Sunglasses
A couple of months ago, I got a new pair of glasses. It wasn't that my prescription had changed much, but I had been wearing the old pair for so long that the lenses were covered in aberrations. While this doesn't really hinder your ability to see, it can make it difficult to see things clearly. It's easy to get complacent and believe you have clarity in your perception of things, especially when all of...
Honesty
Honesty is a difficult thing to define clearly. If you ask someone a question when you know that answer is "yes", but they tell you "no", that's clearly dishonesty. But the world is complicated. In some circumstances the lie can be simple while the truth complex, and it can also be the reverse, so they can be difficult to tell apart. We learn from our cultural upbringings that lying is often called for, for the...
The Weak
Over the course of my adult life, there is a conversation that people keep bringing up to me. Here is the idea, simply: that civilization shields humankind from the elements of nature. Nature is cruel, and the highest law is survival of the fittest, which can only be carried out by killing the unfit before they can contribute to the gene pool. This protection afforded humankind by civilized society means that the weak survive, whereas...
Sacrifice
I spent a good deal of time yesterday, while traveling back to California, reflecting on the horrors I had caused during my visit to my home state. In hindsight, and in a larger context, things make a great deal more sense now. A person who reads my last blog post might wonder why on earth I suddenly ventured across the country in an effort to explore the possibility of romance with a girl I barely...
The Accidental Cyberstalker
I don't take myself terribly seriously. Usually I pick a topic that interests me, devise a spin on it, and post some goofy and trite take on it. I have something extremely serious to say now, and it's based on a series of mistakes that I've made over the last week. These mistakes have affected at least one person other than myself, and in a terrible way. I'm posting this in the hopes that others...
Alms
It is of course impossible to talk about this subject matter in real terms, based on one's own direct experience, instead of as an abstract theoretical concept, without risking it coming across as a backdoor brag. It's important enough that I'll risk this. A few things I've noticed and learned: Homeless people begging on the street for money still ask for "spare change", and in most cases, when someone offers them something, it's exactly that:...
Christianity, In a Nutshell, From a Nut
I resolved to spend some time in 2015 getting acquainted with religion. This was largely an intellectual undertaking. I sought to understand what I did not, and since I grew up and live in a predominantly Christian country, this is the religion that stands out, because our culture's viewpoint on it is so varied and rife with conflicts. My ideas in here are largely my own, but I sincerely doubt anything I'm about to say...
"Lost" and Repentance
Over the past several weeks, I have been re-watching the entirety of the television series "Lost". I watched most of this series as it aired, from 2005 to the end in 2010. Here's what can be said about the series: it was a rare serialized sci-fi drama that actually wasn't at all serialized. Each episode, throughout all six seasons, contains a self-contained character struggle surrounding some philosophical problem. There is a parable in each episode,...
Merry Materialism
The debate surrounding the commercialization of the Christmas holiday is a study in apparent contradictions. Since Christian scripture (and the Hebrew scripture piggybacked onto it in the Bible) espouses the value of a lifestyle that de-emphasizes the importance of material things, it's a little odd that in a country where many people who practice this scripture, there is a massive spike in consumer spending while people are preparing to celebrate its largest holiday. That there...
Why Learn Math?
Jesus must have been a difficult fellow with whom to have a conversation. In the gospels' accounts of Him, He responds to questions with parables about goats and vineyards and bridegrooms. I can only imagine the circuitous answer I might get from Him if He were the concierge at a hotel and I was urgently looking for the bathroom. Blessed is he who wets his pants waiting for the Lord to get to the point....