have a lot of means at our disposal for doing that- drugs, alcohol, work, titles, uniforms, relationships. Using these things to try and hide from consequences will only lead to more dire consequences in the future. The key here, as I mentioned above, is acceptance. Accepting what we have done in the past, understanding where it has brought us, and attempting to make better, more educated choices in the future.
There is a reason this is the last “duck,” that we need to put in a row- simply because it is the duck that is the culmination of the other 4 “ducks” that came before it. If we understand our self worth, if we understand our need and fulfill our ability to love and be loved, if we defend ourselves, and deal with our own inner confusion, the consequences in every area of our life will be good, more or less. We will be able to handle any consequence that comes along because it is itself the consequence of putting our ducks in a row.
If we don’t put those other 4 “ducks” in a row, we will have other consequences to deal with- being unhealthy- being scattered- never taking responsibility for our actions and trying to correct ourselves and stay on course.
This requires a lot of work to “keep our ducks in a row.” Constant work, but the consequences of that work, of self examination, of proper love of self and neighbor, will itself lead us into good healthy decisions and consequences. So what we have to do is to accept where we have been, and use it as a jumping off point for where we would like to be.
Are your ducks in a row? Do you understand your worth? Do you love yourself and others? Can you defend yourself in a proper way? Where does your inner confusion lie? Do you accept the fact that you are where you are because of choices you have made? I know that personally, I have only been putting my ducks in a row in the last couple of years, and it requires a lot of constant work and vigilance. The consequences are worth it though.
Stuck in a Car Wash! (Dealing with Inner Confusion) January 1, 2008
Posted by rengawman in Humor with a point, Motivation, Theology, cars, life, philosophy.Tags: humor, Humor with a point, life, Motivation, philosophy, self-help, Theology
1 comment so far
Oh this is a great story…
Last year, during a cold snap in February, the roads were covered with salt, which meant my car, Lucy, was also covered in salt. So on my way home from a friend’s house late one night I was concerned for Lucy and the many layers of salt she had on her, and before acrewing a new layer, I figured I would give her a quick run through the car wash.
Now I understand the absurdity of the idea of washing my car in below freezing temperatures, with salt coating the roads, and having to avoid the army of salt trucks I saw on the way home, but for some reason it seemed like a good idea. So I went to one of those “touchless” car wash, put my credit card in, the door opened and I pulled in, business as usual. The car wash ended and I am sure Lucy looked nice and clean. When it came time to leave, the garage door in front of me wouldn’t open, and the one I came through was closed… so basically, I was trapped. I got out and pushed the emergency release button, and the door was still shut. Frozen solid!
I was trapped…I was trapped… there was no door to the outside for humans either, and since I have not experienced the resurrection, and I am not GOB or David Copperfield (the fictional character nor the magician) I could not walk through the walls, and I felt a certain sense of dread come over me… Plus, inside the touchless carwash there is always water shooting from all directions, so to get out of my car was like walking through an obstacle course of water. At one point I was standing there thinking about what to do for a minute, when I realized that one of the streams of water was hitting the upper part of my right leg which I didn’t feel for about 30 seconds, as the water was also warm… I don’t have to tell you what that looked like… or felt like, as the water was very warm. Plus there was steam everywhere which fogged up my glasses. I was in a bad position. I did begin to laugh at this point, and realized how funny the situation was. THEN I moved out of the way of the stream of water. HA!!!There was also no phone number posted to call, plus it was 10:30 at night. Anyway, I walked over to the other adjoining carwash chamber (great descriptive word there) (reminds me of the carbon freezing chamber from Star Wars), and I hit the release button for the garage door and that one opened. Instantly the steam increased 3 fold as it contacted the arctic air outside, and I must have looked like an alien emerging from the belly of the space ship.
Too bad nobody was there to see it. So it’s cold wet and steamy, and my pant leg was drenched but I had my sweet freedom. Except Lucy herself was still trapped. I called a number that I finally found and left a message for “Greg.” Greg never got back to me, so I went back into the car wash, backed Lucy up to the back door, went around and bought another car wash, which opened up the back door and I backed her out into the cold, again in the midst of all is steam, Lucy emerged. Great story huh?
There were moments while I was trapped in that steamy mixture of cold air and hot water that I just didn’t know what I was going to do. I was terrified at moments that I was going to have to spend the night in the middle of the car wash. Did I call 911? If I did, was it enough of an emergency and would I get in trouble? Worse yet, would the cops get there and just laugh at me? Talk about inner confusion! I was at my wits end! There were seemingly a thousand options that I could have pursued in securing my freedom, and none of them seemed adequate. Plus, once one door opened (literally!) all the other ones in front of me were still closed.
The cops would have laughed at me…
I think this is a great analogy to how a lot of people view life. They are in situations which baffle them- really it isn’t the situation that baffles them, rather it is their own interior confusion that makes life-situations baffling to most people.
All of us deal to some extent with inner confusion. A lot of us like to avoid it because it makes us feel uncomfortable in our own skin. We are sort of like that car wash in some ways- like the water that was squirting in all directions, clouding up the cold air with steam, so we are often a flurry of emotions, thoughts, fears, rationalizations, and any number of things that “fog up” our interior “lenses,” and prevent us from understanding who we really are, and what we need to do.
Inner confusion
Dealing with this confusion is a basic human need. All of us get stuck in the car wash from time to time. Maybe we can relate to my little foible in the car wash last year- we know we are stuck in the steam and the sprays of water, closed behind doors that won’t open due to our choices or circumstances, and we are too embarrassed or afraid to ask for help. I was afraid to call the police to get help because I figured they would laugh at me. Maybe some of us are ashamed about our own inner confusion and rather than seek help and be ridiculed or hurt, we prefer to spend the night in the chaos of our own “inner carwash.”
Eventually, I took the time that night to think my way out of the carwash, and if we take the time, calm down, and really begin to look at our inner confusion, both the causes and the effects, we may just figure out a way to free ourselves from the bondage of our own inner confusion. That takes work- it also invariably requires another person, or people to help us.
The first requirement is a relationship with a Higher Power. God made us, he can help us to figure out what is going on inside of us. He can calm us and give us a new perspective on our own inner confusion. Really we are wonderfully designed, and what seems like chaos to us is actually working properly. Going back to our carwash, the streams of water, the steam, and all the other elements of the confusion car wash told me that everything was working properly! It just seemed confusing to me! Once I figured out the glitch, I was free in a matter of minutes. Often what seems confusion to us is confusing because of a matter of perspective. God has the ultimate perspective on how we are supposed to work. Unlike “Greg” at the car wash, when we call on him he will come and help us fix the problem. We have to call Him first though.
Second, we need a community of support. Maybe that is family, maybe it isn’t. Maybe it is friends or a support group. The first step to managing the seemingly unmanageable inner confusion we all face is admitting that we might have a problem, or a glitch in the mechanism. Once we do that we can go to people that can help us.
As I have mentioned in other blogs, you can’t see your own face without a mirror. We need someone outside of ourselves to be vulnerable to- both human and divine, that can help us sort out our inner confusion. This is an ongoing process if we want to be happy and free.
Of course, there are inappropriate ways to deal with inner confusion as well- avoidance behaviors that try and suppress the inner confusion we all face- Drugs, alcohol, bad relationships, or any number of things. These things not only are ineffective against suppressing our inner confusion, they make it worse.
In the end of the day, we simply need to make sure that we are rigorously honest with ourselves, our friends who we trust, and with God. We need to be humble enough to make that call when we need to when we are stuck in some situation, even when fear is telling us not to, or we are afraid of being hurt or made fun of. Only then can we begin to sort out that inner confusion which at one point or another, plagues us all.
American Gladiators are Back!!!!! (The Third Duck: Defending yourself) December 28, 2007
Posted by rengawman in Humor with a point, Motivation, life, philosophy.Tags: humor, Humor with a point, life, Motivation, philosophy
1 comment so far
This is the third in a series about “Getting your Ducks in a Row.”
Thank goodness for this writer’s strike, because it is bringing back one of the greatest TV shows to ever grace the screen: American Gladiators.
Back in the 80’s I remember sitting through horrible episodes of Saturday Night Live (ok they weren’t as bad as some of them now) just to watch American Gladiators. I am not sure why the show ever went off the air, other than the fact that they messed with some of the more popular games, eliminating some of them all together, or replacing them with goofy substitutes that they thought would liven things up. I mean, who liked that stupid swinging one anyway? That was just dumb if you ask me.
Duuuude….
It was a great concept- average Americans- Americans just like you or me taking on buff, steroid induced machines in some really physically challenging competitions. Well, some of them were physically challenging anyway. Like the Eliminator at the end of every show, or the one where they had to out-clime one of those buff Gladiators on a climbing wall. It was great competition as the Gladiator, who was always in much better shape than the opponent scaled the wall like Spider-man to pull down his contender.
There were games though that required almost no physical prowess whatsoever. I can’t remember the name of it, but one of the games gave the Gladiator a high powered gun that shot tennis balls at the contender. The contender had to hit a target just above the Gladiator’s head to win, using only tennis balls thrown by his arm. (OK he had some weapons of his own, but they never seemed to have great aim.) The Gladiator would just sit up there and fire tennis balls at mach 5 at the contender’s head. Now that is good TV.
Unfair advantage…
Sadly, the original Gladiators Zap, Laser, Gemini, Mitch, and Sneezy, (I may have some of those names wrong) got canceled and had to go back to working at Pay-less, as the most buff shoe salesmen ever. They faded into obscurity, only to be seen in re-runs.
Now they are bringing back the Gladiators thanks to the writer’s strike, and the world will be a better place. Once again we get to see average American’s get the crap beat out of them by over juiced men and women… I hope congress doesn’t ask THEM about steroid use…
Still, you have to give those average athletes credit… I would never want to go against a person who calls themselves Viper or Ice. They often stood up against these big people and defended themselves well. My favorite event by far was the pugel-sticks, where they stood up on big pedestals with giant cue-tips and attacked each other. It was great.
Nobody stood there and took it though- they defended themselves, even if unsuccessfully, they still had to learn somehow along the line how to defend themselves. This is the third “duck” in the series of 5 ducks that I mentioned in a previous post.
One of our basic human needs is to learn how to defend ourselves. That can be hard to do- there are a lot of people that get into situations that prevent them from learning how to do this- how to defend themselves physically, emotionally, or psychologically. It seems that they are going up against someone much more scary than any American Gladiator could ever be- be it a parent, a spouse, a family member, or even a boss.
Some people think that in order for people to love them, or in order to love someone (the second “duck”) that means that they have to let someone roll over them. That is not the case- each one of us needs to learn how to defend ourselves, in order that we might love ourselves and others. Being rolled over is not a loving thing to do for anyone.
Some people learn how to defend themselves inappropriately too. Some people turn to addictions to insulate themselves from their own emotions or fears. Drugs, alcohol, shopping, sex, food or whatever you want to put in that list (because you can be addicted to just about anything or anyone) is a quick and easy alternative to actually standing up to what we fear and defending ourselves in a healthy and appropriate way. In the end, those quick fixes that we use for self defense end up isolating us from others and ourselves, they prevent us from loving or being loved, they add to our confusion, and diminish our self worth.
Another unhealthy way to defend ourselves is to try and control the situation- to roll over other people so that they cannot hurt us, or to try and manipulate situations so that we are always king of the mountain. Ultimately to roll over other people to defend ourselves is also self defeating for the same reason that addictions are. Basically, you begin to isolate yourself from other people as they come to fear you and your attitude and reactions to things.
The King of the Mountain is always lonely
Defending ourselves does not mean to isolate with addictions, or to try and control every single situation by rolling over people. In the end, it is more damaging to do either, and you will end up alone, fearful, and angry at the world. I have seen it happen in people’s lives.
How do we properly defend ourselves? I believe the key is in setting healthy boundaries and then keeping them.
If we have someone in our lives that is toxic or dangerous to us, we have a right to set our own boundaries with that person. That doesn’t mean imposing boundaries on them (that probably wouldn’t work anyway) but it means that if we have a toxic person in our lives, we choose when to see them or not, the setting and the circumstance.
That means that defending ourselves is to not put ourselves into a situation that we will get hurt by. It means knowing ourselves well enough to set boundaries that are healthy, not exclusive, and it also means uttering the most difficult word: “No.”
Setting boundaries means saying no to some things. Loving someone doesn’t mean you always say yes to every desire that they have. Loving someone sometimes means you have to say no- it sometimes means that setting a boundary means that for their own good you have to put some distance between them and you. It doesn’t mean that you don’t love them, but what it means is that you love them enough to protect both yourself and them.
Boundaries
You don’t even necessarily have to tell difficult people about your boundaries- it is you that has to keep them, not the other person. That may mean removing yourself from a dangerous or abusive situation. That may require you to ask for help in order to preserve yourself.
Really defending yourself and loving yourself aren’t too different. It would be silly for that contender in American Gladiators to just stand there and take a beating from someone twice his size. We, like that contender, have a right to healthy self preservation- to say no- and to make sure that we are in an environment that is happy and healthy.
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The Real Moulin Rouge in Paris (The second duck, to love and to be loved) December 27, 2007
Posted by rengawman in Humor with a point, humor, life, travel.Tags: France, humor, Humor with a point, life, love, Paris, travel
3 comments
A Humorous Story :
A few years ago, of of my favorite movies came to the big screen: Moulin Rouge. Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, and even that short guy that plays the creepy clown in Spawn was in it. Man, as if clowns weren’t creepy enough, he had to go and play an even creepier clown in that Spawn movie. Frankly, I just find John Leguizamo creepy, whether he is dressed as a clown or not.
For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, Moulin Rouge is about a burlesque house in Paris, France, near Mon Martres. Mon Martres was famous, and still is, for many things, amoung the most notable are the artists. Like many houses of ill repute, Moulin Rouge enjoyed a considerable amount of success for its time, which was about the turn of the 20th century. The movie itself was about a particularly famous actress falling in love with a penniless writer. There was a lot of singing involved, particularly of songs by Sting.
Anyway, I loved the movie, and around the time Moulin Rouge (the movie) was reaching the heights of its own popularity, I was taking a trip to France to see Paris. We saw all the sites in that fair city, including the top of Mon Martres, and the glorious Sacre Coeur church that sits on top of it. We ate a nice lunch, and saw some of the artists that hung around doing portraits of people.
Sacre Coeur, Paris
I was with my friend, lets call him Mitch (to protect the innocent). Mitch had been having a tough week as they had lost his luggage in our trip from Rome to Paris. All he had to wear was the clothes that he traveled in. The airline was nice enough to give him a toothbrush though.
So Mitch and I finished lunch and looked into the guide book for the next thing to see. It turns out that St. Ignatius of Loyola had founded the Society of Jesus on that very mountain, so we strolled down Mon Martres, faithfully following our guide book to the street where the church was built. Since we both attended a Jesuit school in Rome, we figured that we had to pay our respects. It was about 3:00 in the afternoon so it was locked.
Disappointed we looked into our guide book for something else to do, and lo and behold, the Moulin Rouge was just down the street and around the corner! I told Mitch that we had to go since I was rather enamored by the movie Moulin Rouge, and it would be silly to miss. He seemed hesitant. He never told me why but I was about to find out.
Now, something should have told me this was a bad idea, but images of Nicole Kidman were dancing through my head. That something was that two older gentlemen, dressed as two older women, were standing at the end of the street waving at us. Their faces looked like melted candles. I pointed at them and said to Mitch, “hey look at those two.” They waved back, and said hello to us. I thought it was funny. Mitch did not.
I think we may have seen Dame Edna- melty face
That didn’t deter me though, as we took a left at the elderly cross dressers and went further down the mountain. My face was buried in the book trying to make sure we were going the right direction. We got to the bottom of the hill and turned right. Mitch immediately let out a rather loud, oh no! I looked up, and there it was. More neon than I had ever seen in my life: we were in the red light district of Paris.
Mitch was scared. I was frankly scared. I have never been in a more disturbing place in my life. It was all around us, like we had walked through the closet in the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, but instead of appearing in Narnia, we appeared in a much scarier place. Mitch told me that we should get out of here… I tried to act calm and I told him that there was a subway stop about a block ahead, conveniently placed right in front of the Moulin Rouge.
As we walked, there were people (fully clothed) standing in front of the various… establishments… trying to get us into the door. I was trying to play it off as if it wasn’t disturbing, but Mitch wasn’t doing so well. I said to him, “Mitch, they aren’t going to attack us!” At that very moment, one of the door people grabbed Mitch by the arm, dragging him toward the door, and said- “You come with me sweety!”
Mitch let out a groan of terror. I started laughing. It was too much really.
So I fought off the door person, and we shuffled down what seemed to be the never ending block toward the Moulin Rouge. I looked up, and there it was. No Nicole Kidman, no Ewan McGregor- no creepy John Leguizamo. Just a neon covered Red Windmill spinning in the afternoon sun. It was still a burlesque house. The guide book seemed to leave that whole part off of its description.
Mitch was ready to go, as was I. The subway entrance was just a few feet away when I saw it- a candy stand. I walked over and bought some gummy bears. I got a bag full and then we got on the subway to whereever we ended up next. I came to find Mitch wasn’t real happy with our adventure, but he eventually forgave me, as it was an honest mistake.
The Point:
There was a constant theme that went through the entire movie of Moulin Rouge- the Penniless writer, played by Ewan McGregor, came to Paris, not only to write, but to fall in love. The constant theme throughout the movie was that there is nothing greater in this world, than to love and to be loved. That brings us to the second duck that my spiritual director told me about last week. It is absolutely on the money. Of course, once Ewan McGregor expresses publicly his love for Nicole Kidman’s character, she dies of teburculosis. I am sorry if I spoiled the ending for you… you had 7 years to watch it.
This is a fundamental human need that we have though- to love and to be loved. Some people have a hard time with some aspects of this “duck” for various reasons.
There are some people that are easy to love. Some people that when we see them, it brightens our day, and it makes us feel good. There are others, however, that are not so easy to love- sometimes it is a friend, or a co-worker, or a member of the family. Love is not always an easy thing to do, but love is what we are made for. As I have said in other posts, we are made in the image and likeness of God, which means that we have free will, and second, we have the ability to enter into relationships. These culminate in love- love is the choice of willing the good of another person.
Sometimes willing the good of another person means that we have to give them up. Sometimes it means doing something, or not doing something, that we might not want to do in order that we do what is best for our neighbor. Love is very very difficult, but we have a need to love because it takes us out of ourselves, and is the basis for every relationship that we have, from friendship to family or even co-workers. Love at least should be the basis for those relationships. Love turns us away from ourselves, and improves the other person by letting them become the best that they can be. Love hurts sometimes too- real love does, because it involved risk and sacrifice. Risk that our gift of self may be rejected or mis-understood, and sacrifice, which is at the core of loving others- doing what is right for them and best for them, even if it is tough to do.
Believe it or not though, I believe that loving others is the harder of the two. Accepting love is really hard for some people to do, because they don’t think they are worthy, or they have never really been loved. Accepting love means admitting that you need love- it also involves risk- the risk of letting someone know you, and exposing what is in the deepest parts of your heart. See, you can’t love what you don’t know, so often we reject love to protect those things in our hearts that we think are unlovable.
This is what shame is- our whole culture is based around shame for a good part- shame is the belief that there is something unlovable about me- something we are embarrassed to show. People who are abused often feel this- not only do they not let other people love them, but they have a hard time loving themselves. Being loved involves even more of a risk than loving someone else, simply because in order to be loved you have to be open and honest with yourself and others in order for them to love you.
That is where God comes into the picture. He loves us unconditionally. There is nothing we can do to lose that lose, and nothing we need do to earn it. God knows us better than we know ourselves, and always does what is best for us. Sometimes that means saying no to us as well. The key and the goal is to begin to see ourselves as God sees us- to let Him love us, so that we might imitate that toward ourselves and others.
There is no amount of shame that God cannot love away if we let Him. Then we ourselves can be loved, and in turn, go out and love others- finding out what they need and their greatest good and willing that. This fulfills who we are as human beings, allowing us to freely enter into a loving relationship with God, ourselves, and other human beings.
My Magic Monkey Blogspot Political Muffin Chronicles December 21, 2007
Posted by rengawman in Uncategorized.4 comments
So my brother and I were chatting yesterday about this blog, and I was mentioning the different hits I was getting from the search engines, primarily from the search term “smart car” from my blog on an efficient diesel engine the other day. Just because of “smart cars” I am getting hundreds of hits a day on that particular blog. So he suggested that I look up the most popular words in the blogosphere (what a dumb word frankly) and the above title is FILLED with the most googled and searched words in regards to blogs. Well, except monkey and muffin. Those are MY most searched for terms on the internet. I am seeking help.
That’s right… Monkey Muffins. I have ordered 5 cases already.
That having been said, I was intending today to write a little blog about 4th grade. Because I know people are interested in my 4th grade stories. I just know they are. Please be interested…
When I was in 4th grade, I was really into magic- I mean really into it. I think it all started when my mom took me to see David Copperfield (the illusionist, not the Dickens character) the year that he walked through the Great Wall of China. (Incidentally I had a trick that performed a couple of times in High School that was similar- I could break the Great Chair of Aluminum without batting an eye just by sitting on it). (Not to mention futons)
In this particular show, DC didn’t have a great wall of China to walk through, but he did have a somewhat impressive metal wall that he walked through. As I recall, the trick took about 20 minutes to perform altogether, but 19 minutes of it was David Copperfield dancing around the wall in a dramatic fashion. Maybe I was just into dramatic dancing. No… it was magic.
AllI could think of back then was figuring out how the heck he did that, and how no wall would ever hold me back again. I can’t tell you how many walls I tried to walk through after that. I can’t tell you because I eventually passed out from hitting my head on various walls trying to walk through them. I don’t remember 1985 at all.
Owned by the wall
I even went as far as going to a Magic Society meeting (yes there is such an organization, it just doesn’t exist in Arrested Development). (I often heard Final Countdown playing in my sleep.)
GOB
OK even as much as I was into magic back then, the Magic Society proved to be creepy, even by 4th grade standards. Sure these guys could make pigeons come out of places where no pigeon should be, but I am pretty sure it warped their brains somehow. (I remember one creepy guy in particular) (creepy). Most of these guys did not have the grace nor the finesse of David Copperfield, although there was a lot of dramatic dancing going on at the meeting I went to. Maybe I just went to the wrong meeting.
This did not deter me in the least. Certainly I wasn’t called to join the Magic Society as a 4th grader- these guys spent way too much time doing magic even for me. I got my first magic kit shortly thereafter- a Harry Blackstone Magic kit. For those of you who don’t know, Harry Blackstone was the David Copperfield of the 70’s. He was a great man. More mysterious than dramatic, I think he was a great magician. (Could have used more dramatic dancing though.)
It appears that he is dancing… dramatically
I spent the next couple of weeks learning the various tricks- making balls disappearing under cups, card tricks, various tricks involving strings (which almost made me lose a finger once by the way) (That is a different blog) (Strings tied to tight can cut off the circulation in a child’s finger I learned one day) (On my own finger)
After a couple of weeks I felt like I was ready to perform. I had perfected about half the tricks, and thrown in a few dramatic dance moved to boot and I knew it was time. So I approached my 4th grade teacher Mr. Sunderland, who also let me run a banking business in class (yet another blog) (I made lots of money that year) (For a 4th grader) and I asked him to let me perform.
Perform I did- I don’t know if it was the dramatic dancing, or the quality of magic, but I was able to dazzle the other 4th graders. As I get older, I realize how easy it is dazzle 4th graders by the way. A couple of my tricks flubbed up, but for the most part my career as a 4th grade magician was off to a running start. It was my first and last show. I did do some card tricks for a waitress at Bob Evans a few weeks after that, but that was the end of my professional career before I found something else, or my banking business took too much of my time.
I think my interest in magic goes right along with a lot of my habits and actions. In sacraments class back in grad school in Rome, our professor told us the difference between magic and prophecy. Prophecy in a culture is for the good of the culture and not the prophet, whereas magic is an attempt to control one’s environment- it is somewhat self centered.
Who doesn’t want to control their environment and walk through walls or fly around? If that sentiment wasn’t shared by a lot of people there wouldn’t be comic book heroes with superpowers, or people like Donald Trump and Martha Stewart. It is in our nature to try and control our environment however it is possible, and magic seems to do that well. It seems that David Copperfield can dance through a wall or make the statue of liberty disappear. It seems like he has total control over his environment when in reality it is all an illusion.
That is about the same when it comes to controlling our own environments- it is an illusion to believe that we have control over most of anything- that attempt to control our feelings or emotions or the actions of our environment of others is simply like magic- an illusion. There are lots of ways we try to do that by the way that are much more dangerous than magic- work, titles, power, drugs, alcohol, spending- insert your vice here. None of it gives us any more control over our environment than anything else. I often wonder, with all their money, how free someone like Donald Trump or Martha Stewart really is. Maybe they are slaves to their money- I would bet they are.
Realizing how little control we have over things is really liberating. I can’t control how I feel about things- I can’t control how you feel about things- I can’t change the weather or walk through walls. What I do have control over however, thanks to the grace of God, are my choices- my actions. I do have control over that no matter what is going on around me. I do not believe that we are necessarily determined to act in a particular way because of our environment or upbringing. I think often that we, myself included, simply choose to go with what is easier or comfortable or what we know thus giving our free will to someone else, or enslaving it to some kind of addiction. Certainly we are created to be free rational beings capable of entering into good relationships with people of free will. It is hard to take back our free will because that means maybe ticking someone off, but as I mentioned yesterday, you are probably going to tick someone off anyway, and you can’t please everyone (another issue of control) so you might as well not try.
The intelligent thing is to cultivate your free will- to learn to discern what is best for you and those around you, what is within your power to do, and to do that thing. I can’t determine how anyone acts but me, and even then to act completely freely I need the grace of God himself to be the free being he created me to be.
More Important than The Bible- Opinion and Truth December 21, 2007
Posted by rengawman in Humor with a point, Motivation, life.4 comments
I found Waldo… he is strangely alone…
Do you remember those pesky magic eye puzzles that were all the rage ten or fifteen years ago? About the same time as we were trying to find that stupid Waldo guy (who apparently liked to hang out in large crowds… I can relate) every single mall had a kiosk where they sold these stupid magic eye puzzles.
To the naked eye, it looked like a Jackson Pollock painting- a hodgepodge (love that word) of colors sort of splattered onto a poster. Apparently, if you stared at this thing long enough, crossed your eyes, stood on your head, and had a few drinks, the image would change and you would see a farm-scape or a sailboat, or Waldo, in 3D appear before your very eyes. It just so happened that the next kiosk over sold little bottles of Advil and eye drops, because not only did you have a headache from staring at these stupid posters, but your eyes dried out because you had to hold them open for so long trying to figure out if it was a monkey or a baseball bat that magically appeared out of the mixture of colors and textures. These stupid things were just as popular back then as hyper-color t-shirts. (Yea… remember those? If you touched them they changed color because of the heat in your hand. Until you washed them once. I am sure we were all poisoned by those shirts somehow. Maybe that is how we could see that magic eye puzzle- the hyper color t-shirts were making us hallucinate.)
I have to admit trying out these magic eye puzzles myself the first time. I walked by the kiosk and saw people just staring into the collection of various eye puzzles, and decided to join the herd. 3 hours later, I think I saw a camel in a space suit pop out in 3D.
It is the Mona Lisa… you see it don’t you?
There were always three types of people at these kiosks- the people that would walk up and look into the magic eye puzzle and instantly yell out (as if any of us cared) “I SEE IT!! IT IS A SUNSET IN TOKYO IN JUNE!” Others, grumbling, also loud enough for people to hear, “I just can’t see it, it is just a bunch of colors running together… I just can’t see it… are you sure that’s there?” The third type of person was the type that felt sorry for the second type of guy who couldn’t see the dolphin jumping out of a bowl of spaghettio’s and would help out assuring the incapable person- “It’ll be alright- just relax- let your eyes cross- don’t you see the dolphin? He’s right over there!”
This one is meaningless… they just made this one to mess with us.
I think that the most entertaining feature of the magic eye puzzle was not the magic eye puzzle itself, but watching the people stare for minutes at a time into what looked like a child’s finger painting.
I know the feelin’ buddy.
I did eventually see the images pop out of the posters, and it was neat, but I wonder if there was anything there at all, or if I was just buying into the hype of the magic eye puzzle. Maybe there was something there and maybe there wasn’t- was it my own perception, or was I borrowing the perception from my neighbor who gleefully “got it?”
Here is an interesting fact I heard recently- up to 90% (90%!!!!) of our perceptions are borrowed from other people.
I will let that sink in for just a minute.
It’s like Homer Simpson once said- 42% of statistics are made up on the spot, but only 12% of people know that. Sometimes we trust in the perceptions of others more than we know.
So when it comes to a world view- a cosmology as the philosophers like to coin it, a lot of our views come from what other people have told us. I think that is what Nietzsche was talking about when he was talking about his “will to power.” The will to power is the ability to impose our own perception onto the people around us. It works- just watch the news. They are imposing their views on us all the time, and I am even tempted to believe it simply because it is easier to believe them than to do the research on my own. I don’t have the time, the resources or the energy to do that.
Perception is a tricky thing. As I have mentioned in past posts, there are as many perceptions as there are people- if I am looking at this chair, and so are you, we may be seeing the chair differently- I may think it is red, and you may think it is violet. Perceptions, whether given or borrowed, are never 100% accurate. That is where communication comes in, in order that we may cut through what is mere opinion to the objective truth underneath. Life is constantly about that- it is a constant battle that I think a lot people really don’t engage in too well because it is a lot of work. Rather they would just rather accept the perceptions of others- culture, media, or what have you.
The rose colored glasses of opinion.
What is more important than the chair in our above example is not the chair necessarily, but our perception and our interpretation of the chair.
In a like manner, when we talk about theology, more specifically the Bible, it really isn’t the Bible that is important these days, but it is MY personal interpretation of the Bible that is important. You can really interpret the Bible in any way you want- a great example that I like to use is the whole slavery issue in the history of the United States- the abolishionists used the Bible to go against slavery, while the south used it to support slavery.
So when it comes down to it these days, what is more important than the Bible, or the Koran, or the Torah, or the Big Book in this culture, is our personal interpretation of the book- I can interpret those books to mean whatever I want them to mean- or whatever someone has told me to interpret them as. In order to interpret the Bible in the proper way we would need to go back to the original intention of the author (and the Spirit that inspired that author) and begin from there for a proper and true interpretation. Otherwise the snake handlers are just as justified to handle snakes as any of the mainstream religions.
It is a fine line between figuring out the truth and separating it from mere opinion or perception. As I said, this is probably the work of our lives, because the intellect seeks the truth. I do not think that there is a simple answer to this problem, as it goes back to the radical individualism of our modern western culture. Truth is out there though, it is simply not a matter of perception, but finding the truth requires us in some sense to question the perceptions that we have, the perceptions that others have, and to find the truth that underlies it all. That doesn’t mean that a generally accepted perception isn’t necessarily true, but we should deeply question EVERYTHING in our search for what is true and what is merely opinion.
There are two philosophers that come to mind here that I think would be important to mention. The first is Francis Bacon, and the other is Martin Heidegger. Both of these guys were advocates of what I am talking about- Bacon said that we have preconceived “idols” of the marketplace- accepted notions that were given to us by our upbringing and inculturation that we accept as truth. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t true, but that we need to toss them out every so often to test them to find which is true, and which is simply an “idol.” Heidegger on the other hand advocates a similar plan- that is to “step into the clearing of being,” in other words like a forest to step into a clearing that the sun (being) is unobscured by the trees of perception and opinion.
The “clearing” of being
Only when we step into the clearing of being, and get rid of the idols of the marketplace, can we begin to compare our own and others perceptions of things- including things like religious texts like the Bible, the the truth.
I remember my first day in philosophy class ten years ago- we studied… I think it was the Phaedo by Plato (I could be wrong on the title of that one)- the whole thing centered on the difference between mere opinion and truth. Its conclusion was that opinion can be true, but isn’t necessarily true, and it is our task- really our deepest desire- to separate opinion from what is objectively true. That’s about as hard sometimes as seeing those pecky pictures in the magic eye posters.
At the end of the day, finding truth is sort of like picking Waldo out of one of those “Where’s Waldo” pictures. There are a lot of things that LOOK like Waldo that are not, just like there are things that APPEAR true which are not. We can never be content with a look a like to the truth, just like we are not done with our search until we find Waldo, or see the 3D image in the magic eye poster.
Where’s Waldo? Where is the truth?
