The last few weeks of reflection have brought something to mind that was a fairly interesting revelation to me. It wasn’t an all-at-once sort of realization, but more of a compilation of many thoughts I’ve had over the last couple of years. This post (series) is an exercise in thinking through it more clearly, and also is a type of confession.
I’m splitting this up into several posts, not as a traffic gimmick or something, but because of time constraints.
It should be known that the God I speak of is the God of the Christian Bible. This is the subject of another post altogether. Perhaps I’ll get there at the end of this. Hang with me.
The first three things that remind me that I’m not God:
1. Hunger
I dislike being hungry. It reminds me that I am a mortal creature that is dependent on the world around me. It reminds me that we have to work very hard to produce food (or produce cash to buy food, or earn cash to buy food). Ultimately it reminds me that it used to not be this way, and that someone else is in charge of my life.
This causes me to try to avoid feeling hungry. Whenever I feel even slightly hungry, reflexively, I eat, to try and re-assert some dominance over my domain. Rarely, if ever, do I allow myself to simply sit with the feeling, and reflect on the fact that I am a dependent creature. This is why I am overweight (not grossly so… 225lbs at 6′2″, but enough that it reminds me of all these things.)
2. Sleep
At certain points during the day, especially in the evening, my productivity drops to nil. I am forced to cease activity, and surrender to an overwhelming urge to sleep. I can stave this off with drugs (caffeine), but not for long, and always with longer term negative consequence. Prolonged periods of wakefulness actually drive human beings insane.
This, like hunger, reminds me that I am a weak, mortal creature. It also reminds me that I serve a God who never slumbers nor sleeps, which is comforting. But ultimately humiliating (which is also a good thing).
3. Lack of Knowledge
I hate not knowing something. Deep down a part of me hates people realizing that I don’t know something. (Yes, this is ridiculous.) Two tendencies result from this.
I try to know a little about everything. Dangerous, and ridiculous.
At times, I will speak about something that I know nothing about as if I knew about it. Also dangerous and ridiculous.
I try to read as much as I can and have a finger on the pulse of “culture” (the world around me, current events, trends, fashions, music, etc…). This is an endless pursuit and can get a little out of hand for me from time to time. The funny thing is, I feel like a bit of a failure when I don’t keep up. The failure? Failure to be God.
This is a reminder that I serve an omniscient God.
Living in a college town, and being a fairly socially active person, I hang out with a relatively large amount of college students (ages 19-24ish…). Recently I’ve realized a fairly significant generation gap.
I was sitting in room with about 20 college students and asked them how many of them read blogs. The general reaction was along the line of “isn’t that cute, the old guy thinks we still read blogs.” Sort of a bemused head shaking. They were well aware of blogs, they just don’t ever read them.
I know that if you expand this group out to about 100 college-aged-people, you get maybe 2 or 3 who are HUGE fans of two or three (or ten) blogs and are avid readers, but the rest don’t bother.
They spend all day on Facebook, almost literally.
Nobody IMs anymore. They text. (er… txt…)
They rarely use e-mail, except for work in which case it’s a necessary evil.
People still watch TV…
…and play a ton of video games.
So, blogs, which are my business, have become mainstream, and have captured the attention of big media, but are losing the attention of the emerging generation. What’s next?
I could resist a post about politics. My apologies. Flame away. This one was just too good.
This last Saturday, SNL ran a hilarious opener skit spoofing Joe Biden who (say what you will about Palin) I believe to be the best material to come along for political humorists since… Dubya himself. The skit was Biden rambling inanely with various prophecies about the future. I’ve been in a bit of a cave the last two weeks but I knew this was too funny to be made up, had to come from somewhere. Here’s the skit.
I decided to look up a few sources about the speech referenced here. Whooooaaaa, whoa whoa. Did anyone read this or listen to it?
Here’s what he said…
“And here’s the point I want to make. Mark my words. Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy.”
Umm…
“Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. And he’s gonna have to make some really tough - I don’t know what the decision’s gonna be, but I promise you it will occur. As a student of history and having served with seven presidents, I guarantee you it’s gonna happen. I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate. And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you, not financially to help him, we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right. Because all these decisions, all these decisions, once they’re made if they work, then they weren’t viewed as a crisis. If they don’t work, it’s viewed as you didn’t make the right decision…”
Uhhh…
“We don’t need anybody denying us, this is gonna be tough. There are gonna be a lot of you who want to go ‘whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don’t know about that decision.’ Because if you think the decision is sound when they’re made, which I believe you will when they’re made, they’re not likely to be as popular as they are sound. Because if they’re popular, they’re probably not sound.”
Wow. (My main thought about that last sentence was that Obama’s current platform is pretty darn popular right now… and McCain’s isn’t.)
Translation:
A major crisis going to happen. A world power is going to test us, and we’re going to respond in a way that…
Now I can go one of two ways with this.
That makes us look an awful lot like republicans.
Make us look like maaaybe WE might be the bad guy after all.
Either way, the real change we are going to see with Obama in office is not one of sudden peace, prosperity and hand-holding happiness.
Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said… The real change you will see with Obama is his stance on how to deal with foreign issues. When he really realizes that politics is, in fact, the art of the possible, as he so often says. And Eden, Utopia, Camelot, Shangri-la, call it what you will, is IMpossible in this world.
Will McCain do much better? Doubtful. My hope with McCain is actually that not much changes. History shows that the less the government interferes, the better. The sweeping changes we need in Washington are not simply an administrative change. We need to close down many many many departments, programs, bureaus. End many government jobs. Free up people’s money to invest in the market. Give people with a lot of money the freedom and ability to pump it into the economy (rather than stealing it from them to give to various programs to “help” the… less… able… to… buy stuff… you know, like, cell phones… (did you know you can get cell phones with Wellfare??))
Rogie Kingtweeted this awesome resource earlier today. I am a huge Coda fan. HTML/CSS/JavaScript/PHP IDE, Terminal, FTP, Site Management, and resources in one great package. One of the cooler features is it’s one-click code clips. I’ve always wanted more, but never bother to create them.
Enter Coda Clips. Find and install (with a click!) a bunch of really handy code clips! should make development pretty speedy.
