We had (nearly by accident) some Jewish friends over to help us finish up the cheesecake leftover from Friday. We talked about all sorts of life-goings-on, and our guest asked how our church was. We explained a little (nothing terribly or anything) but before we knew it, we all were talking about how our respective religious population-segments have actually developed in parallel. It seems the Modernism has had a very similar effect: shifting the focus off of any transcendental identity/other, instead towards a logical ethical system. While we all have our stomachs turned at the thought of such reductionism, it seems our parents, or grandparents are absorbed in this perspective. (Note: I’ve been on about this before)

But a second, more interesting view has emerged among us youngsters. It seems there’s a tad bit of agnosticism afoot, mostly in reaction to a lack of differentiation between “faith” and “knowledge.” Oh, those two ideas have quite a history of clashing, but it seems in the more conservative camps, where “truth” is trumpeted, knowledge of it is playing in harmony. Earlier, older fundamentalists would speak clearly of their “conviction” of what is or is not truth.. but that was apparently not good enough. Now, conservatives “know” what is true. That’s great, because now everyone else is, well, stupid! ..eyes-rolling..

But do you see what has happened? In honest-to-goodness matters of the empirically unprovable nature (transcendent ontology), knowledge is now being claimed, instead of faith. Well, if you have not faith (only knowledge), how is it you please God? Frankly, I don’t find it surprising that people say they “know” God; I’m glad. What surprises me is how people seem to leave faith behind! Faith– the act, the hope — is what is common to all mankind. We were fully able to communicate with our Jewish friends because we both understood this basic nature of humanity & reality: that throughout history there have been varying ideas about what is transcendent, and some may be more reasonable, but none of them are provable. This equal-footing in the face of the dark, empty other-worldly void is where communication can occur with all people. Knowledge-claims are confidence-claims, and our confidence is only partly a matter of rationality; reason can hint, and can improve our will-to-believe, but belief is still willed.

It’s tough being human. We see only what we’re tuned into. Such selectivity is the basis for prejudice and violence — I face it daily in my Sociology classes. Sociology is committed to clarifying the reality of social-aggregates for the masses, but the masses first learn most of their sociological-reality before truth can get to ‘em. Tribalism sucks, objectivity is handy.. but so very rare – rare unto the point of non-existence; our inter-subjectivity suggests much to trust in.

Background Point #1: The 20 Statements Test
I was forced to do the 20 statements test last Monday in Socio Theory class, only to discover 2 things:
(a) a deep, anti-labeling drive/push (based surely in too many labels placed upon me through my life)..
(b) a natural reaction into the subjective.
Obviously this is an accusation that I’m self-focused..

But this sociology class is teaching me more about myself than any other class. It is showing me some distinct traits which are good & bad. Philosophy only gives me options. I like studying the human nature, and I like considering the philosophical options, however, I still enjoy some concrete things every now & then. But I’m not a scientist. I’d rather let someone else run the numbers, do the methods (is that what research assistents are for?). I’ve got plenty of ideas.

Background Point #2: Carmen’s Theory of Society.
I (like most people) value what’s in me too much; others read this in me, and find no ‘room’ in/nearby me for themselves to value me/attributes of/things in me. I have been actively stopping other ppl from valuing me. I should start letting other ppl value my qualities.. cuz that’s their job, not mine.  Society only works when other ppl value what’s in me, and I in them.

Background Point #3: NYT Depression Article. Just read it. (over & over again! )

Quick, Fake Responses to all this, in particular to Carmen’s Theory:
-Waaay too idealistic.
-That’ll never work
-That hasn’t worked
-That’s why I’m so self-consumed; others never valued me
-Ok, so maybe some ppl valued me, but I didn’t value them, cuz of an unequal distribution. That is, Older ppl might have valued me, and I might have valued them for their place in my life (being old ppl).. but a lack of peer-valuing has contributed to an uneasiness in me, and self-reflection. The “rumination” theory of the mind, that we get focused and obsessive about certain attributes we got picked-on by others long ago.

Perhaps a real response:
What I value is what I value; it is initially sourced in what I find outside myself (like everybody else). But because of various ruminations/imaginations/strong-mindedness, I create a world about me, fanciful, unique-to-me, and nearly impenetrable.

It all starts with something very small which I find amazing or appauling. Then, instead of  (a) “tempering” any next idea or thought regarding this against reality, or (b) perhaps as many others do: just leave it be, I continue on my mental jaunt, which to me is fun. It no longer seems imaginative but very, very real – more real than the external world in which the idea was sourced. This, of course is not simply my personal, willful “commitment” to rationalism; a free-willful choice is hardly what I feel! Rather, my mind has come to a near-enslavement of rumination by sheer habit. This enslavement is where I feel all/most of my determinism/anti-will ideology.

Consequences of all this:
I feel oddly confused, relieved and surprised by all this self-learning. Carmen noted how most of this information did not come from inside of me. (Read: I’m not that amazing after all.) Second, this is all certainly a relief, that there is a new platform from which I can actually live my life and take part in what actually is the external world.

Most importantly, for all those med-students who wish to be psychiatrists (which likely I should have seen a loooooooong time ago! ..but they’re all booked up in this city..) I have some words of advice:
1) You will not solve your patient’s problems unless you understand their context, and method of mental processes. Read: I hope you took your psychology & sociology classes seriously in undergrad!
2) You will not change the world with drugs. Hopefully you already know this. But hopefully you understand your role as a counselor more than as a doctor.
3) You will get more “data” on mental issues than anyone else ever will. You have the chance to be the best at what you do. Make sure you get the data & be a good mental scientist. (See #1).

In a tribute to Jessica Hagy‘s oh-too-obvious work (but we still love it!) I hereby present:

In the past 20 hours, I have heard of “snow-pocalypse” on FoxNews* & “Comcast/NBC mergepocalypse” / “Comcatastrophe” from the Consumerist**. Need I mention the “financial meltdown” from 2-4 months ago?? I’m not convinced.  Sure the snow is “record setting“, but that just means it’s rare, which means exciting. It’s fun, it’s February, it’s supposed to snow! And the more southerly it snows, the faster it will melt. My real concern is the general public (and news media’s) willingness to panic. Panic attacks don’t get anyone anywhere.

Enough already.

Notes:

* I do not watch FoxNews. Ever.
** I was pointed to this link by a friend, which was amusing.

Anyone who has read this blog knows I’m a HUGE fan of Johannine lit, and that thanks to the last class in undergrad I took which explained it for me. But in detail, John, being a good shepherd himself, attempts to teach each person to listen to God’s voice (truth) – not just in example, not in knowledge, but in experience – in a soul. “You already know, what you have already heard from the beginning..” He is always calling us to look to what we know, and dive in deeper instead of thinking you already know it, and trying to add on novelties.

Contrast this with Conservative Evangelicalism, which seems to presume Jesus & Paul going around shouting. So in the image they perceive, they fulfill and follow! However, such shouting to the masses is likely not the reality of the matter: Jesus was very discerning, even selective (Zaccheus!) & did not shout or assume all men were willing & able to listen..

John however, followed this selectiveness, speaking to those who can hear instead of forcing ears to be open, or trying to open men’s hearts and lives into conformance, only killing men in the end, creating callous hearts unable to feel or hear the shepherd’s voice, which ought to be known and heard much easier without all this violence..

Now, I understand how all this happened: mid/late modern individuals felt the truth needed defense or modernizing.. that it was an untenable position in the eyes of the masses and needed to be made ‘hearable’ to men’s ears. Sadly, with the updating of this ‘hearability’ or the truth, it weakens the hearability in one’s soul, and even those ‘ears’ were already being closed up by other anti-humane Modern traits and trends.

So what of it all? We are now in a place historically where men’s hearts are pushing against these systemic heart-closing trends, and the most of us who grew up with the half-truth are returning to its fullness once again. To avoid such troubles, what ought we expect in our lives? In our ‘small groups’, amongst our friends, towards our modern cubicle jobs?

Most of us in our 20′s are holding on to some form of identity statements. There’s a set of reactionary statements we make, pushing us from our stodgy, modern childhood & adolescence through our college brains into something called ‘life’ now. Most of us don’t have a good idea where we’re being pushed into, and most of us are ok with just being reactionary. It’s a tad healthy to ‘get away’ from all that was killing us and driving us crazy, but at the same time, it’s not very healthy to not have a solid, grounded, well-explained and considered position or two. Most of us are addicted to reactionism, since it’s just too easy, relative to being responsible & chained down or something.

So what are we to hold on to? What is “what we have heard since the beginning”? Our childhood? The politics and weird social ideologies surrounding “Jesus loves me”? How our parents are too squishy to have anything behind them? Or, our novel ideas which we would say are ‘the beginning’ to our ‘new’ lives as rational adults?

The answer to these q’s are obviously “yes and no”. There’s truth just about anywhere, and that’s the point. Modernism has taught us to learn something, learn it’s place, and them move on from it. That is “growth”. But John’s repetitive writing is obnoxiously incompatible with such a late western ideal. In all my studying of the philosophy of mind and Artificial Intelligence, there’s one thing that makes us human, and it’s not ‘choice’ like The Matrix held up. It’s our forgetfulness. Sure we can ‘learn and move on’, but life isn’t so hierarchical or ordered. We forget (oddly enough, in a logarithmic curve), and we need to be reminded, and relearn not just ‘the place’ but the places each idea influences.

For instance, we are taught to ‘love your neighbor’. (That is sufficiently ‘from the beginning’ as well!) Our first modern question is “and who is our neighbor?” We can learn through someone telling us that we are “to love everyone.” But most of us will not learn such a lesson until they fail to love everyone they meet, and learn the consequences of creating so many broken hearts in this world. This is the repetition we need, for the forgetfulness we bear, and the central point behind grace and mercy shown to another as well as us: we fail, and given enough time, we just might succeed once in awhile.

So back to our small-group. What and how are we to expect our friends to grow and learn? It’s awfully depressing to hear the same issues and concerns each week over and over again, but it’s awfully pressured to feel like we ought learn something weighty upon our hearts.

I’ve never been a fan of ‘a new topic each week’. It’s fickle, and who is doing anything more than repeating their trite identity-building resolutions/reactions anyways? Book-studies are better, and oddly enough, they are more pointed. That’s my point: perhaps ‘small groups’ ought not be focused on the people involved, the times that are compatible to meet, topics agreed upon, but each group have one central goal/theme/recurring idea. “We go to the ‘grace’ group”, or “This is the ‘wrath of God’ group”( ) that kinda sounds fun. The point is to focus our lives around a topic we believe we need to learn, and then to dive in, reminding each other each week ow that has played out in our lives for good or ill, how we forgot, how that could have been useful to survive the week, or perhaps in mildly more intellectual fashion: compare-contrast: each week is a new topic, yes, but how does some societal problem, theological point, sermon this week fail or succeed with or without mercy, or love? This way we learn the depths of God’s truth, love, mercy and wrath. Perhaps even reading a book on the topic, or reading another book off-topic to see how it is or is not shown in characters’ lives..

This all sounds so fruitful to live in the reality of  human forgetfulness instead of in the modern assumption of learn-and-move-on. Most of us will never move on from the Gospel. The love of God is not something to ‘step up from’.. Our lives are not just built on top of his grace, but each brick’s substance is his grace.

This week I’ve been doing some thinking and reading on affection and cognition.. good phenomenology stuff. In doing so, I’ve been focusing on 2 terms: expression and it’s complement, impression. Of course these terms were used in the art world 50 to 100 years ago, but I’m focusing on their value and place in the soul.

Being a quieter creature, I can have trouble with expression. Too much of it from others around me, and I’m going crazy. So impression should be easy for me then, right? To some degree, yes. But when I speak of impression, I refer to direct inputs one has in their life. So, taking an audit this morning, I asked, “Generically, what inputs do I have/allow in my life?” My first response: “very few.”

1. Listening to others: few speak other than my pastor & some in community group
2. Reading: I rarely take the time (though I’ve been trying and starting to enjoy this week)
3. Learning: This directly takes place in the trenches at work, and that is a painful version.

If Impression is a form of humility, what then is its role against (in dialectic fashion with) self? Does it mean ignorance of self? At least not placing enough time and energy on self. And what of the self’s reaction to this? Does it whine? Revolt? Fuss? Complain, “What about me?” “Well, What about you? Self, do you so need the attention of the world? You already have it of the Father & the death and life of his Son!” This is what/who I need Impression from.

Yet I’m unwilling to bow to this. This is myself demanding to push away impression, yet crying out. What is this?! Needing and receiving love is a need for impression: the expression of another unto my self. Why then have I focused on my need for the impression of love, yet pushed away the one capable & desiring to express his love to me – to fill my impressing need?

My day devalues love & the source of it, yet my self cries for it. I need and am unwilling to admit it, to label it, to accept that my need, with all that I describe it as, is precisely love.

So how to convince self? Look & find that needy part of me? Have I just not heard enough? No habit built-in of hearing.. of hearing his love? Indeed all I’m left to do is cry, “Open my ears!” I see well enough, but my ears are closed off. You’ve spoken through signs to this deaf man – let me hear the cries of others & of your love! Turn my will to accept & admit my need of love.

---

Is this management not of affection but of communication: impression & expression? It’s hard to manage theory.. So most have sold to hearing with-out hearing: daily impression of reading, fighting to hear and hear. Is this that mechanical and formal of a relationship? What other means of communication are there? Surely reading the rational form of creation, as well as the aesthetic in it and that reflection of deity within man and his role here. Such are more subjective re-readings from the original objective source.. and subjectivity is where truth, love and faith are to reside to have any value for one’s soul.

While I was first introduced to Myers-Briggs (Jung!) I’ve long since revelled in the DISC system. And tonight, I think I finally have found explicit use for the Jungian system.

The first analytic idea is to assume any one of the 16 MB categories is the ideal of one of the D,I,S or C. This is utter failure though. I realize now it’s more of a noun-verb thing. The DISC is pretty clear on behavior. MB is horrid at behavior, but *so much* better at means and intention.

For instance: I know a few people who are dominant “I” folk. (In fact all my major friends are IC’s!) But there is huge variation in what constitutes their actions. One will talk and talk and talk thinking he’s adding to an idea, when truly, he’s only saying the same thing 5 different ways. This gets old quick, but fact is, he’s focusing on the interpreting of info part of the Feeling over Sensory on MB. However, there’s another character who likes to come up with stories as he speaks.. his words take him places: he actually IS adding meaning, but he’s also open the new things (MB: Intuition!), whereas the first guy is stuck, having already decided, and now just trying to influence his decision. I like stories. And short attention spans.

There comes a point when influence is out of bounds. Particularly when no problems are resolved, just shoved aside through the influential forces of manipulation, reversals and redirection.

Perhaps you’re unaware of what I speak? Go watch “The Puffy Chair” (I was unintentionally subjected to such today). This movie would be hilarious as a cultural spoof if I didn’t know too many people who exhibit the fatal personality flaws engendered in this movie.

Some key examples:

1) The girlfriend unwilling to stand by a decision to not go on the trip, but poking an prodding.

2) The main character throwing around “Why am *I* in this? Why are *YOU* in this (relationship)?”

3) The dumbfounded statement of confusion at the end of the movie, finally beyond his consistent avoidance of rationality, leaving him unable to decide or know anything, even that breaking up is the most humane thing for them both. I can’t help but title his tendency “escape from reason,” but only to find him recaptured by the demands of rationality again.

4) The dad at the end: “You know everything you’re gonna know about one another.” (blatently false)  “And now, it seems as if you’re just waiting for one really bad thing or one really good thing to happen in order to make a decision. And that’s not going to happen.” (blatently true). Fact is, two complete idiots who have no knowledge of practical psych can “know” things about each other, but be entirely unaware of the consequences and solutions. In fact, they’re more likely to only know how each other are screwed up and reacting, not who they have yet to be settled to be.  How can you know someone who does not know themselves, and actively avoids knowing that?

Like I said, the worst part of this movie is not that it’s a stand-alone, but pure representation of too many relationships built solely on influence. The disaster of this movie is trumped only by the reviews calling it nearly epic in it’s representation. But seriously? It just plain scares me. Especially the reviews which display no knowledge of practical psych to get over and through the issues displayed in this movie. Everyone is bowing down saying “Oh, this is great, ha ha!” instead of saying “OMG, That’s me, and I’m killing the people around me.”

On a slightly more philosophic note, I consider early post-modern tendencies of co-equal epistemologies to be these characters: “truth only exists as differential against another.”

Btw, I don’t call my fiance “dude.”

It’s no surprise that this world takes some up-keep. Few things ‘just work’, and that certainly goes for life and the daily hassles therein, be it traffic to simple forgetfulness to emotion distress that stops us from anything remotely responsible or enjoyable.

This up-keep that is needed is a healthy aggression often labeled pro-activity or responsibility among other titles. But such things are hardly what we as full human beings want or expect out of life. Don’t get me wrong, life certainly includes continual self-giving.. but to never receive back (whether in perceived or actual form from God and/or others) is too much to bear.

Rather, in the face of all this that is required of us, we often seek that which is to us, peace. Here is where either responsibility or addictions take root. For what is peace? Has it more similarity to non-motion, inactivity or unmovedness than to activity? If peace is simply the ‘hassle-free life’, then non-motion it is. But what of relational peace? Will unmovedness suffice? Clearly not: a united mind, affection and action bring peace in that realm. Perhaps peace is to be a stoic or eastern hassle-is-as-no-hassle, betraying any true emotion in me..

I find all ‘answers’ entirely weak in light of the goodness found in renewal. Would I rather sit in unmoved fashion bitter and sulking at the cruel world around? Sure it may feel right and true for a while, but not for a lifetime. Rather, what I find in my days is so much hope and energy in the morning, and fear of the day’s work taking it all away before I can get to my true loves in life: thinking, writing, music, friends and my soon-to-be wife. These good things are part of what God has built me for.. they are good things, requiring of me. They require motion. And in good Aristotelian fashion, this motion towards them must overcome the daily stresses. This is peace.

But I’m not sure how that overcoming goes down. I know there’s something scary about human resiliency. We just won’t give up. We can, but quite often we don’t. Simple pride is enough for some, if you’ve normalized to a culture of it. But pride seems to be an all or nothing thing: if I have too much, it will drive me. If I instead take on humility, then I find myself less worn-thin, and having more energy. But If I try for the middle-lands, assuming and controlling over some small domain, then I’m worn out, seeking to regain control over something else, or nothing at all: numbness & apathy.

Peace is not the numbness from all of the external forces beating on me. Peace is not the apathy which comes either. Peace is overcoming this numbness and apathy of self-defined & controlled life of knowing-what-I-can-handle and instead being reminded and re-associated, familiarized again to truth and love. Allowing self to experience when experience has only brought hurt and frustration and tiredness and be influenced towards the foundation of this world and beyond it. Hope of goodness.

Peace is then tied to humility. And humility is enjoyment, quite near to love which moves: responsibility. That’s my taxonomy.

My trouble? I become so embedded in the day.. making me smaller than human, and less near to goodness, hope, love and truth.

The better part of our days are sadly spent at work. We get up, drive there, wake up there, work there, get tired there, and go home worn out to those who deserve what we just gave to another.

I’d like to think that if we took a Jewish-day perspective that my energy would be used at the beginning of the ‘day’ (when I’m still with my family, able to give my best to them first). But that clock-resetting isn’t the same as my body resetting. I’m still ‘refreshed’ by sleep, not by the hands on a clock.

However, if I stop working/fighting/doing hobbies so dang late at night, then I’m able to relax before I sleep, and actually sleep well. Maybe then I’ll have some left over for my family..

The latest American economic fad is to give hardware away at corporate-subsidized priced, ‘hiding’ the actual cost in a monthly service fee. I think we all know and see this with the iPhone 3G having a lower entry cost than the first iPhone, and as with many other cell phones, by signing up for a plan, you get a ‘discount’.

Further examples are the new ‘Netbooks’ being subsidezed by Verizon, and there’s always those online service vendors hocking SaaS.

My verdict: I kinda like it. It’s a new form of credit that makes us play responsibly with our toys for the length of the contract.

But the other half of the story gets real interesting real quick. We all know that when a company builds out a platform, they have but one option and goal: to make money off of it. But what happens when you build out a platform ..and everyone else does too? Upon ubiquity, the price drops. Plenty of supply, plenty of options, no more demand.

I know, I know, I’m being obvious thus far, but the interesting part comes when you consider all this in terms of decades-long entrenched companies and their platforms now being heavily undermined and competed against (Microsoft). What was once a staple, an assumption is now (finally) being questioned. How long before a company’s platform becomes obsolete, and they must not just re-brand, but pick-up decades of infrastructure? IBM did it. But Redmond is usually smarter than all-eggs-in-one-basket. Their desktop market is hardly everything. At least they’re innovative.

But I still wonder how long Windows will be profitable. On one hand they keep upping the stakes (requirements) beyond what people need(Just like Office.. and now we’ve got simple Google Docs!), so they tier-out, but honestly, that’s what Apple did between Jobs.

Fact is, Big Business trusts and buys Big Business.. but us little guys are willing to take bigger risks with less on the line. And when there’s enough of us, we win.