Anger at God

During recent tragedy one thing that's changed is my conception about being angry with God. To be clear, I'm not sure I can say I have ever been angry with God in my life. Some may ask why, and it's likely because I've never really taken the absolutist, omnipotent, or total control of every worldly detail view of God. I believe God is only omnipotent as they have access to all power, and even then I understand that a belief in a just God obviates the ability to believe in an omnipotent God as certain laws greater than that God must then be followed. I've also believed strongly in free will, and that God's protection or preservation thereof is a necessary condition for their existence, or at least their Godhood. However, I am also convinced in a personal God, one who cares deeply for their children and wishes involvement in their lives (but like any good parent, must limit their involvement to allow independence to develop).

I find the parental analogy very compelling, and this has led me to an interesting thought on being angry with God. A quick search on being angry with God will reveal how many people are uncomfortable with the idea. It feels blasphemous, perhaps, but I think there's one person who's quite OK with people being angry at God and that's God themself.

My wife and I hope to have kids, and that hope's no longer in the distant future, so I've read the occasional article about parenting, discussed it with friends and family, and tried to gain what experience I can watching over others' children. I've learned that a mature adult generally weathers the storm and is understanding of a child's anger, even though it often ends up pointed toward them, without becoming upset or angry about the situation themselves. Good parents understand and allow their children to become angry, they often don't take it personally, and recognize that they may have to accept their child's fury themselves because understanding the larger situation is beyond the child (at least at this point in their development).

Some of this thinking may have come together when a friend of mine who is a mother took a sip of her son's drink, leading to a short spat of crying and yelling, "I didn't want you to do that!" over and over. That moment seemed so childish, crying out wishing an event hadn't happened but not providing any ideas for redress or seemingly unwilling to come to an understanding or acceptance of the painful reality of what's occurred, and yet it also seemed so familiar as I and my loved ones were often doing the same only our yells were, "I wish she hadn't died." This may seem uncaring on my part to compare a child's displeasure and losing out on a sip of milk to the death of a loved one, but from God's perspective it might not be so different, and again I find the similarities of the emotional turmoil experienced eerily similar.

Yes, I'm certainly speaking from a Christian perspective here, but I've tried to ensure I'm speaking in the most general terms. If you're an atheist, agnostic, or otherwise unaligned or undecided allow me to speak to you a little more closely at this time, and if you're one of my Christian or otherwise theistic audience members lend me some latitude for a moment. One of the important roles of God is that of an abstraction, or even verbal shorthand. Some theists like to make much of Einstein's very profound theism, but the God of Einstein probably more resembled the impersonal physical laws pervading all creation through all time than the proverbial sky daddy in which many of them might profess faith. From this perspective anger at God is easy to understand; we're angry at the whims of fortune that brought us to our current place (and hey, like the ancient myth-makers knew when they came up with Thor, Ares, or Sopona it's more cathartic to personify your ill fate than to allow it to persist ethereal).

So I think God completely accepts our anger towards them. That said, anger isn't a healthy emotion. Without even addressing the psychology, it increases blood pressure and depresses the immune system so it is unwise to maintain for long periods of time. I think this is why forgiveness is so powerful, and so important. The concept of forgiveness is often abused, taken to mean we can't treat people or entities with suspicion or coolness when that may be exactly what is deserved, but I think forgiveness starts with releasing the feelings of rancor and hatred toward others. Forgiveness can go beyond that, but often anything beyond that requires penitence on the part of the trespasser, so the beginning may well be the most important part of forgiveness if only because it will be the most often used.

Whether one conceives of God as a loving cosmic Allfather or even as an impersonal cosmic force permeating the universe and seen in its structure and beauty we can accept anger toward God, and perhaps even recognize it as necessary at times. When to move beyond this anger, to forgive God and once again connect with the omnipresent divinity will depend on the individual and is likely to be a difficult task. I pray those in need may do so, and hope these meager thoughts on the matter help.

Are We Ready for Post Scarcity? Part 1

The abundance of the modern day is staggering.  Food alone is now requiring few man hours and producing vast amounts of product.  In about 25 years the personal computer has gone from a relatively cutting edge office device to a ubiquitous handheld one.  The amazing advances in technology will only cascade into more, and these will bring amazing blessings, conveniences, and boons to humankind.  These are gifts we should be prepared to freely receive, but like a gift of chocolate that will make us sick if eaten to quickly or heavy book that will require much reading and concentration we need to be receive these with caution and adroitness.

Let's go back to food.  One of the interesting points of contention between my brothers, me, and our grandmother is our approach and mentalities surrounding food.  Our grandma, growing up in a family that suffered through and being born shortly after the great depression, views food as a precious and scarce resource.  She often views food in terms of availability, enjoying buffets and inexpensive diners and being anxious over throwing away uneaten scraps or spoiling produce.  My brothers, and even my parents, live in the modern age and see food as abundant.  We don't like to waste food, but recognize that when the bread gets moldy it should be thrown out because it only costs a dollar or two (ten minutes of work at minimum wage) to get another loaf.  We live devoid of the "clean your plate" ethic so common in past generations.

Thank heavens for that too, as obesity and overeating are a greater health risk to us than malnutrition (though I am skeptical of the magnitude of this risk).  It's actually odd to think about health risks arising because nourishment is so easy to obtain.  Taking anatomy and physiology I've learned hundreds of ways in which a deficiency of calcium, iodine, glucose, iron, or any other number of dietary intakes cause problems.  It's bizarre to think of problems coming about simply because we have so much of those things we need and love that we run out places to put it and spend so much time and energy to keeping it all together.

Food is only the beginning of this, though.  Technology is more and more in in the reach of anyone who'd like it.  Entertainment and education is more available than ever with the internet.  And these are just the commodities being made abundant with modern technology.  Go even slightly futuristic and we have productive capabilities exploding via robotics, precious metals or gems having their scarcity destroyed by advanced chemical and materials engineering techniques, and even thought or creativity flooding the market in ways never before seen thanks to better distribution systems, or even AI and other futuristic computing creating new art.

The challenges presented by this can be staggering though.  The central one is likely motivation.  Survival and status have been the principle motivators of a person in the past.  That might have meant being the mightiest hunter in the tribe that's always well fed or the most influential business magnate on wall street who always had some opportunity waiting, but the principles been the same.  Many of us have said something like, "I really don't want to go to work today but they won't pay me if I don't so I guess I had better," and we've probably even said that with some frequency.  If we reach post scarcity we theoretically won't ever need to get paid, so what will keep us getting out of bed in the morning and off the streets?  I'll be investigating this and other ideas of a post-scarcity society and economy in part 2.

Thirty Years

Yesterday was my thirtieth birthday. As I leave my thirtieth year of life and enter my thirty-first I reflect on the passed year.  Year thirty feels as if I've been a plane that's waited at the gate, taxied up the runway, and taken off for a new destination.  Here's the highlights:

• Working at inthinc : I continued my job at inthinc technology solutions for the first part of the year.  This time taught me once again the importance of good management.  Our last manager was very skilled at keeping the support team of which I was a part happy and feeling valued within the company.  During the first part of the year we had no manager and a number of internal conflicts arose within the team as well as numerous difficulties arising from a lack of effective interfacing with the rest of the company.  Our new manager, when hired, eventually turned out to make promises like a politician, fail to inform us about and connect us effectively with the rest of the company, and make the talent feel undervalued. I was the third person to leave the team as the burden on our team increased and feelings of valuation decreased.  After leaving the company I continued to hear of hardships and found the company was losing money and talent at an alarming rate, though it seems to have stabilized at this point. I have a number of good friends from my time there, but am happy to have gone.
• Returning to University : Leaving inthinc prompted an overall career change.  I had noticed that the career trajectory in technical support would take significant time to advance and might not lead to a place I really wanted to be.  Looking at what field might be related to my previous scholastic experience in physics I found that radiology is something that would probably take about as much time to train in as it would to advance in my current work, had similar job demands at higher pay, and ultimately would be more fulfilling and interesting.  I enrolled at Weber State University and started attending classes. I was reminded how much I appreciated the university atmosphere and learning new material.
• Entering Medicine : Preparing to enter the field of radiography I've been learning about the medical field generally as well.  I trained as a phlebotomist and am making arrangements to test for my limited x-ray machine operator's license.  I have been fascinated by the challenges and nature of the medical field. There's an intriguing intimacy to healthcare that makes me feel a great deal of responsibility toward patients. I never thought that biochemistry would hold any interest for me but after studying it (in part at least) for a semester I've completely turned the corner and am engaged by protein structures and metabolic pathways.  There's clearly a lot to learn and do in this field and I'm eager to continue exploring it in year thirty one of life and beyond.

Why I Like to Play Pretend

I've always loved to play pretend.  As a kid the most entertaining thing I could do was imagine myself as someone different in a vastly different world.  My parents have said that in my early years a teacher once, in reference to my independent imaginings of intrigue, said something like, "I was a little worried that Devon wasn't getting along with the other kids, but then I realized he just doesn't find playing with them that interesting."  And why would I have?  What possible competition could attempts to direct the motion of a ball around a field hold to the vivid flights of fancy surging through my mind?

I still like playing pretend, but with age have changed the ways I do so.  There's writing, which is fun in it's creativity but requires quite a bit of commitment to craft something really satisfying.  It's certainly not on par with running back and forth during recess freely directing the actions of whatever amazing character I had created.  Reading is even more restrictive, and movies and television more so still.  The best way I've found to recapture that adventurous imagining of childhood, and even build on it in some ways, is through tabletop role-playing games.

Tabletop RPGs aren't known for being creative and fun, except by those who've played them.  Their reputation has sadly been horribly slandered almost since their inception. The most popular tabletop RPG, Dungeons and Dragons, was criticized in early years, like many works of fantasy such as the Harry Potter series, as being something which promoted satanism and witchcraft.  This had the unfortunate effect of causing the game's creator, Gary Gygax, to feel he shouldn't admit to being a Christian.  As he told a convention of gamers in 2007, "I was reticent to say the fact, you know, that I was a Christian, mainly because I was afraid that I would give Christianity a bad name because I did D&D. So I did, I kept my mouth shut."

The problem wasn't helped by a mother who, in my-admittedly biased by persecution and somewhat uncharitable given the involved tragedy-opinion, rather than accept the sad truths of mental illness which caused her son to commit suicide decided to crusade against Dungeons as Dragons as the evil which stole her son away from her.  The result has been a society that largely feared the game (it even seemed a little creepy to me as a youngster after I got an email, probably an ad or invitation to an online game, that talked about how to hold 'death matches' and my father mentioned it sounded like "A D&D thing," which was reasonable but devoid of the now known innocuousness of pretend in those early days of both the game and the internet), and pushed only those sufficiently unbothered by the tut-tuts of society at large to be able to enjoy the game.  This turned out to be the "nerds," and has left Dungeons and Dragons in particular and tabletop role playing in general with a stigma of silly foolishness engaged in only by those who never go outside or shower that has persisted to this day.

All this is a shame, really, because the games are quite fun and have a lot to offer.  Tabletop RPGs provide a system for cooperative story telling.  They can be similar in some ways to the games of 'pass the story' one might have played around campfires or in grade school writing classes, though a major difference is that one person takes primary control of the plot and everyone else directs the actions and dialogue of the main characters.  The game rules help with this by creating a system for directing action, resolving conflicts, and defining a character's attributes.  If you want to play a character that's particularly strong, but kinda dumb you can put this in his ability scores.  The old playground fights, of, "I shot you." "Nuh, uh, I dodged it." are resolved with attack modifiers, armor classes, and dodge skill rolls.  Players give respectful smiles and cheers to one another as they roll high numbers on dice of varied shapes, meaning that their characters have landed heavy blows on fearsome foes.

That camaraderie is another great thing about gaming.  A group of friends being creative and enjoying one another's company.  They pepper the story with details, often humorous as it's always fun to joke with friends.  Friends come together in the game world to take on great evils and seek untold riches or amazing power, and they come together in our world to have fun and tell a good story.

I wish the hobby didn't have the baggage it does, because I think it adds a lot of value to one's life and could be used for many wonderful things, but it doesn't seem like I'll ever be able to get together that church group of gaming friends where an ecclesiastical leader guides the adventures of a group of holy warriors fighting the forces of evil and striving to live the principles of their faith, the professional group of executives playing characters who are always striving to gain treasure and power but must also protect the innocent and the weak to avoid alignment penalties, nor the student group adventuring to find the secrets of the universe.  Games are a painfully under-utilized tool to motivate companionship, self-improvement, and promoting good causes.  Tabletop RPGs are another unfortunate example of this.  I'll still have fun playing though, whenever I can find a few friends that also enjoy playing games and being creative together.

Waiting

"Patience is a virtue," everyone says.  Often one hears a response along the lines, "Yes, but it's one I don't have."  I feel like this response misses the mark terribly and perpetuates the foolhardy idea that our virtues (or vices, often) are just something we are born with and will end up living life according to.  It undermines the idea that we humans are free and have the power to act for ourselves, debasing man to nothing more than an animal, or even the earth, water, air, or other elements of nature.  Since, as you may have noticed, the author finds this idea somewhat repugnant he will often retort with something like, "And we must learn to develop virtues."

Patience is, or at least is often perceived to be, how we handle waiting.  Do we sit quietly, do we fidget, do we pace up and down?  There has been an odd change recently that has caused us to think many things should happen instantaneously.  When I worked as a camp counselor the employee use computers were very obsolete and of course ran quite slowly.  Rather than disparaging the frustrating situation I came to refer to these as the "Zen computers."  I try to take this sort of attitude toward a lot of waiting; standing in a line, downloading a webpage, or standing at the bus stop can be great opportunities to think and observe our thinking.

Often waiting frustrates us because we feel such a drive to get our next task finished or such desire to have whatever we'll get after the wait.  I've had to adjust lately to some of these feelings myself.  I recently changed from a company that would give me a weekly paycheck to one that pays every two weeks.  This means I have to wait longer when I want to make a payment on my student loans, credit card, rent, cable bill, or anything else.  I've had to do slightly more planning ahead, but the bigger deal is becoming comfortable with things the way they are until I have the resources to change them.  I think this is the greater principle here.  Often we get frustrated, aggravated, or just plain angry when we're forced to wait because it's such a clear signal that there's something we can't control.  Facing our limitations is always humbling, and many don't wish to be humbled.

Lately I've also been waiting to get married.  This has been one of the most interesting experiences I've had in learning to wait.  I feel such deep desire toward my beloved as well as a certain sense that I won't be taking the next step in my life until the wedding day has come.  I'm learning a lot when about enjoying the experiences I'm having even while wanting so much more.  I think this is what we're really seeking when we talk about learning delayed gratification.

It's easy to view waiting as something onerous and obnoxious.  It's common to equate a wait with a difficulty.  I think waiting is a great way to learn, especially about ourselves.  Know thyself, the saying goes, and while doing things is important we also need to take time to get to know ourselves in a more intimate setting.  Waiting is a great way to do that.

Happy Friday!

I hear this exclamation every now and again, and it must be getting popular enough to have reached the public mind in general, because I just heard it on an advertisement for an internet talk show.  While I enjoy finally hitting the weekend like so many others, I'm not fond of the phrase.  Is Friday now a weekly holiday?  If so, what are we celebrating?  The answer to the second question unnerves me.

The specialized celebratory greeting definitely shows us that Friday's become some sort of weekly holiday. Holidays are nice and I think we should take whatever opportunities to celebrate that we have so that doesn't have to be a bad thing.  The question is what we're celebrating, and unfortunately the answer is straightforward.  We're happy collectively to see the end of the work week.  The fact that we're happy enough in our collective consciousness to hallow (the word holiday is derived from holy day) our escape from working each week reveals how deeply we must hate our work, and that's a much deeper problem.

Why do we hate work so much that we rejoice the way we do over the weekly liberation from it? What makes our work so unrewarding that we rejoice in such a way once it's over?  Many people today argue that that's the nature of work, that if we enjoyed something it would be play.  Mark Twain posits the idea that, "Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."  This holds some truth, but I also feel there's something crucially missing.  We go to our jobs and trudge through the days so that they'll give us the money to pay our bills.  Sadly, this seems to be the way the world is, but it doesn't have to be so.

As discussed a little here and in Jane McGonigal's fine work Reality is Broken the world (or the US at least) is facing a (really weird) crisis.  It's a crisis of engagement.  Our entertainment has so far outstripped education, possibly face to face social interaction, and definitely work that we're having trouble caring about these things and being happy when we're involved in them anymore.  It pales that poorly to the things that entertain us.

Think about how sad it is that for so many people taking care of a virtual farm (Farmville) is more interesting and engaging than what they do normally in life.  Farming is at least traditionally viewed as a venture quintessentially representative of working hard just to subsist, and yet with the tools available to modern game designers and some imagination it's become a lot more exciting and fun that we'd rather do that than listen to a lecture in school or (for one working in retail, let's say) help someone find something in a store.

I've often worked retail, so let me use that as an example.  One of the problems is how easily we feel unrecognized in work these days.  Perhaps confounding the problem further is the "trophies for breathing" culture that's also creeping in, but it is pretty easy to feel unappreciated since the people we help we only interact with for a few minutes and our bosses are just there to tell us what we're supposed to do next.  A simple initiative a company could do to offset this for retail employees is a simple incentive system of giving employees points when they do things to further company goals (upselling, excellent customer service, efficient work during high traffic periods, etc.).  Ideally, these points would eventually be redeemable for monetary or otherwise physical rewards, but just having a consistent recognition I feel would improve the workplace.  Employees would be rewarded for sticking with a company and working hard toward company goals by having a "lifetime score" with the company that would constantly increase.

Though this seems like it would be a momentous burden on management (and, indeed, takes a degree of skill to pay close enough attention to reward points often enough, without giving away points just for breathing and making them meaningful, but also not being too stingy and creating dynamics of teacher's pet/boss's friend through the point system), it could also be a great way to simply frame managerial goals.  We're trying to increase net sales, double points for upselling this week!  The most important thing at widgets and such is customer service, examples of excellent customer service always receive at least ten points!  We know this is a stressful job, so working through the lunch rush of the day earns you 5 points!  Think of the last three phrases without the point framework in place.  You might have even heard similar things from management, but do they ring less hollow when there's a concrete form of recognition attached?

The weekend will always be nice, and we'll probably always be glad to do something else than our job for a day or two (though even this is debatable, ask the enthusiast/addict to whichever Facebook game/Online MMORPG if they've ever tweaked just a little on a vacation because they weren't "harvesting their crops" or "missing out on XP"), but it doesn't have to be a glorious liberation from the nigh on slavery of our weekly work.  We can engage people in the things they do every day if we only choose to believe that all work is worthy of engagement and make an effort to make it involving instead of just hoping that money we pay will keep our employees there.

Despite all I've said, I like the idea of a weekly holiday.  After all that's the idea of the Sabbath, and I find a great deal of worth in that.  I've even heard that, perhaps similarly to "Happy Friday" it was common among the ancient Jews to greet each other with "Shalom Sabbat" (Peaceful Sabbath).  The difference I see is that the Sabbath is deliberate and a focused effort.  It's a day we take and set apart to focus on holy things and to rest from what wearies us in the world.  It's devoting ourselves to something, rather than a reflection of the fact that we've become woefully not devoted to what we do everyday.  The holy is something that I would like us to celebrate on a weekly basis, our lack of interest in much of our day to day lives is not.

Ramadan: Day 10 (written on 21st of August)

As a sort of spiritual experiment I've been keeping Ramadan this year. Today was day ten, and I thought I should record some of the thoughts and experiences I've had so far. What truly inspired me was my morning prayer today. Mornings in general have been an interesting part of Ramadan since I usually sleep in well past sunrise. I still have, often enough, but to eat before the daily fast begins I've woken up early once or twice. Once before today was a very nice experience, but more frequently I've woken up, eaten a breakfast, and then gone back to sleep. Today a woman I've been getting to know also wanted to begin waking up early in the day, so we made plans to call each other in the morning. I talked to this fine woman while eating a modest breakfast yogurt and oats (and some leftover brownie too) and watching the sunrise. One of the topics of discussion was the morning. The morning is different. Evenings and nights are still very active for modern Americans. Mornings, especially as early as before sunrise, are very quiet and still. This made it a nice time to speak with a new friend, and it has also been an ideal hour for my introspection. Watching the sunrise has been very nice. First just because it's so novel to me, seeing as I usually loath being up before the sun is, but more importantly just to appreciate nature's beauty.

This is the second time I've prayed during sunrise over Ramadan and it's been spectacular both times so I should really work to do so more often. Today was particularly powerful. These prayers are great because after waking up and eating breakfast and then watching the sunrise I've shaken off the tiredness and am alert enough to feel the Spirit of God and speak meaningfully with Him. I did so today near the end of the sunrise, I knelt down for prayer and when I rose up the sun had unhidden itself from behind the horizon and sunlight spilled over me as I lifted myself up from prayer. I thought this a exquisite symbol for the Holy Ghost's presence that I also experienced.

One of the things about prayer, faith, and ritual is that mundane things in life become holy. The sunrise, while always lovely, today was a testimony of God's greatness, power, mercy, care, and love. My fast has been food only, rather than a full on traditional food and water fast, making the water I drink a sacred reminder of the Living Water which slakes my thirst for meaning, justice and righteousness in life. I hope to continue and improve upon these experiences as I continue Ramadan.

Thoughts from the Airport

I love airports. An airport is an exciting nexus of modern human existence. A coming together of people, people on journeys. Some leaving to see others for a joyful celebration, some doing the same but for a somber purpose. Still more arriving, perhaps wearied from their voyage and excited to meet friends and settle in at their destination. Or excited to finally be in the place to where they anticipated coming.

They're grand testimonies to modern technology, and while some worry and fret over technologies march forward I marvel and embrace what it's brought us. It was 107 years ago that man first lifted himself from the ground with nothing more than ingenuity, effort, and luck. And now we've mastered the craft so well that anyone can do so for the same price as an expensive piece of clothing. We build what are cities unto themselves to support people taking to the skies day by day. That is what an airport is.

The airport I'm at now is perhaps not one of these, being smaller than where I arrive, the Denver International Airport, but it still excites me. Today I played a game with myself. I tried to move slowly, sauntering through this buzzing hive of humanity. Airports usually excite me and I energetically pull keys and shoes off at security checkpoints, forcefully drive forward toward the gate from which a few tons of steel, silicon, and modern aeronautics will carry me to wherever I wish to go in the world, and then arrive somewhat disappointed that I've been so efficient only to arrive early enough to wait. I still arrived early enough that I've spent about an hour and a half waiting, but it's certainly been enjoyable. The air conditioning has deceptively made the sound of a waterfall in the section of seats next to mine. It's rained and a few brilliant blasts of lightning and deep peels of thunder have been mine to enjoy. Most of this time though I've used to read and, now, to write.