Happy 108th!

Folks, I’d like to take a minute to congratulate the clubhouse on this - its one-hundred-and-eight posting. That’s right, this marks our Cento-octenial! Granted, it would have made some sense to celebrate the 100th posting, but I figured, why buck the trend and start making sense now? Plus, I figured that one of my faithful clubhousers might write Willard Scott to congratulate us on the Today show. Clearly, we take a back seat to 106 year old Birdie “Ma” Miller and 102 year old Fanny Chaffee. Whatever.

I was hanging out with a friend of mine the other night when I mentioned that I had a blog. She called me that next afternoon from work to tell me that she hadn’t gotten anything done all morning, because she was too busy reading my blog… back to May! And I thought, wow, someone can read some 3 hours of my writing? Now, that’s a compliment. Then she wrote me today to let me know that she had gotten all the way back to my first post in Dec! I’m flattered. I even tried to go back to the beginning and read it for myself, but I, admittedly, got bored and quit after 2 posts. Now I understand why actors refuse to watch their own movies – they already know what’s going to happen.

I figured I’d take this opportunity to give back to you, my dear reader. So, here it is, a very special gift from me to you: a quiz. Get out your number 2 pencil and follow along at home. Let’s see how closely you’ve been paying attention.

(1) In a post about the trouble with language, i wrote that if someone said "I love you!" I might reply "I want a ___ ________, too."

(2) I wrote a list of random things which was supposedly placed into a briefcase that was cuffed to a man in the back of a taxi. To which mid-western town did he take it?

(3) True or False. I once wrote a post claiming that I was the sexiest man alive.

(4) I once had lunch "with" (a) John Edwards, (b) Bill Maher, (c) Coach k, (d) Dean Smith, or (e) Hillary Clinton.

(5) If I ruled the world, which of the following would be banned: (a) speaking Japanese, (b) lemons, (c) napkin origami, or (d) having more than 2 children.

(6) How many times have I fallen in love: (a) never, (b) once, (c) twice, (d) five times, or (e) every time you walk into the room, baby.

(7) When I broke into Snakeman's house, I did which of the following: (a) reset his tivo to record the Golden Girls, (b) accidentally killed his snake, (c) ate all of his home made chocolate chip cookies, or (d) built a pillow fortress?

(8) I had to have elective cosmetic surgery due to an accident involving: (a) skateboarding, (b) archery lessons, (c) a dog fight, or (d) a battle to the death between a pirate and a ninja?

(9) According to the first principle, I am: (a) a Christian, (b) left handed, (c) a keeper, or (d) better at basketball than bowling.


Answers (highlight to reveal):
(1) ham sandwich; (2) St John, Kansas; (3) True; (4) John Edwards; (5) Lemons; (6) Twice (7) reset his TIVO to record the Golden Girls; (8) a dog fight; (9) a keeper.

**

I wanted to comment upon what I’d written, but, as I’ve already mentioned, I was unable to re-read my blog. Instead, I just cut and pasted it into a word document and yielded the following information.

Total Number of Pages I’ve written (including photos, excluding comments): 170. (Holy Crap!)
Total Number of Paragraphs written: 1119
Total Number of Lines: 5,043
Total Number of Words: 54,466
Time required to transcribe my blog, typing 50 words a minute: 15 hours and 8 minutes

According to this nifty applet, I've compiled a list of the most popular words in the English language and noted how many times I've used them. If you use the applet, just know that they're watching you!


Top Ten Words in the English Language:
(1) the - 2,495
(2) of - 1,157
(3) and – 1,163
(4) to – 1,732
(5) a – 1,240
(6) in - 815
(7) that – 1,105
(8) it - 770
(9) is - 969
(10) was – 384
(11) I – 1,847
(12) for - 474
(13) on - 290
(14) you - 589
(15) he – 316

Clearly, I use the pronoun "I" way, way, way more than most people. Although, I've read that it's healthy to use "I/we" statements as opposed to "you" statements, particularly when yelling at someone. Apparently, I dont use the words "in" and "of" nearly enough.

Other notable Words (with rank in parenthesis):

(15) he - 316
(30) she - 75
(36) her - 102
(54) more - 131
(60) him - 105
(154) life - 146
(235) less - 25
(308) full - 29
(318) probably- 31
(357) book: 56
(376) God - 60
(384) Love - 187
(406) read: 87
(480) human - 57
(484) Happy - 20
(543) hope: 34
(572) friend: 93
(616) girl: 51
(675) knowledge: 18
(731) success: 0
(974) maybe: 100
(1075) understanding - 13
(1,789) empty: 3
(1,941) faith: 7
(2,381) Beauty - 36
(2,389) Angry - 2
(3043) definitely: 2
(3,107) Hate - 28
(5,145) wisdom: 13
(6,471) Sacrifice - 5
(10,666) Donkey - 125
(13,815) Sartre - 10
(15,446) Plato - 4
(35,307) dude - 8
(54,660) Serendipity - 1
(n/a) don’t believe: 5

I find it very interesting that the subject pronoun "he" (#15) is more common than "she," (#30) BUT! the possessive/object "her" (#36) is more common than "him." (#60) What's that all about? Freud once wrote that men act and women are acted upon. Does our very use of language reflect this Freudian bias? You'll note that I use him (105) more often than her (103), further cemeting my allegiance to the Feminist movement.

I use these words more than you would expect: more, God, book, read, human, friend, beauty, girl, and hate. These words popped up way more than expected: love, friend, maybe, wisdom, dude and donkey.


Most rare word used:
(86,562) gigabytes - 1

Most Common word unused:
(233) British - 0
(312) report - 0


Phrases:
“I don’t know”- 6
“I know”- 18
“I'm a hot, sweaty St. Bernard”- 1

**

Speaking of words, I came across this great NPR podcast called A Way with Words. Two language experts talk about etymology, grammar, and word usage. Sounds thrilling, I know. But really, it’s fascinating. You should check it out.

Martha Barnette ended the last show I listened to talking about the New York Times article that discussed one of the hottest new baby names – Nevaeh. Apparently, only 6 years ago, there were only 8 babies with that name. Since then, the name has had an unprecedented meteoric rise to the 70th most popular name for a girl. Indeed, if you were born in 2005, you are more likely to be named Nevaeh than to be named Sara, Vanessa, or Amanda! What caused the trend? Apparently, it all began when Christian Rock star Sonny Sandoval announced that he had named his girl Nevaeh, which is “heaven” spelled backwards. Since then, according to the article, blacks and Evangelical Christians have been running with it. Is this really happening?

This baby naming business is getting out of control. Every girl I know already has 5 or 6 names picked out for their hypothetical children. It seems to me that a great deal of thought and effort is put into this. For my part, I’m simply going to name them Donk and Donkette and be done with it. If I have more than one, then I simply add a subscript number. Thus, my 3rd girl would be Donkette3. Who’s with me? For the rest of you, you may enjoy this interactive baby names wizard.

**

For those of you that don't want to go back and read all my past postings, here are some highlights:
(1) My first post
(2) The things I want
(3) Legend of Snakeman
(4) Fame
(5) Laundry List

**

It's been fun.

Playa Hatin'

A friend of mine levied some criticism against his brother, who is a philosopher of some renown. He said, “Even after publishing all those books, if you ask him a simple question, like ‘Does God exist?’ he can’t give you a straight answer.”

Maybe questions worth asking don’t have straight answers. Or, maybe life is more about finding the right questions. After all, what good is the right answer to the wrong question? Wouldn’t no answer to the right question be better? Hmmm.

**

In explaining why Miles Davis’ understated style was popular with women, Stanley Crouch remarked:

“If you put an audience of women together and there are 3 walnuts on a table. One guy comes in and he has a sledge hammer; that’s how he gets inside the walnut. The next guy has a nutcracker and he gets into the walnut like that. Then there’s a third guy and just by simply rubbing the walnut some kind of way, the walnut opens – he’s the one they’re going to be interested in.” That’s Miles Davis.

I’m not familiar with the work of Miles Davis, so I can’t say whether or not it has anything to do with walnuts. It’s an interesting theory, nonetheless.

**

In that same interview, cultural critic and essayist Stanley Crouch argues that “We have sunk down into a situation in America in which we assume that all authenticity comes from the bottom, comes from the street. It’s relatively absurd to see in popular media this constant definition of authenticity through something like the rap world in which it is always a celebration of lowlifes, thugs, pimps, and types of that sort.” He rejects the proposition that this is a counter-cultural response by those on the fringes of society, and, instead, posits that such culture is “quintessentially American.”

This raises the question: who makes our counter-culture? We’d like to think, perhaps, that counter-culture is the result of the minority finding a voice. But the rap industry, for example, is run primarily by rich, old, white males, many of whom, I can only imagine, don’t even like the genre, and all of whom sit squarely amidst the mainstream. For example, while the current leaders of Def Jam records look like this and this, the leaders of the company that owns the media conglomerate to which Def Jam belongs (ie, their bosses) look like this. So, can we honestly say that hip hop is the voice of black America? Crouch doesn’t think so. In fact, he charges that Hip Hop is primarily a mode for suburban white kids to take an “audio safari into “the jungle of urban America.”

When I first heard him say that, I was taken aback. Can gansta’ rap really be for suburban white kids? Then it occurred to me that Crouch wasn’t the first to make such a claim. Indeed, if you listen closely, you’ll even hear the occasional rap song about it. Awhile back, a friend of mine, who was working for a hip hop record label, sent me a song called “I Used to Love Her” by Common. Common refers to the early days of rap – think Run DMC and the Fat Boys – as “Original, pure, untampered.” He contends that this “old school” rap spoke to his heart, that it was soulful, and that it wasn’t motivated by greed. But “the game” changed. He continues, “I might've failed to mention that the chick was creative/But once the man got to her, he altered the native/Told her if she got an image and a gimmick/That she could make money, and she did it like a dummy.” Not only that, but he includes a lyrics that seems to justify Crouch’s “audio safari” comment: “She used to only swing it with the inner-city circle/Now she be in the burbs lookin' rock and dressin' hip/And on some dumb [expletive deleted], when she comes to the city/Talkin about poppin glocks, servin rocks, and hittin switches.” Who is hip hop’s target audience?

Common and Crouch are not alone in their criticism. Rapper/poet, Black Ice (video), points out that the shift from early hip hop to gansta rap was contrived: “They’re takin our heart felt demos, putting us in limos, trying to [screw] up our direction..” Not only that, but the very creation of the gansta culture by record labels has systemically altered our sense of authenticity; “meanwhile, they corrupt your perception of what the real is./ See, they’ve taken all our business men and made them drug dealers/ took all our messengers and made them rappers/just flappin their jaws, afraid to admit their treason/ took all our soldiers for the cause/made ‘em killers for no reason/… [and] if you’re negative, you’re positive/and if you’re positive, you’re a hater.”

In response to criticism levied against the industry by Bill Cosby, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson, former Def Jam records president Russell Simmons, in an interview with the Washington Post, “rejected the notion that hip-hop music has had a coarsening effect, saying it ‘is the soundtrack that reflects the struggle’ of young people today.” But, that’s the question, isn’t it? Does it reflect anything real at all? Or has it been entirely contrived for financial gain?

For my purposes, it doesn’t matter whether Russell Simmons is right or whether Stanley Crouch is right. The historical question of the origins or gansta’ rap – be they poor and black or rich and white- may never be settled, although it is an interesting subject to consider. What concerns me is that the question of authenticity alone is being used as an empowering or silencing tool. For many people, the conversation begins and ends in asking whether or not something is factually correct. For example, one might ask, was Jay-Z really a drug dealer before he entered the rap game? Was 50 Cent really shot 9 times and then lived to tell about it? If yes, then in the minds of many, it is justifiable for them to rap about selling drugs and shooting people. The flip side of the coin, unfortunately, is that people with a positive message – like Bill Cosby, Common, and Black Ice – are being silenced under the term “hater” because they don’t self-identify with this conception of “inner-city plight.” This is what I take exception to. We must not forget that culture is made by and ought to serve people, not the other way around. We should be suspicious of any culture which attempts to silence those who argue that a given culture no longer serves (or never did) its purpose in advancing valuable, normative social mores, or that it’s advancing the wrong ones. Rather than ask the retrospective question – did this really happen to people? – we should probably be asking the prospective question– do we seek for this to continue to happen? And, do we?

Reading Rainbow

I’ve been doing some traveling lately, which has given me the opportunity to read lots and lots. I finished my second Jack Gilbert book, Refusing Heaven. In the title poem, Gilbert talks about going to church on a winter morning. He sees the old women dressed in black and recognizes that they are closer to God than him. They make him feel as though he has “an unusable soul.” But, he understands that to choose their path would be to reject all that he’s been through. Instead, he reflects on his life- what he is and where he’s been- and concludes, “The silver is worn down to the brass underneath/and is the better for it.” It begs the profound question: under what circumstances, if any, would you refuse heaven?

The collection reads like an old man, seeing his life flash before his eyes, asking himself if it was worth it. It’s truly remarkable to see which events a person in such a position would chose to consider. The book is phenomenal. Here are some highlights:

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
But just coming to the end of his triumph.

**

(as he stands before a panel of gods)
What do you want?
A blonde one asks. To keep what I already have, I say. You ask
Too much, he says sternly. Then you are at peace, she says. I am not at peace, I tell her. I want to fail. I am hungry for what I am becoming.

**

Ginsberg came to my house one afternoon
And said he was giving up poetry
Because it told lies, that language distorts.
I agreed, but asked what we have
That gets it right even that much.
We look up at the stars and they are
not there. We see the memory
of when they were, once upon a time.
And that too is more than enough.

**

Also, Amazon has looked over the books I’ve purchased and, quite incredibly, recommended that I buy Donkey Gospel by Tony Hoagland. Mind you, I've never bought a book from them about donkeys or gospels. It appears that a book that I would otherwise be interested in carries that title. Unbelievable. Here’s a sample.

Finally, I picked up Stephen Dobyns’ Velocities in part because his cover art was from my favorite artist, Mark Rothko. So far so good. I’ll post an excerpt shortly.

Speaking of Mark Rothko, when I was back in NY, I hit up the Modern Museum of Art. It was my first visit since the recent re-design. I was disappointed that they only had one of his works on display. They had this special exhibit on ‘obscured perspectives,’ which I found pretty interesting. Part of it was a large black room with about 50 flat screen tv’s hanging from the ceiling. Around the perimeter of the room were a few cutouts that functioned like port holes, with a view into the adjoining room. Through the little peep hole, you could see all these amazing works of arts – including one of my favorite Rothko’s. But to see it, you had to crane your neck and twist and turn to see through the little hole. Even then, you could only see part of each of the works. I found, however, that I appreciated the work more because I had to work so hard to barely catch a glimpse. Interesting.

Here’s what’s neat about participatory art: for a brief moment, my struggle against obscurity was on display at one of the world’s greatest museums for all my fellow patrons to behold and appreciate. Little ole me was a work of art!

I also started “Everything and Nothing” by Jorge Luis Borges. My ipod recommended I read it. I was listening to this Mike Doughty song, “Grey Ghost.” As the title was scrolling across the screen I noticed the following, “(Here's the hidden message: Eat your greens. Read Everything and Nothing by Borges. Thanks for listening. Mike.).” Honestly, if one of my favorite musicians is going through the trouble of encoding a secret message into his itune, I owe it to him to check it out. As fate would have it, the book isn’t stocked at any of the local bookstores. I happened to find a copy at a random Borders in Mt. Kisco, NY.

Form and Function

I’ve been watching lectures from the TED conference. Most recently, I watched a lecture by Sir Ken Robinson on the state of public education. He points out that our educational system prizes logic and reasoning (left hemisphere) over art and creativity of the right hemishere. He suggests that this is because the public system was founded in the 19th century, during the industrial revolution. People had to study that which would get them a job, so art, dance, and poetry, among other things, were universally de-emphasized.

Indeed, university professors – the most “successful” people to rise through our educational system – are literally disembodied. He points out that professors “live in their heads.. and slightly to one side… they look at their bodies as a mode of transport; it’s a way to get their heads to meetings.” It’s true, isn’t it? If it had its druthers, wouldn’t our educational system make everyone look like that? But do we really want a world full of egg heads? Would that be a better place to live and grow?

Robinson concludes his lecture by arguing that we ought to look at education as “human ecology” and need to “reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity.” He analogizes our current hierarchy to strip mining, where we tear up the earth looking for one particular commodity, at the expense of the rest.

Another lecture/performance by David Pogue, a New York Times tech columnist, picks up on this theme, I think. He points out the difference between the design approaches of Microsoft versus Palm and Apple. Palm had a “three-taps rule.” The Palm was designed such that you could utilize all the features by tapping the screen no more than 3 times. With Microsoft word, you cannot even do the simplest tasks (such as opening a new blank document) without clicking at least 3 times. Microsoft cares more about power than design and usability. Contrast the remote for my stereo receiver at home, which has around 150 buttons, with my ipod, which has 5.

I believe that this is an example of innovation that takes into account both the right and left hemispheres of the brain. The fact that my ipod is the simplest and sexiest machine I own does little to improve its functionality. Still, the designers of it recognize that I am not a disembodied consumer of music. Form is important even where function resides.

A gestalt understanding of a human being would take into account matters of aesthetics in technology, education, religion, recreation, and any number of other matters. Why should we be content with things that only address a part of our being?

Am I A Feminist?

I’ve had a little back and forth with a fellow blogger Katie Rose about a story she wrote about here. If you’re interested, you can go to her blog to read the original story, her post about it, my comment, and her response. Most of Katie’s other posts are thought provoking and worth a look, as well.

The short of the story is as follows. There’s a girl, Holley Mangold, playing high school football (quite well) in an otherwise all-boys league. Holley doesn’t consider herself a feminist and distances herself from ‘I am woman hear me roar’ movement (Holley’s words). Katie, meanwhile, argues that the girl is “breaking down barriers,” being a “trailblazer,” and serving as a “hero” to other young girls. Indeed, Katie even levies some criticism against the 16 year old saying that it is “sad” that a woman “changing the stinking world, can't stand up and say, ‘YES, I AM CHANGING THE WORLD.’”

I’m trying to understand why a feminist would use the term ‘heroic’ to describe Holley’s decision to play football. By her own account, Holley admits that it is not her intention to change the sport or the world, nor does she intend to advance feminist ideals; she just likes football. If she is heroic despite her intentions not to be, then her heroinism must be owed solely to the effect her actions have. So what effect might a girl playing high school football have with regard to the feminist movement?

Feminism is defined, though perhaps poorly, as the “belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.” Is Holley, unwittingly, pushing society towards sexual equality? If one’s answer is yes to this question, then you might believe that ‘equality’ means ‘sameness.’ Thus, if a boy plays football, a girl can play football, too. Indeed, you might argue, girls ought to play football to preserve this sexual sameness. But, if that is one’s belief, then one must also acknowledge the other side of the coin, which is this. Sexual sameness can be accomplished in either of two ways - neither one being better than the other – (1) girls can do things that have been historically done by boys (such as football) or (2) boys can do things that have been historically done by girls. In other words, yes, the sexual sameness perspective would laud little Holley Footballer, BUT, it would laud her only as much as it lauded little Johnny Barbie-doll-player. But do feminists canonize little boys that play with dolls? Do they praise boys that want to grow up to be a stay at home dads? Or nurses? Or school teachers? Wouldn’t the fruition of their dream push our society towards sexual sameness with equal force and rapidity as the Holley Mangold story? Would these boys also be criticized if they didn’t acknowledge their place in the feminist movement and shout from the rooftops that, “YES, I (TOO) AM CHANGING THE WORLD.”?

I would argue, then, that if one is going to consider Holley Footballer a hero, then, for the purposes of internal consistency, one shouldn’t forget about Johnny Barbie-doll-player. Alternatively, one can conclude, as I do, that neither of them deserve the scrutiny of our heroes. Sometimes kids, boy or girls, just want to be kids, and since when is that not ok? Who am I to spoil their fun by forcing upon them my own big ideas about how the world ought to function? Unless of course, they want to be little ethicists…

**
Katie also asked me if I was a Feminist, and, if not, why not? Truth be told, I don’t consider myself an anything-ist. The problem with identifying with any ideological group is that it’s probably too broad to accurately reflect an individual’s personal beliefs. To complicate matters even more, feminism, in particular, seems especially factional. For example, wikipedia divides the feminist movement into 14 sub-types:

Anarcha-feminism
Cultural feminism
Cyborg feminism
Ecofeminism
Individualist feminism
Liberal feminism
Marxist feminism
Postmodern feminism
Psychoanalytic feminism
Radical feminism
Religious feminism
Separatist feminism
Socialist feminism
Womanism

Indeed, the feminist movement has been chopped up, divided, contorted, misquoted, perverted, misunderstood, overanalyzed, defined, redefined, undefined, expanded, contracted, etc, etc, etc so many times that the term itself has been rendered completely devoid of meaning. If someone says they are a feminist, what does that tell you about them? That they hate men? Maybe, some do. That they think that there is no distinction between genders? Maybe, some do. That they think that men and women should live separately? That they think that there should be fewer men in the world? That they think all sex is rape? Maybe, some do. That they think the very use of language is a means of subjugating women? That they spell the word ‘wommyn’ as opposed to ‘women’? Maybe, some do. That they think that women are discriminated against more than other social groups? That they think that God is a woman? That they think that we should get rid of capitalism? Maybe, some do. That they think that women are like cyborgs? Maybe, some do. Indeed, others would reject all of the above and still consider themselves feminists. My point is, the label feminism encompasses so much to the exclusion of very little that its use is rarely, if ever, informative or descriptive.

The only common strand among all feminists that I am able to identify is that they all think that there is gender inequality and they think that fact should be righted. However, that definition of feminism is so watered down that it is indistinguishable from what would appear to be its antonym, Masculinism. (To be honest, I didn’t even know such a thing existed until just now! Although, in law school, as a response to the “Womens Law Students Association” a group of guys banded together “The Man Club,” which hosted a beer pong tournament and a lecture by renowned ambulance chaser James Scott Farin, though not at the same time. Do you suppose that’s what Masculinists do on weekends? ) But who, in their right mind, would argue against the fact of gender inequality or argue that it not should be righted? Not me. So, I guess I’m a feminist (of no particular denomination) and also a masculinist (sans the beer and ambulance chasing) and, at the same time, I'm neither, also. To the extent that I am a feminist, I must note that I concern myself less with the descriptive question of sameness (see above) than the evaluative question of equality. That is to say, I recognize two distinct genders that are equal, rather than one super-gender which is identical to itself. And while I find the notion of a genderless society implausible, that fact alone would not disqualify me from membership into the feminist or masculinst movements.

If someone can present a better definition of the term, I’d be interested to hear it. At the very least, reading up a little about the movement has been a valuable experience. Roar.

Pacman Es Victorioso!

Poetry Slam

I’ve had Rives’ blog linked in the sidebar for some time now. I decided that I should point to it in an “official” entry, because it’s quite good and some of you may have missed it. Also, he had recently added a video section which contains some footage of a few poetry slams. He’s a good poet and an excellent performer. It’s worth a look. My favorite performance is “Mockingbirds,” which was performed at the TED conference. The best part is that the breakdown in the middle, which is completely ad-libbed. He “mockingly” strings together quotes from all the conference’s previous speakers. I also like Sign Language, which was the first poem I saw him perform some years ago.

Seeing these performances reminded me that I was a slam poet of sorts for a short period of time in high school. Apparently, I had largely blocked out that phase of my life almost entirely. Basically, kids would perform some poem they thought was interesting, though not their own. Each round would consist of about 7 kids and someone’s mom or dad would be judging in the back. The judge would rank the students in terms of their performance. So, the best kid would get a “1” and the worst kid would get a “7.” Easy enough. The judges were also to jot down some constructive criticism. One might get “vary pace, but overall strong performance: 3” or “work on diction and use more hand motions: 5,” whatever. Pretty much everyone, even the “1,” would get something negative written on their score sheet, just to keep them humble: “stirring read, but work on eye contact: 1”

I was pretty terrible at reading poetry, lots of 5’s and 6’s. There was this one time, however, that I didn’t stink. I distinctly remember having received the score sheet that read, “AMAZING! AMAZING! AMAZING! AMAZING! AMAZING! AMAZING! KEEP ON KEEPIN’ ON!!!” All of the trophies that I received in my youth are in cardboard boxes in the basement of my parents’ new house. I don’t distinctly recall any of them. I wouldn’t be able to recount the circumstances that led up to them having been awarded. I don’t remember how great they made me feel at the time. Still, some 9 years later, I can quote the exact phrasing of that one score sheet. Why is that? It probably has a lot to do with the last figure on the page. Immediately after the third exclamation point following ‘KEEP ON KEEPIN ON’ was written the number two. That’s right. I received perhaps the greatest critique sheet ever in the history of slam poetry, only to finish in second place for the round. Ouch.

I take away two points from that story. First, the fact that I remember this minor shortcoming reinforces my belief that humans tend to harp on the negatives. Our idioms need to reiterate that the grass only appears greener on the other side and that the glass is actually half-full. We have to be reminded that we shouldn’t make the good the enemy of the best. We are people that need to be told to smile in photos, because we might not otherwise believe that we had a good time. Remember that some of the stuff, even a good bit of it, is pretty amazing, and every time you flash those pearly whites for a photograph is open defiance of the human tendency to forget that fact. Be defiant; your mental health depends on it.

Second, no matter what I do in my life, no matter how many awards I receive, how many scholarships I win, no matter how many promotions I earn, no matter how many teammates give me a congratulatory slap on the butt, no matter how many nice things people say about me, be these many or be these few and far between, may I never rest on my past accomplishments. A person is defined less by what they have done than by what they are about to do. When I sat down, the judge was confident that I would be awarded the “1.” Only, someone better came along. That happens in life. The trick is to see it as motivation to keep improving oneself. Like the man said, if you’re going to be someone, you have to keep on keepin’ on.

First Principle

The first principle: I am a keeper.

**

A meteor is headed towards earth. When it hits, all life on this planet will be instantaneously extinguished. There will be no suffering. Everyone will be gone before they realize what hit them. We only have two months left. Our demise is sure. Nothing can be done about it.

Here’s the thing. You are the only one who knows that this is about to happen. You have a wife/husband and two kids. If you tell them what you know, they will not take the news well. In fact, they will be nervous wrecks. It is assured that the news will ruin the little time they have left on earth. Of course, if you keep the truth from them, you will be effectively living a lie. Do you tell them?

I’ve realized that one’s answer to the above problem highlights an essential aspect of their philosophy. Namely, do you find truth to be an end in itself? Or, alternatively, does the truth need to serve some greater good to be valuable?

Those who lean towards the former – truth as an end itself – would tend to tell their loved ones, despite its ramifications. That is to say, truth is so valuable in and of itself, that its presence ‘justifies’ the harm it would cause loved ones. “Sure it may hurt them,” they say, “but it’s THE TRUTH!”

Those who lean towards the latter – that truth ought to serve a greater good – would tend to withhold the truth, because of the harm that divulging the truth would cause. For them, protecting their loved ones from harm ‘justifies’ living a lie. “Sure it’s technically a lie,” they say, “but it’s for THE BEST!”

Everyone falls into one camp or the other. The early returns from the informal poll I’ve conducted around town has shown about a 50/50 split between tellers and keepers. And if you were wondering, yours truly, is a keeper.

So which one are you? And why?

**

It is in the above question that I believe I have found a tenet to my creed and some direction in my quest to find a religion.

What is religion? It is a mode to rectify your relation with God, or the universe, or yourself, or whatever. Some people mistakenly think that religion, itself, is the truth. They lose sight of the fact that Christ-ianity is a different thing altogether from Christ, or that Buddhism is not the same thing as Buddha. By conflating the two, they have elevated a lower level truth – that which was clearly intended as a method to a greater truth, or in a word, a means – to the level of Truth in and of itself, or in a word, an end. Thus, people call themselves Christian and act as though that’s the end of the story. Or, the call themselves Muslim and expect eternal life. But living the good life, or finding salvation, or discovering the way, or however you phrase it is surely more complicated than simply associating with a group, be it religious or otherwise.

I got into an argument with a friend a mine a few weeks back. I took exception to the fact that he called himself Christian, even though he didn’t believe that Jesus Christ was divine, that he performed any miracles, that he died for our sins, that he rose from the dead, that his mother was a virgin, etc. Basically, he rejected all the central tenets to Christianity, as noted in the various Creeds, except the Golden Rule and he added that he “saw the face of Jesus when he prayed.” In his mind, that was enough to be “Christian.” It didn’t matter that he didn’t believe in Christ. It didn’t really matter how he conducted his life.

So the question occurred to me, why on earth would someone self-identify with a club for which they disavowed every core belief? Why would someone self-identify as Christian only to then have to back up and say, “BUT! I don’t believe in a, b, c, d, x, y, z, which most Christians do.” Why not call yourself something else? What’s so special about being called Christian? Why not call yourself a Golden Rule-ist? Or a Face of Jesus When Praying-ist? Calling oneself a Christian without believing the tenets of Christianity or practicing the tradition is like calling yourself an alumnus of Yale and then saying, “BUT I never actually applied to the school, I don’t meet the criteria for admission, I’ve never attended a class, and have never received a diploma.”

I think what’s going on is that people believe there to be some value to being a Christian independent of practicing Christianity. It’s as though they picture God awarding points for being part of the club. Thus, if Christianity happens to be true, those standing before God who called themselves Christians would have a couple of points in the bank already before judgment begins on their deeds (assuming that’s how it happens). Or maybe they picture St. Peter at the gates of heaven eyeing their resume and saying, “Alright, off to purgatory you go!” But then, right at the last second, one whips out one’s wallet and shows Peter the Christian Card. And Peter says, “Oh, I didn’t know that you were a card carrying Christian, you’re one of us, so I’ll wipe the slate clean and let you in. Enjoy eternal paradise!”

But, if we understand religion in general as a means to the greater good of growing into proper relation to God, or the universe, or oneself, then self-identifying with a religion without practicing it is absurd. Religion, in this sense, is a practice. Therefore, if you don’t practice the practice, then you don’t reap its value. Why self-identify with valueless shells?

What's at play here, I think, is an over-emphasis on Truth and a de-emphasis on the position that truth should “work” for the truth-seeker. For example, what good is spending all one’s life trying identify the true nature of love, if doing so would not make one (or others) better able to love? To study love in the academic sense at the expense of its practice would surely be a tragedy. In the same way, what is the sense of holding on to a religion that you believe to be true if it doesn’t further the goal of religion – to get you closer to God, to understand the universe or the way, to set things right with yourself, or whatever. What is the sense in revealing a truth (about the meteor) to your family when no other discernable good can come of it? Is the central role of family to propagate Truth or to serve, protect, nurture, love, etc?

This relational approach to truth (or religion) asks wisdom to serve as a guide. Some knowledge is good. Some knowledge is bad. Wisdom is the ability to discern between the two and to formulate plans of action based on the former rather than the latter. Wisdom is the awareness that only some forms of knowledge are worthy of pursuit. It is wise to stop and ask, will any good come of this? And the answer to that question depends on who is doing that asking. It is in that sense that I’m arguing that the value of truth is relational.

While this point was clear to me with respect to the meteor scenario, I failed to see that it applied to religion as well. I was doing the same thing I had criticized my friend for, only from the other direction. He was holding on to a religion that didn't work for him, because he thought it might be true. I was trying to find a religion that was true, so that it could work for me. But if we each, instead, sought out to rectify ourselves with relation to God, ourselves, the way, etc - which is to say, if we sought to find what works for us, religiously speaking - we would have discovered both a religion and the truth.

Of course, the larger problem with the truth-for-truth-sake paradigm is that one can never know for sure whether one is right. This was the impetus for Socrates to proclaim that the best you can hope to do is to identify what you don’t know. I agree with Socrates that finding one’s own ignorance is part of wisdom. This fact casts doubt on Truth as a whole, which is more problematic for tellers than keepers. Because keepers only view the truth as a means to a greater ends, this problem only brings one means into doubt. For tellers however, who pursue truth at all costs, this fact casts a shadow of doubt over the very ends to all their pursuits. BUT! What we can know - perhaps better than anything else - is what works for us, so that should be our focus.

Drumroll please. In the end, I reject the teller paradigm on two grounds. First, it does not take into account the effect the truth will have on the truth-seeker and the world. Rather than this approach, I believe the “wise” thing to do is to see knowledge as a servant to the seeker. We should further “the good,” which is to be understood in relationship to the truth-seeker. Knowledge worth pursuing and worth propagating is only that which furthers this good. Truth in and of itself, unguided by wisdom, is not one such good. Second, one can never be sure if one possesses Truth in the abstract. In contrast, one can know oneself well enough to determine whether or not a particular truth is good to the individual. For those reasons, I advocate for the relational keeper model. My new approach with respect to religion will be to identify the people that are good at the religion and ask whether or not the religion "works" for them. If so, I have to ask whether or not it can work for me in the same way.

Buy One, Get One Free

There’s an old adage that when it rains, it pours. I think this succinctly describes the cyclic nature of life. It is unlikely that things will come to you in equal proportion at constant, predictable intervals throughout the course of your life. Rather, it often happens that a long period of famine will be followed by a short period of feast.

In an somewhat related note, Forbes has just ranked The Triangle (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill) among the top ten places for single people. Here’s how the single life has treated me the last month in my fair Triangle. I’ll give a brief recount of my life with the ladies during what can only be called the summer of absurdity.

Some 4 women, totally unsolicited, have come up to me and either given me their phone number or asked me out.

The first one gave me her number and said that I should meet her husband. My friendship with both of them has gone really well and it would not even bear mentioning except for the fact that it was the first in a series of similar occurrences.

The second one asked me to dinner… and invited her priest along. This was a complete disaster. The poor girl was mortified as her priest and I yelled back and forth across the table at one another. She may be the only one who escaped without incurring the wrath of God. Note to my female readers, if you cause your date to be sentenced to eternal damnation, you’re probably not going to score a second date.

The third one, a 22 year old, asked me to the movies and later admitted that it was a scheme that she and her boyfriend had come up with to find him some “smart” friends. I was the target of the plot that they had carefully orchestrated during a long car ride back from Canada. I’m flattered, I guess?

The fourth one, a 50 something year old, asked me to come over and have dinner with her and her lesbian lover. She said my dog could come along, too. I recall that my official response was, “Ha!” as I quickly side-saddled away.



(I’m excluding from consideration the girl who admitted that she didn’t shower regularly and the undergrad coke fiend, both of whom were likely involved in a domestic partnership or perhaps common law marriage, but I didn’t stick around long enough to find out or be propositioned.)

Point is this. If you’re single and looking for any of the above, the Triangle is the place for you! It may be 100 degrees outside, but couples rain down like manna from heaven (not that I'm invited there anymore).