The Sliding Puzzle

I had a friend a while back who, while visiting with us got a hold of an eight-piece sliding puzzle and attempted to solve it. The final result was supposed to be a three-dimensional lizard emerging from a pond, but my friend was not getting it to work and became more irritated and more humorous the more tries he made. Finally, in a fit of desperation, he took a butter knife to the edges and proceeded to pry the pieces out. Then he rearranged them correctly on the tabletop and re-installed them in the sliding frame in the proper order.

The only problem was that the frame was now loose at best, and broken in places at worst.

The more attempts that were made to solve the puzzle incorrectly (i.e., by violent prying at the edges with said butter knife) the looser the whole puzzle got. It would not be long before the whole thing would be broken and worthless.

Though funny, the episode says a lot about our fallen human nature. We are impatient, temperamental creatures, decidedly stupid on occasion. On a darker note, however, we are more often than not unwilling to take the time to stand back and understand something, before diving in and trying to "solve" it. This is, for example, the problem with much of modern philosophy, which concentrates on assumptions that are made before any real observation has be done. One can always construct a theory out of thin air and then force the facts to fit later. Humanity is often not interested in discerning something's true nature.

This inevitably leads to trouble, because in failing to understand something's true nature, we cannot properly assess the thing's value, and consequently very little meaningful interaction can take place between us and the thing in question. More often than not our interaction will result in damage and destruction, either of the thing or of us.

We do this with everything, it seems. Americans, I fear, are especially good at this sort of dense behavior. For instance, we look at the male and female sex of all different kinds of creatures, and we see them mate with each other, and we know that this process brings forth new life of the same species. Mankind has known this for thousands or even tens of thousands of years. When we are old enough to understand, we realize that we are creatures similar to the aforementioned observed animals, being male and female and possessing all the proper equipment to mate amongst ourselves. And yet we make the monumentally stupid leap of non-logic to the conclusion that sex between male and female humans has no connection or bearing on the creation of new life.

Or we look at government. Anyone with a semi-firm grasp of history knows that governments do not necessarily have the greatest track records when handed more and more centralized power. Imperial Rome crumbled under the weight of its own corruption and emperor-switching. Emperor Charlemagne's new Holy Roman Empire fell apart because it was built more on him and his charisma than on robust and widespread rule of law. The Soviet Union collapsed under the crushing pressure of unsustainable spending, repression to the breaking point of its subjects, the proven inefficiency of central planning, and the obliteration of the individual. And yet, parties on both sides of the American political spectrum will conclude that either centralized governance or centralized production and ownership is the key to solving all our ills.

Or look at guns and gun control. Or marriage. Or the concept of beauty in art. Or practically any other aspect of our lives. In every case, the loudest voices offering "solutions" to the challenges handed to us are also the ones that advocate tearing apart the frame of the puzzle in order to solve it without any observational work. And this approach has never worked. Not for very long, at least.

Our race is drowning in its own boneheaded sins. To refuse to understand the nature of the world for whatever reason is to doom oneself to incompatibility with that same world and the people in it. When burning fossil fuels for energy is all that we know or will accept, we will run out. When factory farming and mass pharmaceutical production is all that we will consider in those respective fields, we will continue to wonder why the modern man is becoming less and less healthy. When we accept that long hours of work in a factory is the only path forward to financial peace and happiness, we will wonder why we are burnt out and unfulfilled. When we rob from the wealthy to give "compassionately" to the poor, we wonder why both the wealthy and the poor no longer wish to work. When we "accidentally" conceive a child during an act of fornication or adultery and then proceed to have responsibility for it destroyed through abortion, we will wonder why the woman suffers psychological torment and physical ailments for the rest of her life. (And, in relation to that, we will wonder why men are such bums.)

We will wonder, and we will think about the problem after we have already screwed it up. We will suffer pain and regret and loneliness and hollowness because we did not try to understand the nature of the issue at hand, but only applied our own theory of operation to it and hoped like hell it would work. It is not a good way to live.

There is a way out, a way forward towards the light. Or, more accurately, there are two ways out. One is divine and the other is earthly. There is a facsimile of the divine solution floating around, and it is probably the one thrown in people's faces more, pitched to mankind without its proper context or background, used unfortunately as an "easy fix" type approach. It is catchy to be told that Jesus is the answer to all our problems and if we simply believe in Him then everything will be okay, and the hole in our lives will be filled. The real divine solution is much more involved and all encompassing, a labor of love and a transformation of life, but it must inform and work in tandem with the earthly solution to be effective. The earthly solution is this: to be aware. To open our eyes and our minds and to struggle to understand how the world actually works. To reason our way from honest premises to reasonable conclusions. To embrace our intellect, to think for ourselves, and to demand that the world do the same.

It is not a hopeless cause, getting to the root of things. It just takes a healthy dose of humility to admit, as Socrates once did, that we know nothing. We need to look long and hard at every issue in our lives to determine if we are solving the puzzle or breaking it.

Because unlike the plastic eight-piece sliding puzzle, our lives are fixable.

I'm Thankful

I am thankful for my job. A job that makes just enough for me and my family to squeak by and yet employment that is both honorable and that has a future.

I am thankful for my home. It is smaller than 700 square feet, with only two bedrooms for five people. It has brown shag carpeting from the eighties on the floors, a finicky septic tank, no yard, and obnoxious rent. Yet it is still a home.

I am thankful for my family. For my wife, especially, who always sees the potential in me that I never do, for my kids, who love me with abandon. For my parents and siblings, who give my life texture and tension,  insight and humor.

I am thankful for my country. A country with mediocre leadership and a shaky moral compass, skewed logic and overwrought emotions, but a country nonetheless.

I am thankful for a world that continues to spin, grow food, get warmer and colder, make snow, erupt, spew, destroy and renew. Weather that continues to startle and amaze, creatures and geology that continue to manifest themselves.

I am thankful for my faith. A faith that is only made stronger and more vocal in times of trial and crisis such as these. Catholicism has never been about the easy path, but it is about the good one.

And I am thankful for my God, the Maker and Sustainer of my job, home, family, country, world, and faith. Without Him I would be nothing. Literally.

Happy Thanksgiving, to all of my readers and everyone else.

Minor Epiphany

Inspirational. Timeless. The One you've been waiting for. These words/phrases in your experience probably best describe a Disney direct-to-video movie trailer. I recently saw one particularly egregious example, involving Tinkerbell and a land full of other similar fairies that nearly made my Dr. Pepper go out my nose in amusement when the narrator made the announcement: "The Wait Is Over." I was not aware I had been waiting. Need creation taken to the extreme, I suppose. Then again, how else is Disney supposed to sell such saccharine vacuity if not by creating a need?

It is intriguing, and sad, that such hyperbole is applied today for the basest of reasons, i.e., to sell product that generally does not live up to the hype that is heaped upon it. Hyperbole loses all of its impact when used liberally, as any regular viewer of Disney trailers is painfully aware. Saving your adulation for the right moment and the right thing will make others perk up and listen when yo have something real to rave about.

Which is why I hope I have saved my adulation for the right moment here, because I found something tonight that I consider truly remarkable. It is one of the most beautiful pieces of essaymanship that I have read in a great while. It is, dare I say, Inspirational and Timeless. And maybe the one you've been waiting for, if you are discouraged by evil and boneheadedness.

The article is written by a woman named Susannah Black, and it concerns the joy (and the necessity, by odd extension) of writing. Writing in order to philosophize, writing in order to cheer, writing in order to convince. Her style is simple, but powerful. In many ways it was an eye opener for me, because everything she writes about in this piece is concerned with why I started this blog in the first place. She meaningfully and convincingly ties thought to action, the written word to impetus, the power of speech to the ability to move. 

She ties God and a sinful world together, accurately describes their proper relationship to each other, and proceeds to infuse that relationship with a kind of whimsical joy. Her writing treads lightly, because she realizes that writing that is true and good is not of this world.

I hope I am not over-hyping her work, but it quite honestly almost brought me to tears in that it hit so close to home for me. Take a read for yourself and tell me what you think.

Photo by Antonio Litterio, via Wikipedia.

Up/Down

It is telling that, according to Scripture, the very first of the Ten Commandments specifically addresses the idea of replacing God with another object of worship and admiration. God apparently knows us pretty well, in presenting us first with a command that should sound like a no-brainer, if you believe in a God. We tend to think of worship as some overt display of homage to someone or something. However, reality can be and usually is quite a bit more subtle. Which is why the commandment should be a no-brainer, but it is not.

I would expect it would be easy for the average Christian to compile a list of things that would qualify as replacements for God, as false gods. Money, power, and sex probably top most of these lists. All three are venerated by our culture as the be-all and end-all of human life and experience. It only takes one viewing of the film The Island by Michael Bay to get a taste of this dynamic in regards to sex. Or look through any men's magazine for a dozen articles on the value and uses of power. And it takes little brain power to notice the monuments to money that rise up around us in various forms (the World Trade Center comes to mind, albeit not currently standing).

What goes unmentioned here, however, are the more subtle things. The one I am interested in here is an old idea which presents itself in new guise every century or so. It began with the Pharoa, a ruler venerated not so subtly as a god, and goes all the way through modern politics, in the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. For both Pharoa and for Marx, the violation of the first commandment was not in their veneration of an outside object or person. No, it was the arrogation of divine power and glory to themselves.

This shows itself quite readily in our own current Congress and president, who both believe implicitly that they have the knowledge and wisdom to fix all things, but have the arrogance to believe that the mere passage of a law actually physically changes the people and things they govern. This was the idea in a nutshell behind the minimum wage requirement in the United States. Whether it costed anybody anything or not, ended up hurting anybody or not, the government one day decided that by legislative fiat it would correct the problem of low income, in effect proclaiming, "Let there be higher wages." And there were higher wages, of a sort, at least on paper. Or another great example is the health care overhaul. It didn't matter that much of the bill was overweight with bad regulation, ridiculous requirements, weird loopholes and severe cost hikes. The government said, "Let there be universal healthcare." And there was a healthcare law. And the government saw that it was good. The rest of the nation was not so sure.

Is the dynamic clear here? This attitude in effect breaks the first of those ten commandments twice over. The first breach is the people in government daring to think that they knows what is best for millions of people in the same way God knows what is best for all mankind. But in a way the more egregious error lies in the implementation of the fix for the problem: waving the magic wand of the god-government in the form of legislation. Never mind if the legislation is ridiculous, unenforceable, or just plain dumb. It is has been deemed the best way and therefore it passes and is implemented.

It is intriguing, that the farther we stray from the natural law of our Creator in our country's legislation, the more laughable our nation's laws become and the less enforceable they grow. The more our legislation tries to govern from the top down, the more it will conflict with the bottom up rules written on our hearts. This in turn leads to the governmental necessity of using unreasonable force to ensure a law is followed, and tyranny quickly follows. I find a quote from the author and talk show host Jason Lewis pertinent here: to paraphrase, he says that anarchy is oftentimes not a lack of the rule of law, but the rule of too many laws.

To presume such power is a grave injustice both to oneself and to the rest of society. Under the guise of compassion and fairness, God's role in any part of societal activity is elminated because government has become the prime mover. Government is not setting up political power as a god to worship; government is setting up itself as a god. It assumes the power to accomplish its agenda exists as a condition of it being God already.

In my humble opinion, that is a terrifying thought.

Out For Blood

I remember back when Osama Bin Laden was killed in his compound during the now-famous SEAL Team Six raid, I was sitting at work doing whatever I was doing, with my headphones on listening to the local news and talk station on the radio. I believe it was Sean Hannity's show I had been listening to (which I shall do no more except to get the gist of the conservative mood on a certain subject, as Hannity's particularly rabid version of conservative arm flailing grates most obnoxiously on my nerves.) But putting his irritating and ADHD tendencies aside for a moment, I wish to draw out a particularly egregious statement he made that week concerning the government's release of pictures of the raid.

Now, normally, if the government is going to make an extraordinary claim like the fact that they have killed World Terrorist Number One, I would be the first to say "prove it." The government makes very little attempt these days to prove anything, especially its own capacity to govern, so maybe this cynicism is justified. And in this vein, or so I thought at first, Hannity demanded that the pictures of the raid be shown to the public. But he did not really desire proof of anything. On the contrary, he was highly praiseworthy of the SEAL team's efforts and applauded their actions even without the proof. I will try to quote his exact words as to why the pictures should be shown, because the American people "deserved to see that bastard with a bullet in his brain."

Wow. The man was literally bouncing in his recording booth seat with glee at the fact that another human being had been shot to death through the head. And this same man claims to be a Catholic.

This scenario basically repeated itself in the conservative talk show world this past weekend with the death of Kim Jong Il, although without the same driving intensity of the Bin Laden raid. The lack of charity shown was astounding, from talk show hosts and callers. These are people that are supposed to be middle of the road Americans, working class Christians, middle class Evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and atheists who show some kind of moral character. And I can't say that they were all out for blood, but many of them were.

One of the most fundamental things I learned from good Catholic parents when I was a child was that no matter the cost, embarassment, ridicule, or hatred I received, I was required to love my enemies. That does not mean I am not allowed to fight enemies (the Church has the best developed theory on the conduct of a just war than any other institution on earth), but I am still called upon to love the enemies I may be called upon by my country to destroy. One of the greatest parts of this love is to pray for the salvation of the souls of all men, especially publicly evil men. At the death of Osama Bin Laden I did not joke about him finally meeting his seventy-seven virgins, I prayed for God's abundant mercy on his soul. At the death of Kim Jong Il I prayed that his soul might rest in peace because that is what a Catholic does.

A Catholic, a Christian, never revels in another man's death. Vengeance is God's and He shall repay. What we should pray for is that God's merciful will be done in that dead man's case. God does not consider a sinner in hell a triumph; rather, a soul in hell has rejected his Maker and must suffer the consequences. On the other hand, a soul that turns to God at the last moment is a victory more momentous than any other in heaven and on earth, and God rejoices in that soul even more than that soul rejoices in God's grace. In either case, however, God stands as eternal and all-knowing judge, and only He is to say who is in hell and who is not (not you, Senator John McCain.) It is not only not our job, it is entirely outside our realm of knowledge and experience. For us to rejoice that the bastard is finally gone and that God may send him to live with the likes of Hitler and Stalin is to act like a freshman at college, a state of life in which we are ignorant of how little we know and therefore revel in how stupid we are.

It is only fallen human nature to desire vengeance instead of justice, and only logical to desire justice without mercy. And yet God astoundingly does neither; maybe that is part of His unfathomability. He never does what we would do and that frustrates us. And yet when we do His will, we are mysteriously more at peace with ourselves. Far be it from usas His followers, then, to be less magnanimous than God.

I write this with some anger and frustration, not at Kim Jong Il or any publicly evil person in general, but directed at a single comment of a friend of mine. I had made the comment that I wished Kim Jong Il to rest in peace, and that God might have mercy on his soul. This friend (a Catholic) could not agree to my desire that Kim Jong Il should rest in peace, and to this day I do not know why. If it is because of listening to people like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, turn them off. Now. They have been less than Christian numerous times before, and they deserve to lose listenership every time they spout uncharity and untruth. If that is where the vindictiveness comes from, cut them off for the safety of your own soul. Please.

Mahatma Gandhi famously said once: "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ." A "Christian" nation that is out for the blood of tyrants is no Christian nation at all. Be aware of revenge and hatred and root them out. They do nobody any good.

To Russia, With Love

An Open Letter to Russia, Its People, and Its Leaders:

This past week I was able to observe the Russian parliamentary elections via the various news networks. And I have to say, the results were disgustingly predictable. The ruling party once again stayed put in power, amidst widespread reports of election rigging and fraud. The authorities have vowed to bring those responsible to justice and have so far done little to nothing, claiming that even with election fraud factored in, the ruling party still wins.

It would seem that 70 years of totalitarian oppression and the systemic bureaucratic corruption it bred do not fade easily. While the Soviet Union may have crumbled over fifteen years ago, the corruption has remained but under a different guise.

I live in a country where you hear of local election fraud only once in a while, where political dissidents do not disappear in the middle of the night, and where I am free to write and report pretty much anything I want. I will not pretend to know how frustrating and frightening it can be to live under a system that cares so little for its people.

It has therefore been to my great satisfaction to witness the courage of the people of Russia in standing up to a rotting tyranny, finally throwing up their hands and saying that they have had enough. If ever there was a people that has had enough, it must be the Russians. Utilizing all the modern tools at their disposal (social media, mobile electronics, etc.) they have become a powerful determining force in reshaping their nation hopefully for the better.

My prayer is that the Russian people will first and foremost show restraint. Your anger with your government is great and widespread, and yet it must not become violence. To become violent in protest against your government would only be to mimic the very thing you wish to change.

My next prayer is that you, the people, will understand that proper representation in government does not solve all ills, although it is an excellent place to start. Freedom is not only freedom from, but freedom for. Your society must be moving towards something, some end, and its end will greatly determine its means. Choose your goals wisely.

My third and final prayer is for the Russian leadership. Not only is violence against your own people, a people that are begging for justice, not advisable, it will never work. You must recognize not only when you have the opportunity to do good in power, but also when your time has come to leave. The needs and the wants of your people are powerful things to reckon with, and every day spent thwarting them is a day spent digging your own grave deeper. Engage with your people. Or leave.

My country and the Russian nation have of course long been at odds; I hope the day comes in my lifetime when that is no longer the case. You, the Russian people, are a beautiful and industrious people; your land is expansive and rich in abundant natural resources. Your culture is ancient and fascinating, your buildings and cities even more so.

Continue to strive for the freedom to be good, to be honest, to be prosperous, and to be generous. And to those who would stand in the way of those goals for their own personal gain, beware. You will not come to any good trying.

Be aware, Russia. And God bless you.