Sunday, February 13, 2011
Egypt
MSNBC, newspapers and other news sources are headlining the Egyptian shouts of We are free! We know that the crowds in the square believe this, but how does the rest of the population feel? Many are more worried today than they have been in decades. Just how free are the people? At one moment they were fairly free from outside influences, sources that would turn them into an Islamic state and then turn their aim towards Israel. That freedom is considerably lessened. There was some freedom for other faiths to worship but that may erode quickly. They were free to struggle along with the rest of the world during this economic upheaval but they may eventually wish they could turn back the hands of the clock and their young men may wind up dying on battlefields. Freedom comes at a price and the crowds demanded freedom right then without even looking at the price tag. As for our involvement, we abandoned yet another ally and endangered a second and what did we get for it... favorable headlines, the holy grail of the political animal. The Muslim Brotherhood will play Egypt like they played our White House and are now in a better position to win, for they are patient and brutal. The Russian Revolution of February, 1917 had similarities to today's Egypt. Wages were down and food prices were rising. Mass demonstrations erupted. The Tsar, Nicholas II, abdicated in March. The provisional government was moderate in many ways but Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia in April and the minority Bolsheviks rallied. The Bolshevik Revolution would follow. The headlines of the New York Times on November 9, 1917 were Revolutionists seize Petrograd; Kerensky flees. A pledge was given by the Bolsheviks to seek an immediate democratic peace with Germany in the then current world war. The Bolsheviks were unpopular and as the New York Times reported from those fleeing Russia, they were "not 1%, of the total population in Moscow, and all Russia outside of Petrograd, would stand together (against the Bolsheviks.)" Another quote from the same paper described the fleeing provisional leader this way "the excellence of Kerensky's motives and ideals is recognized, but he is too gentle a man...it has been shown that the policy of mildness with the Bolsheviks does not pay." In my blog of March 3, 2009 I related how I happened to be in Paraguay one week after a revolution occurred there and that the following year (1989) was one of one revolution and reform movement after another, some for good and some not. I wrote that "people's emotions spread like the wave at a sports stadium." The blog was a critique of the Obama's administration and its refusal to consider consequences or look beyond political implications. There is euphoria in our media today... and Lady Gaga showed up at the Grammy's in an egg, presumably to hatch before the show.....life is good. Biblical end-times prophesy took off like a rocket in the early 70s with Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth and continued into this century with Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series. Events in Israel were so astounding, particularly the capture of Jerusalem in 1967, that this was bound to happen, and the church became inundated with date-setters and detailed military logistics of what was just ahead. Much of the church reacted to this by treating biblical prophesy as leprous but I suspect that today, many see what is happening around the world, in the push for a one-world government needing only a crisis for fulfillment, the proliferation of nuclear weapons to volatile states run by madmen, in the new paradigm of truths being relative and in ominous power of the Internet on the passions of man, not to mention what science reveals to us about our changing earth and of cosmic influences, and find themselves meditating deeply, more and more, upon biblical prophesy and at least wonder ...what if. Maybe this is the way that it should be. That Jesus would be at the very doorstep of His return, and believers would be oblivious to what was ahead is untenable from what the Bible says. That we would have an advance itinerary and a time frame is also untenable. An extreme soberness is what is called for today, in fact at all times, for we know not what a day will bring. Martin Luther said that he would plant a tree if he knew for certain that Jesus was returning the next day. My tree is a hope that God would commission His Holy Spirit to move across the American landscape one more time, for no ideology, no scientific evidence to refute His existence, no madman or postmodern paradigm of intellectual chaos can, should God will to constrain it, deny a people returning to Him. Last days prophesy is not leprous, in fact it is a blessing as Revelation 1:3 states "Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophesy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near." but it is toxic if abused. If not abused it is a shining ray of glory into God's majesty, a source of strength, and it overflows with hope, for God truly is in control! There is not a day that passes where newspapers do not relate the pain and suffering undergone by people all over this world, and these stories pain those readers who also know that all suffering will end only after Christ returns in judgement to a violent world. His Second Coming should be our hope along with confidence that it will be, sooner or later, in His perfect timing. True freedom comes when one has been ripped, not out of the clutches of a dictator, but of Satan's, and but for the embattled Christian in Egypt who may be looking for Christ's coming more than we do, there may be more freedom as the world sees it, but far less security.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
The Mouse That Roared
Disturbing portrait of the future is one of the blurb descriptions on the back cover of Sherry Turkle's new book Alone Together, Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Turkle is an M.I.T. professor and a licensed clinical psychologist. Her latest book is, in effect, the third of a trilogy and she has researched this subject for twenty years. She writes that we are living parallel lives in a virtual world and that her research shows that too many people find their online life more satisfying than their actual lives and this might be leading to fully networked lives.
She explores two avenues in the book. The first being personal robotics and the second social networking. Kevin Kelly, in his book What Technology Wants, recently reviewed here, alluded to technology as being a living organism in itself. Turkle adds the descriptive seductive. We are fearful of intimacy, she writes, in a way that keeps us just far enough away from others to keep us comfortable.
My interest in this book is in the social networking aspect of it. My concern is that a nation, America, about to collapse from ignorance within and enemies without, increases the former and motivates the latter through its inane fascination with Facebook and its equally narcissism inducing cousins. Turkle feels that it is necessary to begin with personal robotics. As did Kelly, Turkle reveres Charles Darwin but its probably better that such a book as this comes from a member of Higher Education and Psychology, for Christian books have been giving this caveat on the computer age for decades but their message seldom reaches any further than the customers of a Christian book store or the listeners to Christian radio.
As I read Turkle's comments on her trip to the Galapagos, I smiled and glanced over at my CD player where the soundtrack from Master And Commander, a movie where the Galapagos played no small part, was playing. Half of this book was read in the lobby of a Hilton Hotel as my wife was busy with her own volunteer work for our society while I tag along every January to read. Why is it that urban areas are so...liberal? After four hours of turnpike driving without seeing an Obama bumper sticker, I only had to walk past three cars in the parking garage to see one, and there were two more before I got to the elevators. I sat and watched with fascination, both the lobby dwellers and the street race walkers with phones constantly positioned by the ear. The further one gets from the hustle...and the hustle-bustle of the city, and the closer one gets to the land of Bonanza Steakhouses and Harley Davidson dealerships, the more neurons cease to oscillate in abnormal patterns. People walk faster in the city, smile less, do not make eye contact as often, pat their back pocket for a wallet or look to see that their purse is closed every few minutes and generally try to stay as far away from others as possible. Their magazines tend to be on health, fitness, sport cars, money and astrology whereas the closer one lives to the cornfields, the magazines tend to be on woodworking, sports, quilting, the auto-trader and fraternal veterans organizations. Women's glasses in the city tend to be large and round, magnifying the iris while on state route whatever they.... well just look at a picture of Sarah Palin and you'll see them. City dwellers tend to look out of their work windows and down upon the race walkers on the streets below while in suburbia they look out of their windows up to birds flying in the sky. But enough of my own observations. Have our smart phones become a phantom limb, as the book states, when we don't have them in our possession? I know that mine was and that is part of the reason for the self-imposed six-week moratorium I subjected myself to a few months ago.
Sherry Turkle's research on robots begins with those toys that Americans bought their children beginning in the 90s. Names such as Tamagotchi and Furbie were still in the recesses of my memory. She moves on to robotic dogs for companionship, robotic babies for teaching, and even robotic adults that can serve mankind in everything from babysitting, to care for the elderly, to therapeutics for everyone. "People disappoint, robots do not," she writes. Her research involved children, adolescents and adults while her personal interviews brought her into contact with 250 individuals who opened up to her on their computer usage. One man wants to know why he cannot marry his "female" robot and Turkle supplies a little bit more information than we need on just how these robots can serve.
Turkle is right in that the future is unfolding before us. We have lost the ability to look ahead and to see consequences. She fears for the children who are being weaned on technologies that confuse the virtual with the real. She uses the phrase fully tethered life, and writes that we are too often shattered when unplugged. She sees social networking as our future and I sincerely hope that she is wrong on this. Much of her focus was on Facebook where her first concern is whether our profiles are really who we are or who we want to project ourselves to be. "We can always be elsewhere" through social networking, and "we tend to the net and the net teaches us to need it" she writes. Do we really collect friends or do we simply access others, and only the parts of them we find fulfilling, comforting or amusing.
The author paints a panorama of today's networking and begins with the Internet game Second Life, if you can call it a game. In Second Life one creates one's own avatar and lives a virtual life through it. You don't like the house you live in now? Create your dream home and live there in cyberspace! Work in the profession that you have always wanted to and the best news of all is that there is most likely a female avatar out their looking for a little romance! One problem here is that one is never really sure the gender of the one who they are romancing. Turkle provides case study after case study in many areas of virtual life in cyberspace.
One story that I found very interesting was that of two young women, Robin and Joanne, who had a wonderful friendship in college. Joanne finished her schooling in anthropology and went off to Thailand. She wrote long, detailed emails to Robin every two weeks on her experiences. Robin treasured them and would read and reread them for they were "elegant, detailed, poetic." Joanne returns home only to leave for Thailand again a few years later only this time she puts her experiences online for everyone to see for it is more "efficient." This devastated Robin for this close friendship was now to be shared with anyone who had access to Robin's Facebook page. I have felt this before upon receiving Christmas newsletters. You are happy to hear from a friend but at the same time, removed from being part of a close friendship.Turkle laments that the young view the telephone call as something that does not have to be answered, but the text does; and to one young person, at least, teaching her parents how to text was a big mistake. Turkle writes that people can be "processed" easily on the net. Texting is fast but a voice can only slow you down, and it is harder to live up to your profile in a telephone conversation.
Her warnings though are too mild for she gives far too much credit to the good things social networking can provide. This same distorted tolerance is on display in the media's reporting on the Facebook revolution in Egypt. There may be wars ahead with hundreds of thousands if not millions dead but...democracy must be embraced, and right now! Democracy is a worthy pursuit, a pursuit I have lauded many times. Freedom and liberty are essentials for a healthy society and I have filled these pages with this thought but it is hard to take it serious from those pressuring Egypt to lay bare their defenses against the radical fundamentalist in the name of democracy when they found it hard to rejoice in the Iraqi elections or in the Tea Parties for that matter. Coincidentally, The Drudge Report has, as I write, a report titled Generation Net: The youngsters who prefer their virtual lives to the real world. Sherry Turkle's book is not even mentioned here but the results were the same. "Children are happier online" and "they can be exactly who they want to be." The phrase "divorced from reality" is used.
This nation is running, not to the sound of the trumpet that calls us, but to the roar of the mouse. Whereas it was once said that the pen is mightier than the sword, it may soon be replaced with the logarithm is mightier than the pen.
She explores two avenues in the book. The first being personal robotics and the second social networking. Kevin Kelly, in his book What Technology Wants, recently reviewed here, alluded to technology as being a living organism in itself. Turkle adds the descriptive seductive. We are fearful of intimacy, she writes, in a way that keeps us just far enough away from others to keep us comfortable.
My interest in this book is in the social networking aspect of it. My concern is that a nation, America, about to collapse from ignorance within and enemies without, increases the former and motivates the latter through its inane fascination with Facebook and its equally narcissism inducing cousins. Turkle feels that it is necessary to begin with personal robotics. As did Kelly, Turkle reveres Charles Darwin but its probably better that such a book as this comes from a member of Higher Education and Psychology, for Christian books have been giving this caveat on the computer age for decades but their message seldom reaches any further than the customers of a Christian book store or the listeners to Christian radio.
As I read Turkle's comments on her trip to the Galapagos, I smiled and glanced over at my CD player where the soundtrack from Master And Commander, a movie where the Galapagos played no small part, was playing. Half of this book was read in the lobby of a Hilton Hotel as my wife was busy with her own volunteer work for our society while I tag along every January to read. Why is it that urban areas are so...liberal? After four hours of turnpike driving without seeing an Obama bumper sticker, I only had to walk past three cars in the parking garage to see one, and there were two more before I got to the elevators. I sat and watched with fascination, both the lobby dwellers and the street race walkers with phones constantly positioned by the ear. The further one gets from the hustle...and the hustle-bustle of the city, and the closer one gets to the land of Bonanza Steakhouses and Harley Davidson dealerships, the more neurons cease to oscillate in abnormal patterns. People walk faster in the city, smile less, do not make eye contact as often, pat their back pocket for a wallet or look to see that their purse is closed every few minutes and generally try to stay as far away from others as possible. Their magazines tend to be on health, fitness, sport cars, money and astrology whereas the closer one lives to the cornfields, the magazines tend to be on woodworking, sports, quilting, the auto-trader and fraternal veterans organizations. Women's glasses in the city tend to be large and round, magnifying the iris while on state route whatever they.... well just look at a picture of Sarah Palin and you'll see them. City dwellers tend to look out of their work windows and down upon the race walkers on the streets below while in suburbia they look out of their windows up to birds flying in the sky. But enough of my own observations. Have our smart phones become a phantom limb, as the book states, when we don't have them in our possession? I know that mine was and that is part of the reason for the self-imposed six-week moratorium I subjected myself to a few months ago.
Sherry Turkle's research on robots begins with those toys that Americans bought their children beginning in the 90s. Names such as Tamagotchi and Furbie were still in the recesses of my memory. She moves on to robotic dogs for companionship, robotic babies for teaching, and even robotic adults that can serve mankind in everything from babysitting, to care for the elderly, to therapeutics for everyone. "People disappoint, robots do not," she writes. Her research involved children, adolescents and adults while her personal interviews brought her into contact with 250 individuals who opened up to her on their computer usage. One man wants to know why he cannot marry his "female" robot and Turkle supplies a little bit more information than we need on just how these robots can serve.
Turkle is right in that the future is unfolding before us. We have lost the ability to look ahead and to see consequences. She fears for the children who are being weaned on technologies that confuse the virtual with the real. She uses the phrase fully tethered life, and writes that we are too often shattered when unplugged. She sees social networking as our future and I sincerely hope that she is wrong on this. Much of her focus was on Facebook where her first concern is whether our profiles are really who we are or who we want to project ourselves to be. "We can always be elsewhere" through social networking, and "we tend to the net and the net teaches us to need it" she writes. Do we really collect friends or do we simply access others, and only the parts of them we find fulfilling, comforting or amusing.
The author paints a panorama of today's networking and begins with the Internet game Second Life, if you can call it a game. In Second Life one creates one's own avatar and lives a virtual life through it. You don't like the house you live in now? Create your dream home and live there in cyberspace! Work in the profession that you have always wanted to and the best news of all is that there is most likely a female avatar out their looking for a little romance! One problem here is that one is never really sure the gender of the one who they are romancing. Turkle provides case study after case study in many areas of virtual life in cyberspace.
One story that I found very interesting was that of two young women, Robin and Joanne, who had a wonderful friendship in college. Joanne finished her schooling in anthropology and went off to Thailand. She wrote long, detailed emails to Robin every two weeks on her experiences. Robin treasured them and would read and reread them for they were "elegant, detailed, poetic." Joanne returns home only to leave for Thailand again a few years later only this time she puts her experiences online for everyone to see for it is more "efficient." This devastated Robin for this close friendship was now to be shared with anyone who had access to Robin's Facebook page. I have felt this before upon receiving Christmas newsletters. You are happy to hear from a friend but at the same time, removed from being part of a close friendship.Turkle laments that the young view the telephone call as something that does not have to be answered, but the text does; and to one young person, at least, teaching her parents how to text was a big mistake. Turkle writes that people can be "processed" easily on the net. Texting is fast but a voice can only slow you down, and it is harder to live up to your profile in a telephone conversation.
Her warnings though are too mild for she gives far too much credit to the good things social networking can provide. This same distorted tolerance is on display in the media's reporting on the Facebook revolution in Egypt. There may be wars ahead with hundreds of thousands if not millions dead but...democracy must be embraced, and right now! Democracy is a worthy pursuit, a pursuit I have lauded many times. Freedom and liberty are essentials for a healthy society and I have filled these pages with this thought but it is hard to take it serious from those pressuring Egypt to lay bare their defenses against the radical fundamentalist in the name of democracy when they found it hard to rejoice in the Iraqi elections or in the Tea Parties for that matter. Coincidentally, The Drudge Report has, as I write, a report titled Generation Net: The youngsters who prefer their virtual lives to the real world. Sherry Turkle's book is not even mentioned here but the results were the same. "Children are happier online" and "they can be exactly who they want to be." The phrase "divorced from reality" is used.
This nation is running, not to the sound of the trumpet that calls us, but to the roar of the mouse. Whereas it was once said that the pen is mightier than the sword, it may soon be replaced with the logarithm is mightier than the pen.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Bleak House...or...McRevolution
This world, and its people, are very seldom passive for very long. The dynamic of human beings, living in various nations, ruled by one form of government or another, struggling to feed their families, dealing with famines and other natural disasters, not to mention wars, makes the status quo something that usually lasts only a few decades. This past century alone saw two world wars and various and sundry other wars around the globe. Now that we are in the Information Age people will not be content to plow the farm and raise children. We have seen Communism collapse and lay dormant for two decades and we are in the midst of the effort for a new paradigm for a new America. The formation of a New World Order may yet see its day. I wrote the following blog in December of 2008. In it I noted, very unscientifically, that much of the world, in modern times anyway, seems to move in cycles of approximately 49 years. I'm listening to the 50s on XM right now and as much as I enjoy the music of that period, it was a different world from what began at the beginning of the 60s. We seem to be entering another period right now. The differences? Well, for one we do not value thinking anymore. We simply process information. Quality of thought has been displaced by quantity of files to be accessed when needed. Using logic is like a slow computer, discarded for a Droid. America, previous to today, could be defined by liberty and individual freedoms, the Protestant work ethic and a pull yourself up by the bootstraps mentality. Penny candy or a drive-in movie made us smile. Today our egos are obese. We demand to be served. Every material possession is an individual right bestowed on us by Madison Avenue. We offer up our country, our heritage and our future for a mess of pottage given to us by a mainstream media who are the least informed and discerning among us. It is a bleak house we build and only God can intervene to save us from ourselves.
December, 2008
I'm a "boomer," so you may have to try to see through my eyes on this. 1960 does not seem that far away to me. John Kennedy seemed to usher in a new "present age." We can talk about him today and it is not ancient history. Hollywood seemed to change in that year. One particular movie that sticks in my mind is "Strangers When We Meet" with Kirk Douglas and Kim Novak. It dealt with suburbanites and marital infidelity. I haven't seen this movie, I'm sure, in 40 or more years but one scene still lingers in my mind. Kirk Douglas was washing his car in his driveway and a neighbor, (Walter Mathau I believe) gave him a critical look because it was a Sunday. The house was of a modern architecture that developed around the time and we still think of this type of house as an embryo of today's modern housing. Mr. Douglas drove around in what might have been a 1960 Thunderbird. Elvis changed dramatically after coming out of the army. Interestingly, the previous 48 years seems to me to have been unified in a similar way. The Titanic sunk in 1912 and world wars followed, a depression was experienced. It ended with the development of atomic bombs and a "cold war." Another 48 years backwards and the Civil War was ending. The goals and methods of the universities were changing. Ministers were not sought after to head institutions of higher learning. Curriculum's were changing. Another 48 years and the Napoleonic Age was coming to an end. I can go on but I'm not trying to present a firm theory. I'm sure that there are many holes in my examples here. What I'm concerned with is that we do seem to be coming to the end of what we grew up with. Something new seems to be coming and it is not good. Then again, maybe (even probably) everyone at the end of these ages said the same thing. This financial crisis appears to be far worse than most government leaders describe it to be. A struggle for total globalization is on right now. I don't mean, simply free markets that open up trade all over the world, but a whole new financial creation where everyone must acknowledge that we are all chained to one another. As I mentioned in a previous blog, it's hard to argue with the logic of those that believe that a "One World Government" is the only remedy, for we now have the threat of small nations, even small groups, using nuclear or biological weapons. There are two perspectives of looking at this coming "change" that I see; one discouraging and the other with a perpetual hope. Of the former, we cannot cling to a particular period, for history lays this fact out before us that times change. Of the latter, the mindset of the Christian is no different from Christians in any of the ages before us. We still have to deal with our fallen nature and sin, and with a world that will, at times, let us proclaim that only the imputed (not infused) righteousness of Jesus Christ can cover our sin but at other times will not let us speak. Alan Greenspan has been a believer in the "Objectivism" of Ayn Rand where man's happiness and productiveness, through reason, should be his goal. Greenspan, commenting on the catastrophic sequence of events in the financial crisis said "Everyone has (an ideology)... to exist, you need an ideology. The question is whether it is accurate or not." with astonishing insight he continued "Yes, I found a flaw (presumably in his own ideology)....I've been very distressed by that fact." What he hit on that he does not realize is that humanity is fallen and that philosophies that rely "solely" on the logic and reason of man, who is presumed to be fundamentally good, are doomed to disaster.
Such is part of the problem we are facing in Egypt today. We are not dealing simply with a desire for democracy. There is a famine, so to speak, and any ideology that promises food and buying power will be embraced. Add to that an ideology of hate and brute force, and we do not have a recipe for freedom, but for disaster. This is also part of the change that is in the works. One big commercial for anything the techno-savvy can fashion can reach even the smallest hamlet. McRevolution rules.
December, 2008
I'm a "boomer," so you may have to try to see through my eyes on this. 1960 does not seem that far away to me. John Kennedy seemed to usher in a new "present age." We can talk about him today and it is not ancient history. Hollywood seemed to change in that year. One particular movie that sticks in my mind is "Strangers When We Meet" with Kirk Douglas and Kim Novak. It dealt with suburbanites and marital infidelity. I haven't seen this movie, I'm sure, in 40 or more years but one scene still lingers in my mind. Kirk Douglas was washing his car in his driveway and a neighbor, (Walter Mathau I believe) gave him a critical look because it was a Sunday. The house was of a modern architecture that developed around the time and we still think of this type of house as an embryo of today's modern housing. Mr. Douglas drove around in what might have been a 1960 Thunderbird. Elvis changed dramatically after coming out of the army. Interestingly, the previous 48 years seems to me to have been unified in a similar way. The Titanic sunk in 1912 and world wars followed, a depression was experienced. It ended with the development of atomic bombs and a "cold war." Another 48 years backwards and the Civil War was ending. The goals and methods of the universities were changing. Ministers were not sought after to head institutions of higher learning. Curriculum's were changing. Another 48 years and the Napoleonic Age was coming to an end. I can go on but I'm not trying to present a firm theory. I'm sure that there are many holes in my examples here. What I'm concerned with is that we do seem to be coming to the end of what we grew up with. Something new seems to be coming and it is not good. Then again, maybe (even probably) everyone at the end of these ages said the same thing. This financial crisis appears to be far worse than most government leaders describe it to be. A struggle for total globalization is on right now. I don't mean, simply free markets that open up trade all over the world, but a whole new financial creation where everyone must acknowledge that we are all chained to one another. As I mentioned in a previous blog, it's hard to argue with the logic of those that believe that a "One World Government" is the only remedy, for we now have the threat of small nations, even small groups, using nuclear or biological weapons. There are two perspectives of looking at this coming "change" that I see; one discouraging and the other with a perpetual hope. Of the former, we cannot cling to a particular period, for history lays this fact out before us that times change. Of the latter, the mindset of the Christian is no different from Christians in any of the ages before us. We still have to deal with our fallen nature and sin, and with a world that will, at times, let us proclaim that only the imputed (not infused) righteousness of Jesus Christ can cover our sin but at other times will not let us speak. Alan Greenspan has been a believer in the "Objectivism" of Ayn Rand where man's happiness and productiveness, through reason, should be his goal. Greenspan, commenting on the catastrophic sequence of events in the financial crisis said "Everyone has (an ideology)... to exist, you need an ideology. The question is whether it is accurate or not." with astonishing insight he continued "Yes, I found a flaw (presumably in his own ideology)....I've been very distressed by that fact." What he hit on that he does not realize is that humanity is fallen and that philosophies that rely "solely" on the logic and reason of man, who is presumed to be fundamentally good, are doomed to disaster.
Such is part of the problem we are facing in Egypt today. We are not dealing simply with a desire for democracy. There is a famine, so to speak, and any ideology that promises food and buying power will be embraced. Add to that an ideology of hate and brute force, and we do not have a recipe for freedom, but for disaster. This is also part of the change that is in the works. One big commercial for anything the techno-savvy can fashion can reach even the smallest hamlet. McRevolution rules.
Labels:
McRevolution
Saturday, January 29, 2011
DaysOfRage.com
Anwar Sadat was presented, posthumously, the Presidential Medal Of Freedom by President Reagan in 1984. Three former United States Presidents, Ford, Carter and Nixon, attended his funeral after he was assassinated in 1981 by those who hated the peace that he helped bring between Egypt and Israel. Hosni Mubarak was wounded in that murder and has ruled Egypt since then serving as a buffer between Israel and those who want to eliminate it as a state. He has survived a half a dozen plots against his life. If he survives the present turmoil in Egypt he will need to make concessions to democracy while at the same time trying to hold off attempts by radical Fundamentalists to take power through democratic means that they hate to begin with and will dismantle if they take power. If Mubarak does not survive in his position, Egypt as purveyor and beneficiary of peace in the Middle East will end, if not immediately, in the near future. I have mentioned before that Novembers 4th, 1979 was a day that I will never forget for my father died that day, later interred at Arlington National Cemetery through benefits given because of injuries sustained in World War Two. We never talked politics though I was enmeshed with it and we never talked religion either. The first a mere regret and the second an evidence of my own life at the time and something I will have to live with. I'm over a year an a half older than he lived to be. Two other things happened on that day. Ted Kennedy's run for President essentially ended in his disastrous interview with television anchor Roger Mudd. Also, Iranian students took 52 American hostages and would keep them for 444 days. Anwar Sadat honored the Shah of Iran, whom he considered a friend, with burial in Egypt. The Shah experienced his own days of rage beginning in mid-1978. He also named new ministers in an attempt to satisfy the various groups demanding his ouster. Within weeks of leaving his country, the Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran. He was supposed to be a religious leader but things did not turn out this way. Iran would eventually become what it is today, an instigator of havoc throughout the region and potential catalyst of world war. Mubarak was no Sadat, nor was Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, but all three wanted peace in the region and were opposed by Fundamentalists who have an agenda that has nothing to do with democracy, human rights, peace or even fairness. Once again, in Egypt this time, Social Networking brought people into the streets, a medium that requires no contemplation and offers no long-term strategies. America experienced its own network uprising in 2008. It excited a large portion of the voting public and moved opinion like a rowdy moved cows on a cattle drive...Head 'em up...move 'em out! It worked, only the hope and change turned out to be something else. Would Martin Luther King take advantage of networking if he had it available to him? I don't know. I doubt it though for he didn't need it. People were determined to show up for demonstration after demonstration, march after march, to seek equality for all, and were looking towards legislation not riots. John Brown though, would have been texting from that armory in Harper's Ferry. How quickly things can change. Few envisioned only a week ago that Hosni Mubarak's family would be seeking safety today in England. The message for we Americans is primarily this, Super Bowls come and go every year and life goes on. Major snowstorms give only a few days of warning but give enough time prepare. We are currently sailing in a sea of warnings about our nation's future and it is past time to heed the warnings, prepare and seek safe harbor if necessary.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Giants
Do you become frustrated on occasions where you feel that there is nothing that you can do as our nation and our society heads, full steam, into the abyss, all the while knowing full well that our children, if things do not change, will not have the freedoms and liberties that we have had, may not live in an America that is able to defend itself against enemies and may be forced to worship at the altar of the state? Do you feel that there is little that you can do to help, apart from your vote? If so, I suspect that you are in a very large club and I submit to you that there is something that you can do, something that has great potential for changing the course our nation is on! You won't be impressed when I tell you what it is for at first glance it appears to be an insignificant goal but I submit to you that if it were to even come close to becoming law it would set in motion a holy crusade against it by those who would see in it the potential of chains falling off their prisoners, of control being lost over the rabble and of a sleeping Giant Despair being awakened. With all the technological advances that we have to contend with, television remains our chief source of news and our primary entertainment, and its usage is increasing. Every foreign enemy of America that exists at this time views the American malaise as its ally. With our entertainment driven life and subsequent inability and downright disinterest in sorting through the issues of the day beyond a nod of the head to two or three sentences from Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer or Brian Williams, we are proving ourselves to be a feeble, irresolute people, easily manageable as long as our interests are subservient to our libido instead of defending our liberty. Television is at the forefront of a host of entertainments that are more value to our enemies than, as Winston Churchill might say, a hundred divisions of soldiers. The next time that you turn television on, please analyze what you are seeing. Consider the research that must have been done by those amassing fortunes in how best to hold viewers to their ignoble fascinations, drain their minds and nullify any concerns they might have for their own safety and the security of their nation, all the while knowing that if the envelope of newer and more deplorable programming is not continually pushed, the trance might be broken. Consider also the human mind and try to envision the person whose highlight of the day is a Modern Family, then weigh the enormous problems besetting our nation. Consider the effect of the occult, the violence, the banality, the American Idol mentality and the "mature content" from their "babysitters" most recently Glee and Skins on our children. Consider God's warning on where we should not lead our children. Finally, consider that your cable channels are "bundled." You, if you subscribe at present, are forced to support these barbarians within our gates. There is an answer! You can be part of it. If we are given choice in what programming our money will go to, it will be the beginning of the end of the mogul's hold on the collective American mind. There are multitudes in America who value God, family and country but are more often than not confounded as in what to do. Given this choice they will make the right one and in short order it will become noticeable that Americans are waking up to the realities before us and we will see improvement in all of our choices from politics to our entertainments, to what we purchase, to what we save, to what we invest (both money and time) in, to the questions that we ask and the answers we give to questions asked of us.. The audience that chooses to stay in bondage will shrink. If only a few indomitable of spirit in Congress take hold of this concept of a la carte cable, a firestorm will arise from opponents of choice in television! This in itself will expose how important this is to those who will see their hold on the American public beginning to give way. So you indeed can do something, for every voice will be heard in these initial stages of this effort. This is a snowball sitting atop a mountain that if given a push will turn into an avalanche. There was an article in yesterday's The Guardian newspaper from Britain titled Social Networking under fresh attack as tide of cyber-skepticism sweeps US. It mentions six books in America that are giving a warning that cyber-space has the potential to rule our lives, three of these books have been reviewed in this blog and a fourth, Sherry Turkle's Alone Together I'm starting to read right now. I've written quite a few times on my extreme concern about Facebook. Aside from the grand waste of time and feeding frenzy of narcissism, the company is growing in more ways than just users. Most recently Goldman Sachs was in the position to offer investment opportunities up to $1.5 billion and, at the last minute, decided to offer this only to non-US investors. My concern is that once addictedd to Facebook in so many areas of our lives, that this company can then, in effect, guide us in where to get our information. This latest turn to foreign investment brings us closer to the world of un-American philosophies and Russia has more than taken advantage of these investment opportunities. At present, Mark Zuckerberg and his associates call the shots in his company but a day may be near where he has to cede decision making to the major investors. Cyber-space and cable television are a one-two punch to the American way of life, the American Creed, to freedom and liberty itself. Social Networking is a monster and bundled cable television is a dungeon and its keeper "Giant Malaise" feeds us its potions of entertainment, violence, mayhem and wonder-lust every morning, afternoon and evening. As John Bunyan's "Giant Despair" saw its demise in his marvelous book Pilgrim's Progress, so can we rend this new giant impotent by severing the lock it has on us through cable television! My first blog, in November of 2008, was on this topic of a la carte cable and a number of blogs since then. If but one candidate for President in 2012 has the prescience to see that this issue has great potential to stir a public already boiling over an insurmountable debt, then a major obstacle, albeit just one, of regaining our discernment can be hurdled.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Ringelmann Effect?
George Will is a nationally syndicated columnist and one of the more respected commentators in our society today. I don't always agree with him but he has been on a roll of late. It's not that he is leading the way in warning us that our constitutional government is in jeopardy, for the message has been out there for some time but he is one who contemplates patiently before joining a fray. I refer you to his latest article that can be accessed at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/.
If I could summarize just a few points here: Will begins by taking us back to the Founding Fathers intent on three issues, the rule of law, the relevance of the Constitution and American Exceptionalism. He gives two reasons for the necessity of action, the first being that we have elevated the office of the Presidency above what it was meant to be and I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. The second is that government regulation is growing at an alarming rate and that that very regulation is "an apparatus responsive to Presidents." The cause of this he assigns to Congress with words from The Bard, The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.
According to the author the Congress has permitted this to happen in assigning its responsibilities to others. He quotes James Madison from Federalist 45 in "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined." Will rightly describes the concept of American Exceptionalism as "obnoxious to progressives (liberals.)" thinking it a "crude stain of patriotism." This is part of the problem today in that many proclaim that they love America and that they are patriots but their actions belie their proclamations.
Will writes that the result of a "long pedigree" and "rich scholarship" was our "exceptional Constitution," which says not what the government must do for Americans but what it cannot do to them." He hit the nail square on the head when he summarized with "Two years into Barack Obama's presidency, we know what he meant about hope and change -he and other progressives (liberals) hope to change our national character."
This conclusion has been at the forefront of my thoughts since the junior Senator from Illinois and acolyte of various and nefarious world changers such as Saul Alinsky and George Soros came into prominence with their writings and their money in that he (Barack Obama) wants to change America, from being America...to something else. This is a far cry from merely changing the results of our common hopes and goals. This was done with deception, knowing that Americans would consider a change in course for the Ship of State but never lower the Stars and Stripes to raise another flag. Even exceptional articles such as George Will's latest will not ruffle the feathers of those who have assumed their new posts of power for they know very well that more is involved here than merely presenting information to have it scrutinized by the public, for that public is so enmeshed in pastimes and entertainments that it does not have the ability to think through issues anymore.
As Evgeny Morosov puts forth in his new book The Net Delusion, The Dark Side Of Internet Freedom, people will utilize the trivial entertainments of the Internet before they consider the political ideas that come from it and that this plays into the hand of tyranny more than freedom loving activists. Morozov also refers to what has become known as the Ringelmann Effect in that a French agricultural engineer conducted a experiment in 1882 where he was able to determine how much effort an individual put into a designed task of pulling with all his might on a rope. He was then able to have a group pull on that same rope and divide the tension by the number of people. What he found out was that people expended less energy when pulling within the group. The individuals had slacked off when not on their own. This is where we are at today. We depend on talk radio or a Tea Party, or in this case Congress. We live in a malaise as a fish lives in water. We take pride in being part of a group but if that group should collapse is there any substance in us to continue?
Similar to what George Will wrote, we have let ourselves down. We've done that by not relying fully on God as our strength. He was pushed aside one step at a time and we considered it the better part of valor to let it happen. America has no future recognizable to any of its past if we do not, individually, humble ourselves before Him. Our Constituion cannot help us if we look to it as a god in place of a gift of order given by God. As we pull on this rope in a tug-a-war we need dependence on Him who will not slack off. I have reprinted in my blogs a number of prayers from the book Vally Of Vision edited by Arthur Bennett and available at any bookseller (isbn 9780851512280) and I'll offer another here. If and when you see through the mist that our beloved nation is in dire straits, prayers constructed such as this one can, should God will it, guide us even through the thickest fog:
O Thou Giving God,
My heart is drawn out in thankfulness to thee,
for thy amazing grace and condescension to me
in influences and assistances of thy Spirit,
for special help in prayer,
for the sweetness of Christian service,
for the thoughts of arriving in heaven,
for always sending me needful supplies,
for raising me to new life when
I am like one dead.
I want not the favour of man to lean upon
for thy favour is infinitely better.
Thou art eternal wisdom in dispensations
towards me;
and it matters not when, nor where, nor how
I serve thee,
nor what trials I am exercised with,
if I might but be prepared for thy work and will.
No poor creature stands in need of divine grace
more than I do,
And yet none abuses it more than I have done,
and still do.
How heartless and dull I am!
Humble me in the dust for not loving thee more.
Every time I exercise any grace renewedly
I am renewedly indebted to thee,
the God of all grace, for special assistance.
I cannot boast when I think how dependent
I am upon thee for the being and every act of grace;
I never do anything else but depart from thee,
and if I ever get to heaven it will be because
thou willest it, and for no reason beside.
I love, as a feeble, afflicted, despised creature,
to cast myself on thy infinite grace and goodness,
hoping for no happiness but from thee;
Give me special grace to fit me for special services,
and keep me calm and resigned at all times,
humble, solemn, mortified,
and conformed to thy will.
If I could summarize just a few points here: Will begins by taking us back to the Founding Fathers intent on three issues, the rule of law, the relevance of the Constitution and American Exceptionalism. He gives two reasons for the necessity of action, the first being that we have elevated the office of the Presidency above what it was meant to be and I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. The second is that government regulation is growing at an alarming rate and that that very regulation is "an apparatus responsive to Presidents." The cause of this he assigns to Congress with words from The Bard, The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.
According to the author the Congress has permitted this to happen in assigning its responsibilities to others. He quotes James Madison from Federalist 45 in "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined." Will rightly describes the concept of American Exceptionalism as "obnoxious to progressives (liberals.)" thinking it a "crude stain of patriotism." This is part of the problem today in that many proclaim that they love America and that they are patriots but their actions belie their proclamations.
Will writes that the result of a "long pedigree" and "rich scholarship" was our "exceptional Constitution," which says not what the government must do for Americans but what it cannot do to them." He hit the nail square on the head when he summarized with "Two years into Barack Obama's presidency, we know what he meant about hope and change -he and other progressives (liberals) hope to change our national character."
This conclusion has been at the forefront of my thoughts since the junior Senator from Illinois and acolyte of various and nefarious world changers such as Saul Alinsky and George Soros came into prominence with their writings and their money in that he (Barack Obama) wants to change America, from being America...to something else. This is a far cry from merely changing the results of our common hopes and goals. This was done with deception, knowing that Americans would consider a change in course for the Ship of State but never lower the Stars and Stripes to raise another flag. Even exceptional articles such as George Will's latest will not ruffle the feathers of those who have assumed their new posts of power for they know very well that more is involved here than merely presenting information to have it scrutinized by the public, for that public is so enmeshed in pastimes and entertainments that it does not have the ability to think through issues anymore.
As Evgeny Morosov puts forth in his new book The Net Delusion, The Dark Side Of Internet Freedom, people will utilize the trivial entertainments of the Internet before they consider the political ideas that come from it and that this plays into the hand of tyranny more than freedom loving activists. Morozov also refers to what has become known as the Ringelmann Effect in that a French agricultural engineer conducted a experiment in 1882 where he was able to determine how much effort an individual put into a designed task of pulling with all his might on a rope. He was then able to have a group pull on that same rope and divide the tension by the number of people. What he found out was that people expended less energy when pulling within the group. The individuals had slacked off when not on their own. This is where we are at today. We depend on talk radio or a Tea Party, or in this case Congress. We live in a malaise as a fish lives in water. We take pride in being part of a group but if that group should collapse is there any substance in us to continue?
Similar to what George Will wrote, we have let ourselves down. We've done that by not relying fully on God as our strength. He was pushed aside one step at a time and we considered it the better part of valor to let it happen. America has no future recognizable to any of its past if we do not, individually, humble ourselves before Him. Our Constituion cannot help us if we look to it as a god in place of a gift of order given by God. As we pull on this rope in a tug-a-war we need dependence on Him who will not slack off. I have reprinted in my blogs a number of prayers from the book Vally Of Vision edited by Arthur Bennett and available at any bookseller (isbn 9780851512280) and I'll offer another here. If and when you see through the mist that our beloved nation is in dire straits, prayers constructed such as this one can, should God will it, guide us even through the thickest fog:
O Thou Giving God,
My heart is drawn out in thankfulness to thee,
for thy amazing grace and condescension to me
in influences and assistances of thy Spirit,
for special help in prayer,
for the sweetness of Christian service,
for the thoughts of arriving in heaven,
for always sending me needful supplies,
for raising me to new life when
I am like one dead.
I want not the favour of man to lean upon
for thy favour is infinitely better.
Thou art eternal wisdom in dispensations
towards me;
and it matters not when, nor where, nor how
I serve thee,
nor what trials I am exercised with,
if I might but be prepared for thy work and will.
No poor creature stands in need of divine grace
more than I do,
And yet none abuses it more than I have done,
and still do.
How heartless and dull I am!
Humble me in the dust for not loving thee more.
Every time I exercise any grace renewedly
I am renewedly indebted to thee,
the God of all grace, for special assistance.
I cannot boast when I think how dependent
I am upon thee for the being and every act of grace;
I never do anything else but depart from thee,
and if I ever get to heaven it will be because
thou willest it, and for no reason beside.
I love, as a feeble, afflicted, despised creature,
to cast myself on thy infinite grace and goodness,
hoping for no happiness but from thee;
Give me special grace to fit me for special services,
and keep me calm and resigned at all times,
humble, solemn, mortified,
and conformed to thy will.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Fire!...Water!.......Order!!
The following blog post is from August 31st of 2009. The negative depictions of our society have continued to spiral downward but the positive signs have strengthened so that the strained discourse of the citizens employed by both trends would have been predictable. The situation in our nation is worse but we are more aware of it now.
There is a joke that some Presbyterians like to share with one another, to laugh a little bit at themselves, and it goes like this: Ministers from various denominations were meeting in an auditorium to discuss some matters of interest when a fire broke out in the hall. A Baptist minister jumped up and yelled "Fire!" A Methodist minister jumped up and shouted "Water!" followed by a Presbyterian minister who stood up and yelled "Order!"
The Westminster Assembly was a gathering of well over 100 ministers and some laymen that met from 1643 to 1649. This assembly produced the Westminster Confession and the Longer and Shorter Catechisms. These Standards eventually were adopted by Presbyterians. The effort was arduous and meticulous and it resulted in a work of exemplary precision. We are not a society that values these type of works anymore. We like to envision the United States Constitution in our own words. We apparently have a tendency to pass legislation without even bothering to read it beforehand.
Our political elections are but appearances, sound bites and media manipulations. Our corporations craft ethics codes and then, all too often, promptly ignore them. Our educational system seems intent on crafting its own brand of tolerance and building self-esteem rather than retention of facts and analytical thinking. Our Higher Education has become hamstrung by diversity, being politically correct and striving for any statistic that will improve its U. S. News & World Report "College Rating." Our families increasingly consider manual dexterity on the latest hand held gizmo and navigation of Facebook to be preparation for future scientists, doctors and lawyers. Many schools are foregoing teaching cursive writing, for the future is the keyboard. One can sit in Sunday School classes for 20 years without hearing the words Pelagianism, Arminianism or even justification.
On the bright side...yes...there is a bright side; we have learned about our own Constitution in the last eight years and we had a crash (no pun intended) course in economics in the last twelve months. We have seen just how ill-prepared a President can be and how arrogant the Congress can be, and should pay quite a bit more attention in the next election. Many are turning off the television and tuning in the radio where the spoken word is the medium rather than pixels.
The new radicals on campus are the conservatives. Authors like Michele Malkin and Mark Levin sit atop best seller lists while national political leaders such as Jim DeMint and Sarah Palin are sprouting up. As for the Christian church, we still need a return to preaching Christ and we need fathers again assuming their role of Sunday School teachers with their own families, but the fuel of faith is a high grade and should God ignite it, our pews will fill with people desiring to know Him, our pulpits could not be restrained from preaching Christ and fathers once again would relish catechizing their children.
There is a joke that some Presbyterians like to share with one another, to laugh a little bit at themselves, and it goes like this: Ministers from various denominations were meeting in an auditorium to discuss some matters of interest when a fire broke out in the hall. A Baptist minister jumped up and yelled "Fire!" A Methodist minister jumped up and shouted "Water!" followed by a Presbyterian minister who stood up and yelled "Order!"
The Westminster Assembly was a gathering of well over 100 ministers and some laymen that met from 1643 to 1649. This assembly produced the Westminster Confession and the Longer and Shorter Catechisms. These Standards eventually were adopted by Presbyterians. The effort was arduous and meticulous and it resulted in a work of exemplary precision. We are not a society that values these type of works anymore. We like to envision the United States Constitution in our own words. We apparently have a tendency to pass legislation without even bothering to read it beforehand.
Our political elections are but appearances, sound bites and media manipulations. Our corporations craft ethics codes and then, all too often, promptly ignore them. Our educational system seems intent on crafting its own brand of tolerance and building self-esteem rather than retention of facts and analytical thinking. Our Higher Education has become hamstrung by diversity, being politically correct and striving for any statistic that will improve its U. S. News & World Report "College Rating." Our families increasingly consider manual dexterity on the latest hand held gizmo and navigation of Facebook to be preparation for future scientists, doctors and lawyers. Many schools are foregoing teaching cursive writing, for the future is the keyboard. One can sit in Sunday School classes for 20 years without hearing the words Pelagianism, Arminianism or even justification.
On the bright side...yes...there is a bright side; we have learned about our own Constitution in the last eight years and we had a crash (no pun intended) course in economics in the last twelve months. We have seen just how ill-prepared a President can be and how arrogant the Congress can be, and should pay quite a bit more attention in the next election. Many are turning off the television and tuning in the radio where the spoken word is the medium rather than pixels.
The new radicals on campus are the conservatives. Authors like Michele Malkin and Mark Levin sit atop best seller lists while national political leaders such as Jim DeMint and Sarah Palin are sprouting up. As for the Christian church, we still need a return to preaching Christ and we need fathers again assuming their role of Sunday School teachers with their own families, but the fuel of faith is a high grade and should God ignite it, our pews will fill with people desiring to know Him, our pulpits could not be restrained from preaching Christ and fathers once again would relish catechizing their children.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Violence, Mayhem And Fifteen Minutes of Fame
I had planned on my next post being an already composed book review on Kevin Kelly's What Technology Wants but America's latest horrendous mass murder, this time in Arizona, has pushed that aside. The two topics are not totally unrelated and many are beginning to scrutinize the effects that the Internet and other technological entertainments have on our society. Kelly labelled the unstoppable growth of technology as the technium and although warning about it's negative potential, even saying that it may be near 50% of the overall influence, wrote that it cannot be stopped and therefore we must attempt to tame it.
The book I am reading at this moment is titled The Net Delusion, The Dark Side Of Internet Freedom by Evgeny Morozov while Saturday's Wall Street Journal book review was on Is The Internet Changing The Way You Think edited by John Brockman. I will be ordering a book coming out this February titled Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers Of The E-personality by Elias Aboujaoude and add to this the blog I did this past November on Nicholas Carr's book The Shallows, How The Internet Is Changing Our Brains and it is obvious that we are at least looking at how cyberspace may control us rather than us controlling it.
The social networking element of the technium feeds on a society that wants its fifteen minutes of fame, while that society feeds on the product that the enormous financial potential is more than willing to provide. This, the scrutiny of the Internet, only touches on the problems that we face. It is irony in that the very people who are calling for sanity, responsibility and the observance of the law (the Tea Party) are being tarred with that with which they warn about. It is also irony in that those that Dinesh D'Souza wrote this way about in his 2008 book The Enemy At Home, "What traditional societies consider repulsive and immoral, the cultural left considers progressive and liberating." are the ones that cast others as violent. The horror of Saturday's events are the results of a society that has forsaken God.
I'd like to return to my very first blog written on November 27th, 2008, and a couple more written before that year ended. In my first blog (untitled) I tried to encourage readers to support legislative efforts at the time to free subscribers of cable companies to be able to choose only those channels they want to come into their home instead of bundled options now in use. It was my opinion, and continues to be my opinion, that if Americans are given a la carte cable choice, the violence, the occult and the intellectual mayhem on television will wither and dry up and the fringe element of our society will shrink. Another post that I would like to mention was my third in which in attempting to defend then President George W. Bush I began "Is George Bush a murderer and a war criminal as has been said over and over by many people?" It was this very vitriol and the accompanying surreptitious agendas that have led to the movement that is accused of vitriol today.
Three weeks later I wrote about the Supreme Court's 1962 decision in Engle vs.Vitale where in a 6 to 1 vote, this prayer, written by the regents of New York's education system was banned from use in the classroom and led to multiple other expulsions of God from our children's lives, "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon thee and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our teachers and our country." We are a violent society because we no longer wanted God's hand on our decisions. We have a fringe element because chaos has replaced order. This debate has to continue, not only in the public square but in our churches for we have forgotten God who alone established this nation and who alone can stop the carnage.
The book I am reading at this moment is titled The Net Delusion, The Dark Side Of Internet Freedom by Evgeny Morozov while Saturday's Wall Street Journal book review was on Is The Internet Changing The Way You Think edited by John Brockman. I will be ordering a book coming out this February titled Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers Of The E-personality by Elias Aboujaoude and add to this the blog I did this past November on Nicholas Carr's book The Shallows, How The Internet Is Changing Our Brains and it is obvious that we are at least looking at how cyberspace may control us rather than us controlling it.
The social networking element of the technium feeds on a society that wants its fifteen minutes of fame, while that society feeds on the product that the enormous financial potential is more than willing to provide. This, the scrutiny of the Internet, only touches on the problems that we face. It is irony in that the very people who are calling for sanity, responsibility and the observance of the law (the Tea Party) are being tarred with that with which they warn about. It is also irony in that those that Dinesh D'Souza wrote this way about in his 2008 book The Enemy At Home, "What traditional societies consider repulsive and immoral, the cultural left considers progressive and liberating." are the ones that cast others as violent. The horror of Saturday's events are the results of a society that has forsaken God.
I'd like to return to my very first blog written on November 27th, 2008, and a couple more written before that year ended. In my first blog (untitled) I tried to encourage readers to support legislative efforts at the time to free subscribers of cable companies to be able to choose only those channels they want to come into their home instead of bundled options now in use. It was my opinion, and continues to be my opinion, that if Americans are given a la carte cable choice, the violence, the occult and the intellectual mayhem on television will wither and dry up and the fringe element of our society will shrink. Another post that I would like to mention was my third in which in attempting to defend then President George W. Bush I began "Is George Bush a murderer and a war criminal as has been said over and over by many people?" It was this very vitriol and the accompanying surreptitious agendas that have led to the movement that is accused of vitriol today.
Three weeks later I wrote about the Supreme Court's 1962 decision in Engle vs.Vitale where in a 6 to 1 vote, this prayer, written by the regents of New York's education system was banned from use in the classroom and led to multiple other expulsions of God from our children's lives, "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon thee and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our teachers and our country." We are a violent society because we no longer wanted God's hand on our decisions. We have a fringe element because chaos has replaced order. This debate has to continue, not only in the public square but in our churches for we have forgotten God who alone established this nation and who alone can stop the carnage.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Forty-two Days Without Hal
It took me about 48 hours to see that this six week experiment of doing without the Internet or cyberspace in any capacity was not only a good thing but not nearly as difficult as I feared that it would be. I was a little like a lost puppy that first day, two days before Thanksgiving, and was in bed at six o'clock (there would be two more days like this) but by the second day I was simply enjoying the benefit of not having to press "enter" on anything for a fix. I found that I had all kinds of time to do household chores. I didn't necessarily do them but I had time to. I noticed that my reading was done in longer increments. It had been a while since I sat down and read for two or three hours uninterrupted. I've been reading slower and underlining instead of slashing wildly with a highlighter. These sessions have been sit down meals not quick snacks. I had been in the habit of cutting out dozens of articles from the day's newspapers to read rapid fire as time permitted but now I'm reading the whole newspaper. I found that I had to listen closer to talk radio or radio news programs for there was no Internet research to be done on the subject when I sat down to the computer at night. As my wife and I were on a long drive I listened to a financial program on XM that offered some interesting thoughts. Normally I would have paid limited attention to it while planning on viewing its website later on but I knew that I had to commit some of the speaker's thoughts to memory right then. My television viewing may have increased 100% but that's really only about an hour a night over the previous 30 minutes. I do not miss Drudge. Whereas previously I checked the news about once and hour throughout the day I am now satisfied to hear it at 6am and then not again until 4pm and then again before bed. I don't know where the stock market is today and I don't have any idea what next week's weather is forecast to be. The only thing I miss about email is corresponding with our son but the telephone will suffice for now and I did send him a long letter written in cursive. The biggest difference is obviously the blog. That's at least two hours a day that I now have to read leisurely and retire early. I don't think that my consideration for the problems of the day has been diminished at all. In fact it seems that I am more relaxed as I think through the issues, meditating upon them. My talk radio listening had been generally 7 pm to 10 pm as I wrote the blog with an additional twenty minutes to and from work. I only get to hear Rush on my days off. During this first 14 days I spent much less time at the computer, so talk radio is down. Also, I feel a little bit less anxious over the issues of the day but at the same time a little more convinced and determined.
It has been 28 days, two-thirds of the way through this experiment. I've been getting a little bit itchy from time to time to continue with the blog but have not forgotten the reason I ventured into this experiment to begin with. I do not want to imbibe as I did before. I want to enjoy the reading as I do one beer and no more. I don't want to become inebriated with information. I want to chew my meals for better digestion. How I am going to do this, I have two weeks, Lord willing. to decide. I had a conversation this morning with a professor from a local college who enjoys, as I do, coffee and a comfortable arm chair at Starbucks. We are the same age and share very similar interests although our political philosophy is probably miles apart. Today's conversation touched upon mistakes made in our youth. He looked at boredom as the chief culprit which is similar to my conviction that idle time is an open door for idiots to walk through. I had very little idle time previous to this six week experiment. I have it now and found that quality meditation can fill much of it but not all of it. Whatever changes I may make will give me more time away from the Internet and I have to find a way to constructively fill it.
Well, it's been forty-two days since I put away the many uses of the computer other than the word processor that these words are being written on and I almost feel a hesitation to begin again. In retrospect, was this concern I had only with the computer or was it also with my overall compulsion to analyze anything. I've been analyzing one thing or another for the past 40 years since I was a communications analyst in the army. Scripture tells us that examination should begin with ourselves to see if we are in the faith but it also tells us to examine teachings that we hear in light of Scripture. Examination of the Bible itself only proves its veracity but we are not to attempt to analyze the mind of God apart from what He Himself tells us. I mentioned in a previous blog that if I were to label my philosophy of life it might be called the 70 year philosophy or some such title. We have only one life to live which I for the sake of order describe to be 70 years. The great peril of the agnostic is that he fails to cast a vote in the allotted time, thinking that his abstention is in some way wise and humble. The great peril of the narcissist is that he sees his life as living on in his reputation after he himself departs and therefore lives for what he will leave. Neither one has analyzed their philosophy, for the agnostic does not want to be wrong in the here-and-now and the narcissist does not want to be called wrong later. Neither wants to examine in-depth and make any stand. My compulsion to analyze does not frighten me but the possible failure to analyze, or examine, myself to see that I am always in the faith...does. The more one analyzes the world, the more improbable it becomes to analyze oneself.
This is the third day after unlocking the computer. I have had one surprise. When I go to any news site I get a very uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach, a feeling that I do not get with newspapers or books. It's the same information but comes with something that I find unsettling, that being speed and enhanced images. There was a silly, filler song on Elvis Presley's Blue Hawaii album called Ito Eats or something like that. I remember this song for I remember just about all of Elvis's songs up to the mid-sixties. The lyrics start this way, Ito eats like teeth are out of style. My habits of reading Internet news was like reading as if thinking is out of style. The format, the visuals, the brightness of the screen in a darkened room and the quickness of referencing anything in the world make it news and information on steroids. I drink only dark beer, for to this day domestic lagers take me back to a time in my early twenties when I flushed my system out night after night with them. No, I can't go back to this great blessing of the Internet, as some describe it, with the same abandon. This much I know and am thankful for. I'll pick this computer up as I pick up a pistol or a shotgun, with a healthy dose of respect for it's potential misuse. My Scripture reading more than doubled in the past six weeks for I read at length most every night. Has my personality changed? Maybe my blog entries will give a clue. As for the blog I hope to limit the posts considerably. I enjoy writing book reviews and have one ready to post and a second book that I will be going to in a few minutes when I log out and close this cover. Maybe this little foray into self-examination will encourage someone else to look a bit closer to their own cyber habits.
It has been 28 days, two-thirds of the way through this experiment. I've been getting a little bit itchy from time to time to continue with the blog but have not forgotten the reason I ventured into this experiment to begin with. I do not want to imbibe as I did before. I want to enjoy the reading as I do one beer and no more. I don't want to become inebriated with information. I want to chew my meals for better digestion. How I am going to do this, I have two weeks, Lord willing. to decide. I had a conversation this morning with a professor from a local college who enjoys, as I do, coffee and a comfortable arm chair at Starbucks. We are the same age and share very similar interests although our political philosophy is probably miles apart. Today's conversation touched upon mistakes made in our youth. He looked at boredom as the chief culprit which is similar to my conviction that idle time is an open door for idiots to walk through. I had very little idle time previous to this six week experiment. I have it now and found that quality meditation can fill much of it but not all of it. Whatever changes I may make will give me more time away from the Internet and I have to find a way to constructively fill it.
Well, it's been forty-two days since I put away the many uses of the computer other than the word processor that these words are being written on and I almost feel a hesitation to begin again. In retrospect, was this concern I had only with the computer or was it also with my overall compulsion to analyze anything. I've been analyzing one thing or another for the past 40 years since I was a communications analyst in the army. Scripture tells us that examination should begin with ourselves to see if we are in the faith but it also tells us to examine teachings that we hear in light of Scripture. Examination of the Bible itself only proves its veracity but we are not to attempt to analyze the mind of God apart from what He Himself tells us. I mentioned in a previous blog that if I were to label my philosophy of life it might be called the 70 year philosophy or some such title. We have only one life to live which I for the sake of order describe to be 70 years. The great peril of the agnostic is that he fails to cast a vote in the allotted time, thinking that his abstention is in some way wise and humble. The great peril of the narcissist is that he sees his life as living on in his reputation after he himself departs and therefore lives for what he will leave. Neither one has analyzed their philosophy, for the agnostic does not want to be wrong in the here-and-now and the narcissist does not want to be called wrong later. Neither wants to examine in-depth and make any stand. My compulsion to analyze does not frighten me but the possible failure to analyze, or examine, myself to see that I am always in the faith...does. The more one analyzes the world, the more improbable it becomes to analyze oneself.
This is the third day after unlocking the computer. I have had one surprise. When I go to any news site I get a very uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach, a feeling that I do not get with newspapers or books. It's the same information but comes with something that I find unsettling, that being speed and enhanced images. There was a silly, filler song on Elvis Presley's Blue Hawaii album called Ito Eats or something like that. I remember this song for I remember just about all of Elvis's songs up to the mid-sixties. The lyrics start this way, Ito eats like teeth are out of style. My habits of reading Internet news was like reading as if thinking is out of style. The format, the visuals, the brightness of the screen in a darkened room and the quickness of referencing anything in the world make it news and information on steroids. I drink only dark beer, for to this day domestic lagers take me back to a time in my early twenties when I flushed my system out night after night with them. No, I can't go back to this great blessing of the Internet, as some describe it, with the same abandon. This much I know and am thankful for. I'll pick this computer up as I pick up a pistol or a shotgun, with a healthy dose of respect for it's potential misuse. My Scripture reading more than doubled in the past six weeks for I read at length most every night. Has my personality changed? Maybe my blog entries will give a clue. As for the blog I hope to limit the posts considerably. I enjoy writing book reviews and have one ready to post and a second book that I will be going to in a few minutes when I log out and close this cover. Maybe this little foray into self-examination will encourage someone else to look a bit closer to their own cyber habits.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Wednesday.....Culture.....Semper Reformanda (Always Reforming)
A few days ago I did a book review (November 7th, Dave, My Mind Is Going) on Nicholas Carr's book The Shallows, What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains. I didn't stumble upon this topic for I have been concerned with the overall trend away from the written word for quite a while and have been a lover of books and libraries for even longer. I've commented a number of times on my disdain for the whole concept of social networking, and a few days ago, in another blog, I gave my thoughts on the necessity, at times, of an upheaval in our own lives. Introspection into these matters brought me to a decision of my own. My constant need to check the news and email, fluttering like a butterfly over the Drudge Report, stinging like a bee on my blog, and general dependence upon updates of updates brought me to my own desire for upheaval. I want to see how I will function without HAL speaking in one ear. I want the challenge of surviving with less information. (as I paused here, considering what to write next, I checked my email and news) So I've decided to put my blog, and all use of the Internet aside for six weeks starting on Thanksgiving Day. The blog would then be a few days short of two years. My decision here may be as uncomfortable to me as the Chinese Water Torture Cell was to Harry Houdini. I've been trying to formulate this for a few weeks now. I'll lay my Toshiba aside and have my iPhone surgically removed for that period, only opening up an old laptop for the word processor. I hope to analyze if my own thinking has been effected and even my personality. I hope to read a little bit more and see if this effects my comprehension and retention. Maybe it's time to pray more and write less? In fact it's probably always time to pray more and do anything less but I do hope to continue to write some, maybe daily notes on how I'm doing without a constant input of news and I may try something altogether new. There is really no cable television to add to this for we only receive eleven stations as it is. I may resume the blog in January, in fact I hope to, and I may not. None of us knows what a day brings. Lord willing, I will at least report back on this little experiment six weeks from Thursday, on January 6th of 2011, or thereabouts.
Monday.....Why I Love America...Redux
The following blog was written April 15, 2009, nineteen months ago. As discouraging as the trend was in America then, it is even worse now. The TSA problem is not only the insanity of political correctness, it's not only a Constitutional problem, it's not only a harbinger of forced searches elsewhere as long as they say they are keeping us safe, it is not only hypocritical as this proclaimed determination to keep us safe has not shown up at our borders, our harbors, in the protocol our military is forced to use and a host of other areas but there is another problem of immense proportions seen here and in many other areas, that being the inability or refusal to apply common sense. The single most discouraging thing of all is the lack of discernment in a potentially fatal percentage of the American public that the history of their country was indeed special but they themselves, we, have yet to take the test to be included in that history. An all-nighter cram session is necessary and no questions on sports...Dancing With The Stars....or how to live fit and buff are not on the test.
April 15, 2009:
"America The Beautiful" expresses the wondrous bounty God had bestowed upon this country. "Spacious skies, amber waves of grain" and "purple mountain majesties" surely describe this land. I appreciate the beauty of the land and also the liberty that was built upon it, but I love this country for other reasons. When I talk about America, I'm talking about it from its beginning when small ships carried whole communities across the ocean. I love it for its diversity. We have problems but we have overcome bigger ones. We have new challenges that almost seem insurmountable but it's not the first time. We have been bonded together through a concept that demanded diversity of background but became unity as Americans. I love America because of the hope it has given the world and the stability. I can write my opinion and speak it. I can pass out books without fear of intimidation. I can oppose iniquity and protest tendencies that are too close to tyranny for comfort. I love it most because God has used it to spread the gospel to every corner of the world. Everywhere I go, in the workplace, in the recreation and shopping areas, vacation spots and at preserved historical landmarks, there are Christians. I can empathize with them, enjoy their fellowship, share my needs and pray for theirs. Our son will find them at college, my wife and I will work with them and many of our representatives will govern with Christ as their head. God has raised this nation and used it mightily, this is why I love it so. I write this blog because these things are in danger. The bond is disappearing. European immigration is occurring again but this time it is an immigration of philosophy. Illegal immigration, sponsored by politicians for political reasons, does a great disservice to the legal immigrants who continue to bolster and favor us as they become one with us. Our corporations are becoming more international than American. Our activist courts look to international law, for American law will not suffice the paradigm change they envision. Our media is failing its calling and most importantly the faithfulness of our churches to the gospel is at low ebb. Previous to revisionist history, we were taught that Americans were a special people who could do almost anything. The Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville thought this people special enough to travel here just to observe. He wrote, "Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power." Ignoring these problems and the historical tendency of many nations to collapse from within, is not love.
April 15, 2009:
"America The Beautiful" expresses the wondrous bounty God had bestowed upon this country. "Spacious skies, amber waves of grain" and "purple mountain majesties" surely describe this land. I appreciate the beauty of the land and also the liberty that was built upon it, but I love this country for other reasons. When I talk about America, I'm talking about it from its beginning when small ships carried whole communities across the ocean. I love it for its diversity. We have problems but we have overcome bigger ones. We have new challenges that almost seem insurmountable but it's not the first time. We have been bonded together through a concept that demanded diversity of background but became unity as Americans. I love America because of the hope it has given the world and the stability. I can write my opinion and speak it. I can pass out books without fear of intimidation. I can oppose iniquity and protest tendencies that are too close to tyranny for comfort. I love it most because God has used it to spread the gospel to every corner of the world. Everywhere I go, in the workplace, in the recreation and shopping areas, vacation spots and at preserved historical landmarks, there are Christians. I can empathize with them, enjoy their fellowship, share my needs and pray for theirs. Our son will find them at college, my wife and I will work with them and many of our representatives will govern with Christ as their head. God has raised this nation and used it mightily, this is why I love it so. I write this blog because these things are in danger. The bond is disappearing. European immigration is occurring again but this time it is an immigration of philosophy. Illegal immigration, sponsored by politicians for political reasons, does a great disservice to the legal immigrants who continue to bolster and favor us as they become one with us. Our corporations are becoming more international than American. Our activist courts look to international law, for American law will not suffice the paradigm change they envision. Our media is failing its calling and most importantly the faithfulness of our churches to the gospel is at low ebb. Previous to revisionist history, we were taught that Americans were a special people who could do almost anything. The Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville thought this people special enough to travel here just to observe. He wrote, "Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power." Ignoring these problems and the historical tendency of many nations to collapse from within, is not love.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Sunday.....Christianity.....Valley Of Vision.....redux
H. L. Mencken was an influential essayist in America in the first half of the 20th century. One of his famous quotes was a definition of Puritanism as The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy. This is a grossly inaccurate caricature of a religious mindset but an opinion totally expected from a critic in that age. The Puritans loved life and the fruit, joy, blessings and challenges of it. They might be seen at one moment laughing over beer and the next in serious contemplation of the glory of God. It is this concept that I have clung to since first reading about them. Jonathon Edwards, who died in 1758, may have been the last American Puritan. English preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who died in 1892, was called the last Puritan but modern day English preacher David Martyn Lloyd-Jones was also portrayed that way. We have experienced a grand separation of Christian traits in today's evangelicalism. We can be worldly and we can be pious but we cannot be both and either way we have to be victorious, but the solemnity of their own failures was part and parcel of the Puritan life and that introspection is what is needed most today. The pietistic element in Christianity today (liberal churches) can only mollify the secular element in society if it promises to only challenge fellow Christians and not them in being pious. The worldly element of evangelicalism (politically conservative churches) can never mollify the liberal/secular element of society and that element then perceives that Christians challenge only the secular world and not themselves which makes matters worse. If some desire to, let them glory in their own strength but the Puritan mind gloried in the strength of Christ that overcomes our weaknesses. Please consider the following prayer and if you feel led, bring this topic up for conversation during fellowship with other believers. The book, often mentioned in this blog, that the following Puritan prayer comes from is its initial offering, and source of its title, is Valley Of Vision edited by Arthur Bennett and available through any book seller. Leland Ryken's Worldy Saints and J. I. Packer's A Quest For Godliness would be good reads on this subject.
Lord, High And Holy, Meek And Lowly,
Thou has brought me to the valley of vision,
where I live in the depths but see thee
in the heights;
hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold
thy glory.
Let me learn by paradox
that the way down is the way up,
that to be low is to be high,
that the broken heart is the healed heart,
that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
that to have nothing is to have all,
that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,
that to give is to receive,
that the valley is the place of vision.
Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from
deepest wells,
and the deeper the wells the brighter
thy stars shine;
Let me find thy light in my darkness,
thy life in my death,
thy joy in my sorrow,
thy grace in my sin,
thy riches in my poverty
thy glory in my valley.
Lord, High And Holy, Meek And Lowly,
Thou has brought me to the valley of vision,
where I live in the depths but see thee
in the heights;
hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold
thy glory.
Let me learn by paradox
that the way down is the way up,
that to be low is to be high,
that the broken heart is the healed heart,
that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
that to have nothing is to have all,
that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,
that to give is to receive,
that the valley is the place of vision.
Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from
deepest wells,
and the deeper the wells the brighter
thy stars shine;
Let me find thy light in my darkness,
thy life in my death,
thy joy in my sorrow,
thy grace in my sin,
thy riches in my poverty
thy glory in my valley.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Friday.....America.....Coupons
While sitting here, logging onto my blog and listening to the radio, a commercial voice said "a coupon is only good if you you use it.? I didn't catch the rest for I found myself contemplating that statement. It's certainly a true but it doesn't address the whole issue. I could hold in my hand a coupon for a free oil change for a Lexus. My choice is taken out of the equation for I don't own a Lexus, nor do I know anyone who does. The statement is still technically true but it is meant to encourage use, or action so the verity of it, in this case, depends on the coupon, not me. Suppose the coupon I had was for 100 free cable television stations? That's about 90 more than I need or want. In fact 100 cable channels would be detrimental to me, and I believe to anyone else. I might prefer to say "the coupon is bad only if I use it" but the statement obviously is referring to utility not advantage. Suppose the coupon is for ability. We've all been given abilities of some kind. Some have many abilities. Many have the same ability but to varying degrees. For instance, Thomas Sowell and I have both been given a level of intelligence. His ability here is enormously greater than mine, but we both use them, presumably to the best of our...another ability....determination. (For those not familiar with Mr. Sowell you can go to your local bookstore and pick up anything he has written and experience his abilities) What are your abilities in areas that would be beneficial to the nation that you live in, are a citizen of, and have a debt of responsibility to? I remember a comic in a Christian magazine many, many years ago where a man is kneeling by his bed, hands folded in prayer and a very satisfied look on his face as he offers up his thanksgiving with Thank you God, for not calling me to be a missionary! The purpose of this blog has always been to encourage people to look into two things that greatly effect their lives. The first of two is the security and the future of the nation we live in, we respect-even love and which will determine our children's future. Consider the events of this past ten days alone. Had an unidentified missile been launched so close to our shores in the past, as apparently happened off of Los Angeles, it would have been a development as major as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Russia has been brought into the missile defense of NATO. A terrorist played our legal system and political correct society to the advantage of all those who wish us harm. The actions of the TSA is much more than inconvenience or embarrassment. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution requires probable cause in searches yet the most improbable are not only searched but violated to insure that the most probable are not offended. It is more than odd that the rights of terrorists are strenuously guarded and the rights of those the Constitution is meant to protect are abused. George Soros, who has a history of meddling in the affairs of governments made this statement "We have just lost this election...and if this president can't do what we need, it's time to start looking somewhere else." This implies that they had indeed looked to the current adminstration for what they needed, and we know the influence Soros had here, but the results were thwarted. This is in the past ten days alone! Your nation is in extreme need right now of vigilance, common sense and determination from its citizens. You most certainly can avoid it but you cannot avoid the consequences. The second purpose of this blog but infinitely more important is to encourage you to consider this, that the common, accepted Christianity of today, it's doctrines and salvation, may not be correct. You may live in a church age that is so weak that when truths arise they are naturally dismissed as undesirable. One must read to resolve this. When Benjamin Franklin made his famous statement about the need for an informed citizenry he was speaking about the need for libraries, for books and literature. My hope for this blog has been that people would encounter it in passing and go to the books.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Tuesday.....International.....Euro Zone
The European Union has 27 members, 16 of which belong to the Euro Zone, a term we are not all that familiar with in the United States. The Zone is the economic and monetary community within the European Union itself. It has a central bank, but no treasury, and it relies on suggestion not authority. That's the problem in the eyes of many and, as they believe, could eventually lead to the collapse of the Zone and ultimately the Union itself but many are very hesitant to turn their lives over to other nations. Ireland is the latest European Union and Euro Zone member to face a financial disaster, Greece preceding it. Referring to an article by British correspondent Ambrose Evans-Pritchard titled The Horrible Truth Starts To Dawn On Europe's Leaders, many believe, as previously mentioned, that the Euro Zone was formed without the proper authority within it needed to protect the currency, the Euro, that was prematurely established to begin with. Making promises of no defaults of member nations, speculators took chances based on political faith alone with no Treasury to enforce common sense. It was a recipe for disaster. The Horrible Truth that the article's author refers to is not just economic collapse of a continent, but the rise of fascism. In what he calls an authoritarian Putsch, the leaders of this new entity, the EU, refused to accept the rejection of the European Constitution by the French and Dutch and then similarly strong-armed Ireland. Because of this the European Union is illegitimate in the eyes of Evans-Pritchard. See if this sounds familiar: the author writes: Mr. Delors ( Socialist economist and former European politician, Jacques Delors) told colleagues that any crisis would be a "beneficial crisis", allowing the EU to break down resistance to fiscal federalism, and to accumulate fresh power." The phrase more familiar to us would be never let a crisis go to waste. This is what Americans have be warned of for the last two-plus years. These folks, either across the big pond or here, have no intention of following the will of the people, unless that will coincides with theirs. This is why Americans are in revolt today. This is why we cannot sit back and just "hope" that a new Congress will keep their promises. The first thing that we should look for, if and when an economic or domestic disaster should occur, is attempts by the government to implement emergency powers that are ideological in nature. The Congress has to exert itself right now to discourage any such possible plans that may be in the formative stage. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is not without bias and surely those who he writes about would place him in the same category that we are placed in. So what else is new? It's up to the individual to determine in their own mind where the truth lies and if we are indeed experiencing a resurgence of Fascism and a good place to start would be the book highlighted below! As the author also wrote Elected leaders can violate democracy as well. There was a corporal from Austria...but let's not get into that.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Sunday.....Christianity.....George Washington
How many of our Founding Fathers were Deists? I don't know. Certainly Jefferson was. Deism was a popular belief system where there may be a God but he would be a very impersonal one that does not involve himself in the affairs of man, there would be no Holy Scripture for man to refer to, and certainly no atonement. But what about George Washington, the Father of our Country? How do the historians weigh in on him? Peter A. Lillback is an historian but he is also a theologian whose 725 page tome, along with 232 pages of appendices came to a different conclusion than most of the secular historians. I often wondered about this question myself and eagerly looked forward to reading the book, published in 2006, to see if I could put the issue to rest in my own mind. Lillback has a distinct advantage in this particular area of our first President's life for he knows what the gospel is but he also has biases of his own and those biases have bred controversy. So much, but not all, of secular commentary on Christianity today is given from people who are incapable of understanding the Gospel or who just do not care. Lillback's book breaks down the issue into various areas such as the religious historical setting of the day, Washington's early life, his church and family life before and after the Revolution and his presidency, the testimony of others who knew him well and of course his connection to Masonry. One thing that you have to know about George Washington to even begin an examination of this question is his character and personality, for these traits may effect the impression others will have of his religious belief. Personal honor was everything to the man! If he was going to do anything at all in life it was display a strong character and integrity and let his observers do what they want with it. Lillback gives evidence upon evidence here on Washington's fanaticism in this area and the extreme pains he took to guard it in his life. How does this relate to the issue of his Christian belief? Deist belief is not a hazy agnosticism that one could weave in and out of. It was distinct. Lillback makes the case, and I wholeheartedly concur, that one could very well be a deist and be a churchman; but one could not be a deist, a churchman of Washington's level of involvement with orthodox Christian churches, and prize honor and integrity anywhere near the level that Washington did without being a complete fraud. It's not the total answer to the question but it's a beginning and all in Washington's favor for he could not have taken the vows he did, constructed the prayers, espoused the Christian causes he did, and at the same time deny the essence of Christian belief through an actual embrace of Deism! George Washington had a knowledge of the Bible and documentation proved that he read it and valued Holy Scripture from his youth to the day he died when an open Bible was beside his bed along with his Christian wife who had the hope that she would see him in heaven. I understand Lillback's description of Washington's intense personal peculiarities for I hold to many myself. I will not look to the left or the right of the pulpit during a worship service. I will not let any intrusions or intended aids to the preached message enter my mind for I spent my first years in the Christian faith studying "Christian cults" and aberrant theologies and know all to well how easily we fall for man's, often well-intentioned, motives! One of Washington's creeds was actions not words and consequently he came up short on the words as a result. This is evidence enough for someone who wants to come to the conclusion that George Washington was a Deist. I understand this situation. Washington's usage of words such as Divine Providence, which was his norm, is further evidence for some that Washington viewed God as simply a grand architect, but he also used the word God, and the vows, prayers and teachings that he was officially involved with were evangelical. Whether a young soldier, a general or President of the United States, Washington could not possibly have held to his personal convictions of honor and integrity and continued to hide his deist beliefs. His library was voluminous and he paid great attention to the books he bought, kept and cherished. Many Christians books are included here, as well as sermons, yet no books, of which their were many in existence, that proclaimed Deist belief. Washington relied on others to raise the children in his care and under his sphere of influence. He took great care in this area also and chose Christian teachers over some well respected teachers and professors who were known for their secular emphasis. Lillback gives us one of those biographies that searches out and tackles all the arguments against the main premise. So you'll find chapters on mundane areas of Washington's life as well as rumors that were in existence. All of these are satisfactorily answered. The biggest question of all in this examination of George Washington's religious belief, and the one that many seem to answer even before examination is concerning his well-publicized membership in Masonry. I had this question in the back of my mind as I read through the book, eagerly looking forward to how Lillback would handle it. I've read a fair amount on the Masons, particularly many years ago, but Lillback gave some thoughts to ponder that I had not read. The essence of his defense of Washington is this. Masonry underwent a fundamental change beginning in the late 18th century, a change that put it directly at odds with Christianity, which has remained to today. Previous to this faction coming to the fore, and according to Lillback, Masonry was attempting, in albeit a very unwise way, to advance the Christian religion with the help of Masonic characteristics of order. Before the change in Masonry, a heated debate existed as both factions fought for influence. One prominent Christian minister was recruited to Masonry for this purpose, to halt the slide into an unChristian, even anti-Christian mode. He wisely refused for none of the discerning Christian ministers of the day would have taken the path the George Washington did. Washington himself was warned in a letter against the influence of the European Illuminati. His response was that he did not feel that such a precarious influence existed here in the United States, yet added that he had only been to two Masonic meetings in the past thirty years. George Washington's eternal soul is not dependent on the opinion of historians...either way, but it is a legitimate endeavor to see where this giant of a man and maybe the most illustrious and most influential of all our Presidents stood. After reading Lillback's book I still do not have a definite opinion on this but do acknowledge that this man who had so many qualities and abilities may have been a Christian. Certainly, he was no Deist! The fact that he had weaknesses effects me only as long as it takes me to look in the mirror. The fact that Peter Lillback puts froth some of the very ideas that I have warned against time and time again in this blog does not eliminate the usefulness of this massively documented book on the primary issue that it addresses. The gospel cannot be compromised in any way. Works play no part in the regeneration of a person's soul. If George Washington believed that one does, in effect, work his way to salvation, it would be to his eternal demise. Our hope is not in America's might or its continuing display and defense of liberties and freedoms yet many have fallen for just that fallacy! This book should only be used as an historical biography concerning the religious belief of that historical figure. George Washington may indeed have been a giant among governmental leaders of his or any day but he was a man nonetheless and my interest in his eternal salvation is ultimately no greater than of the person who checked out my apples, coffee and pickled eggs at the Giant Eagle this evening.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
.All The Right Moves---Aren't Enough
November 11, 2010
There are times when upheaval is necessary. The corporate world experiences it. The military experiences it when wars are lost, even the church had its Reformation. We experience upheavals in our own personal lives. It's a turning from one philosophy, one tactic, one foundation, one love to another. It can be painful or it can be exhilarating. One can be dragged into it and one can purposely charge into it. It can be peaceful and appear violent in the form of democratic elections and violent and appear peaceful as the Gospel takes hold in a person's life. We need an upheaval in America today.
Much of our corporate world has departed from its responsibility to the people it employs and public it services, where the appearance of ethics has replaced ethics itself. Higher Education has strayed from training minds to seek knowledge and truth to training minds to seek profits and self-fulfillment in spite of nagging evidences and longings for that knowledge and truth. Elementary and secondary education too often seeks to procure its own financial security while forming minds that support the legitimacy of their actions. We exalt ourselves in this society and pamper our egos through social networking. We have turned privileges into rights. We form opinions after having put no thought into it. We buy what they want us to buy and subscribe to what they want us to subscribe to, whoever they may be.. We have become a nation of followers not particularly interested in questioning those we follow as long they keep the benefits coming.
The problem is that they have reached the bottom of the well. The pensions and the entitlements are sinking the boat. The near future, even without terrorist attacks or international disasters, will not be the same America that we were raised in. The chasm between private and public sectors cannot be bridged. Either the government benefits will be adjusted or the private sector will cover the debt through taxes. Either decision will add to turmoil. Californians, last Tuesday, elected to stay on the path that brought them to where they are today. The other states eventually may either have to bail out California or watch an entity that will be proclaimed too big to fail, fail. Either decision will add to the turmoil, and other states will follow. Illegal immigration will either be halted through strict measures or one by one all the states will be overburdened and those states and its citizens affected may begin looking into seceding from the union. Either decision will bring turmoil. . The health care reform bill will either be repealed, which the Left will use to stir the Socialist pot, or it will be allowed to stand until it would be too late to see how disastrous it is. Either decision will add to the turmoil. The new Congress will either follow the Lindsey Grahams in its midst, which could very well lead to a third party, or it will follow Jim DeMint and bear the brunt of every outrageous slander the old guard can muster. Either decision will add to the turmoil.
Most of us have contributed to this mess and I contributed more than my share for the few who have not. The basis of this upheaval needs to come from the realization that we are on a path to nowhere. This society, as it is, cannot sustain itself for long either economically or philosophically. There is one remedy and one remedy only. A sufficient number in this nation of upwards of 300 million has to humble themselves before their Creator. We find ourselves at the brink and at times such as this God often pours His Spirit over the land, and as maple syrup that slowly seeps into the pancake, the people change from the inside out, without the help of political parties and hardly aware that that they have taken another path.
At times like this, in an Awakening if you will, life appears in that people, and hope. Wisdom overtakes greed; patience...insatiability; and humility....arrogance. All the right moves today, the election included, are mere reminisces of a time when the strongest fragrance in the land was that of grace and the greatest bounty was mercy. It's an impossible task, utterly inconceivable and this is to our benefit for if God were needed merely to help us, or to guide our paths, we would never fall on our knees in thanksgiving. My prayer is that this Thanksgiving, God would begin to shake the columns of hell with the same power that, at one time, gave light and heat to every atom in the universe, and apply it to an unworthy people and may He start with my stone cold heart.
There are times when upheaval is necessary. The corporate world experiences it. The military experiences it when wars are lost, even the church had its Reformation. We experience upheavals in our own personal lives. It's a turning from one philosophy, one tactic, one foundation, one love to another. It can be painful or it can be exhilarating. One can be dragged into it and one can purposely charge into it. It can be peaceful and appear violent in the form of democratic elections and violent and appear peaceful as the Gospel takes hold in a person's life. We need an upheaval in America today.
Much of our corporate world has departed from its responsibility to the people it employs and public it services, where the appearance of ethics has replaced ethics itself. Higher Education has strayed from training minds to seek knowledge and truth to training minds to seek profits and self-fulfillment in spite of nagging evidences and longings for that knowledge and truth. Elementary and secondary education too often seeks to procure its own financial security while forming minds that support the legitimacy of their actions. We exalt ourselves in this society and pamper our egos through social networking. We have turned privileges into rights. We form opinions after having put no thought into it. We buy what they want us to buy and subscribe to what they want us to subscribe to, whoever they may be.. We have become a nation of followers not particularly interested in questioning those we follow as long they keep the benefits coming.
The problem is that they have reached the bottom of the well. The pensions and the entitlements are sinking the boat. The near future, even without terrorist attacks or international disasters, will not be the same America that we were raised in. The chasm between private and public sectors cannot be bridged. Either the government benefits will be adjusted or the private sector will cover the debt through taxes. Either decision will add to turmoil. Californians, last Tuesday, elected to stay on the path that brought them to where they are today. The other states eventually may either have to bail out California or watch an entity that will be proclaimed too big to fail, fail. Either decision will add to the turmoil, and other states will follow. Illegal immigration will either be halted through strict measures or one by one all the states will be overburdened and those states and its citizens affected may begin looking into seceding from the union. Either decision will bring turmoil. . The health care reform bill will either be repealed, which the Left will use to stir the Socialist pot, or it will be allowed to stand until it would be too late to see how disastrous it is. Either decision will add to the turmoil. The new Congress will either follow the Lindsey Grahams in its midst, which could very well lead to a third party, or it will follow Jim DeMint and bear the brunt of every outrageous slander the old guard can muster. Either decision will add to the turmoil.
Most of us have contributed to this mess and I contributed more than my share for the few who have not. The basis of this upheaval needs to come from the realization that we are on a path to nowhere. This society, as it is, cannot sustain itself for long either economically or philosophically. There is one remedy and one remedy only. A sufficient number in this nation of upwards of 300 million has to humble themselves before their Creator. We find ourselves at the brink and at times such as this God often pours His Spirit over the land, and as maple syrup that slowly seeps into the pancake, the people change from the inside out, without the help of political parties and hardly aware that that they have taken another path.
At times like this, in an Awakening if you will, life appears in that people, and hope. Wisdom overtakes greed; patience...insatiability; and humility....arrogance. All the right moves today, the election included, are mere reminisces of a time when the strongest fragrance in the land was that of grace and the greatest bounty was mercy. It's an impossible task, utterly inconceivable and this is to our benefit for if God were needed merely to help us, or to guide our paths, we would never fall on our knees in thanksgiving. My prayer is that this Thanksgiving, God would begin to shake the columns of hell with the same power that, at one time, gave light and heat to every atom in the universe, and apply it to an unworthy people and may He start with my stone cold heart.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Sunday.....Christianity.....To Those On A Great Campus!
I had the opportunity to leave some small cards with this web site's URL on them on a college campus today, and whenever I get to leave these cards I try to write on a topic for those who may visit the blog that day. And...this one (youth) is one of my favorite topics anyway. I can hardly express how nice it was to see the exuberance of our son's friends on the dance floor at his wedding this past summer! There's an enthusiasm, an energy and an awe at this age that I remember very well. In my own experience, I misinterpreted that enthusiasm, misdirected that energy and never contemplated beyond that awe and excitement. Only God's mercy on the poster boy of immaturity permitted me to experience His blessings later on in life. So I come to you with that on my resume' and also this; I have distractions, but fewer distractions than I could have in viewing with concern this world that we live in. The sports page is started and completed in the drive-through line at McDonald's every morning. I haven't the slightest idea what the television show Lost was. My iPhone, my XM and my blog are the extent of my electronic knowledge of gadgets. I break away from this blog or a book long enough to watch Lawrence Welk and Middle every Saturday and Wednesday while old classic movies and Penguin playoff hockey can bring a sense of guilt. So I guess it's a rather weak resume' of only I've been where you don't want to go but I don't waste a whole lot of time today in trying to warn. I say this only to emphasize that there is only so much time in a day and what is lost, is lost forever. What do I do for real excitement? Well, I'll tell you, buckle your seat belts, for not only did I sow wild oats in my youth but I was a Johnny Appleseed of it, yet there is no excitement, no joy, no awe as great as the realization, and continued refreshing, of what happened on a rocky hill outside the walls of Jerusalem and in a cold tomb on one of its hillsides. There is no thankfulness as powerful as opening one's eyes every morning knowing that God has not abandoned you, no hope as sure as the strength of His grip, no love as strong as displayed by the one most deserving of praise on the one most deserving of forsaking. Remember that you have had only a few short years of navigating adulthood. Be wary in the realization that you are the target of many who want your services only to further their own goals. Consider the faces of old celebrities that often adorn the covers of tabloids at the checkout counter. They were young and beautiful not all that long ago. Time never stops. Fame is fleeting. Plead with God's Holy Spirit to show you your weaknesses, for if you are not aware of them you may fall victim to them. Thank God for for every glass of water, every meal, every breath. Never let a day go by without lifting up in prayer all of your brothers and sisters in Christ who are, at that moment, being persecuted, who are without at that moment, and who are crying out at that moment to the God who beckons you for your acknowledgement of and petitions for them. Do you think that you are relatively smart? Know this...there is one who wants your soul with him in perdition who laughs at your intelligence, and mine. You could not win in a fair fight and this would not even be a fair fight. There are traps all around you. Do not only acknowledge the perils but be sober-minded! Be vigilant, for as theologian Michael Horton warned, this Christian life of ours is not just another social networking. This is real, that is a farce. This has a cost, that is a wage. Press on!
www.whitehorseinn.org
www.ligonier.org
www.whitehorseinn.org
www.ligonier.org
Friday.....America.....Dave, My Mind Is Going
Nicholas Carr begins and ends his book The Shallows, What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains with thoughts on HAL from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. "Dave, my mind is going...I can feel it. I can feel it" were the computers last words as the astronaut disconnected circuits. Carr follows with I can feel it too. Over the last few years I've had an uncomfortable sense, that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. Marshall McLuhan appears throughout the book with warnings from years ago that we would experience the dissolution of the linear mind and that we were breaking the tyranny of text over our thoughts and senses. Carr says that he no Luddite and points out that because of the Web, research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes but that this boon comes at a price for it shape (s) the process of thought. His book gives us a history of the written word and dissemination of books throughout the world in general. Likewise there's a history of the computer, it's ever increasing use along with some fascinating anecdotes. He spends considerable time on the latest discoveries on the human brain, memory, the processes of learning and cognitive thought...all very readable for the layman. He also gives a caveat on social networking and companies such as Google. Since Gutenberg's invention, according to Carr, the linear, literary mind has been at the center of art, science and society. The heightened consciousness of the elite in earlier times and most people in more literate times has devolved into computerized minds today that experience cognitive overload from the massive input of semi-related data which eliminates deep thought. Books once enhanced and refined people's experience of life and of nature, writes Carr but this is being replaced by the shallows as the new technologies can displace but not replace the written word and linear mind. Carr details how his own normal usage of the PC became a dependence upon it and its services. He had first been turned into a human word processor (my present condition) and then something like a high-speed data processing machine, a human HAL, and laments I missed my old brain then set out on research that resulted in this book. We get a fair amount of history and philosophy, from Gutenberg's invention to Nietzsche's use of a typewriter prototype after he went blind but these are only morsels, for the main course is the human brain, how it functions and how it ultimately became dependent on the technology that it invented. We read thoughts on wisdom from Socrates and Aristotle to McLuhan and Henry David Thoreau. This topic isn't new to me and I've recommended Arthur W. Hunt's book The Vanishing Word, The Veneration Of Visual Imagery In The Postmodern World a few times. I recommend both books but Hunt writes of God's design of the written word as a primary method of communicating with man, whereas Carr barely mentions the biggest selling and most powerful book, and source of all wisdom, the Bible. I'm mentioned in the book! Well, not me personally but the millions of bloggers who wield a keyboard like a magic sword, sending their thoughts into cyberspace. The statistics are there to prove his assertions that extreme computer usage tends to lowers intelligence. It may increase "knowledge" but neuters what intelligence can do with it. Carr writes The Net's cacophony of stimuli short circuits both conscious and unconscious thought, preventing our minds from thinking either deeply or creatively. Our brains turn into simple signal-processing units, quickly shepherding into unconsciousness and then back again....If our brains are computers, then intelligence becomes indistinguishable from machine intelligence. Numerous experiments are referenced showing that the hypertext-laden usage of the Internet is producing that cognitive overload. Carr writes research continues to show that people who read linear text comprehend more, remember more, and learn more than those who read text peppered with links. He quotes a certain Rhodes Scholar in that he is comfortable admitting not only that he doesn't read books but that he doesn't see any particular need to read them and cites a digital expert in that we have been emptily praising great writers of the past. Carr asks Why bother, when you can Google the bits and pieces you need in a fraction of a second. The Net is making us smarter he writes only if we define intelligence by the Net's own standard. Carr explores the phenomenon of Social Networking but saves his greatest concerns for Google, Google's Silicon Valley headquarters-the Googleplex-is the Internet's high church, he writes, and the religion that it practices is nothing more than long established theories on how to improve efficiency in industry transferred to efficiency in the circuitry of the mind. He quotes Google's CEO Eric Schmidt in that the company is founded on the science of measurement striving to systematize everything constantly seeking to refine algorithms to find meaning in our navigation of the Web, the next best thing to actually being able to read (our) minds. Carr quotes Neil Postman in that technical calculation is in all respects (deemed) superior to human judgement; that in fact human judgement cannot be trusted and that the affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts. Carr writes the last thing the company (Google) wants is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. Google is, quite literally, in the business of distraction. Google, Facebook and others are in a constant competition to keep us distracted. The efforts to digitalize every book in the world is explored with the comments by some in government who were suspicious of Google's motives, despite the altruistic rhetoric...that... when businesses like Google look at libraries, they do not merely see temples of learning...they see potential assets...ready to be mined. Another observer wrote that Google has become a true believer in its own goodness, a belief which justifies its own set of rules regarding corporate ethics, anti-competition, customer service and its place in society and that the real value of books in not in the self-contained literary work but in the data to be mined. Carr enters the debate on artificial intelligence coming down solidly in that it will not happen but does warn that humans may indeed be transformed into computers. He quotes David Brooks of the New York Times in that he once thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more but came to realize that the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. A little bit of personal commentary here in that this is in no small way related to our voting patterns today. Our knowledge of national and international affairs comes from snippets of information garnered from television shows where hosts who speak in soundbites devoid of any deep meditation on any of the issues seem totally ignorant of accurate opposing views. And this is all that we want, for the pace of the Internet allows no contemplation. Memory is outsourced as David Books put it. Carr enters into this thought with evidence that memory is unstable for a brief period of time and the Internet is the perfect antidote for the development of long-term memory. Allow me another personal comment here in that the proclamation of the Gospel is also effected by the information age in that decisions for Christ are all too often mere hyperlinks in religious surf, just one more piece of data to be stored. The short-term memory of an altar call fails to plow deep in the mind and heart. This is why I concluded my short story, Seaman Murphy, from October 25th with John Cermak's refusal to lead Shane Murphy in the sinner's prayer. Nicholas Carr sums up his theories in that it is becoming much easier for humans to operate computers...but also....easier for computer networks to operate human beings. I want to add Carr's experience in writing this book as he was without the Internet as he worked on it: The dismantling of my online life was far from painless. For months, my synapses howled for their Net fix. I found myself sneaking clicks on the "check for new mail" button. Occasionally, I'd go on a daylong Web binge. but in time the cravings subsided, and I found myself able to type at my keyboard for hours on end or to read through a dense academic paper without my mind wandering. Some old, disused neural circuits were springing back to life, it seemed, and some of the newer, Web-wired ones were quieting down. I started to feel generally calmer and more in control of my thoughts-less like a lab rat pressing a lever and more like, well, a human being. My brain could breath again. Carr's brief sojourn in the Bible was profound in these verses:
Their idols are silver and gold,
The work of men's hands.
They have mouths, but they speak not;
eyes have they, but they see not;
They have ears, but they hear not;
Noses have they, but they smell not;
They have hands, but they handle not;
Feet have they, but they walk not;
Neither speak they through their throat;
They that make them are like unto them;
So is every one that trusteth in them.
Their idols are silver and gold,
The work of men's hands.
They have mouths, but they speak not;
eyes have they, but they see not;
They have ears, but they hear not;
Noses have they, but they smell not;
They have hands, but they handle not;
Feet have they, but they walk not;
Neither speak they through their throat;
They that make them are like unto them;
So is every one that trusteth in them.
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