Tagged: Christianity
Rougher Work Week
In Heat, the cop played by Pacino returns late to the ritzy bar his wife lingered at and she starts in with, “And I bought into sharing. But this isn’t sharing. This is leftovers.” (Or what is the same.)
Pacino responds, “Oh I get it. You want me to come home and tell you that some junkie just put his baby in the microwave because it was crying too much. And somehow this will…” and on and on. (Or similar.)
Later in the movie while desperately trying to keep someone he knows alive, he says, “Not you, baby.”
Suffice it to say, these scenes, not the particulars but the emotions and complications, come straight from real life—which I would say is exactly why I love that movie and have always loved that movie.
In real life, as I have written before, my own reaction is a sudden and unaccounted for need to cry. I didn’t this time. But all the necessary variables were in play.
There is a great desire to ask, “What can fix the scene(s)?” Or “How can we help people?”
But I have come to believe, “This is the scene. You don’t fix it. You don’t help. You just play your role. And you hope that your society has good roles.”
From the earliest age I knew my role was “anonymous, systematized, called-in relief”.
It’s mostly rewarding.
The Left’s Only Sound Play
Like how comedians must stick to particulars to be funny, the Left must stick to generalities to regain power.
The Left’s only sound play is to claim as a baseline, “Well, whichever Republican was elected after Biden would be perceived as doing well, comparatively.”
This is sound because it is essentially true, it concedes reality, and, importantly, it provides the currently missing foundation for the future. It also undercuts the “cult of Trump” with exacting precision, no small desire of the Left, though not essential to the cause. For readers with the ability to see nuance, it also offers a distracting element. No one is talking anymore about whether Trump is even a Republican. But the Left should want that debate to resume because any interruption of focus counts in the quest for power.
Will the Left use such sage advice? Of course not. Why not? Because they, as we all saw for four years, are not of sound mind.
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Why share such sage advice? Why spend time considering it? Because I desire the history books (which will draw heavily from this blog…) to show how even the meekest of those with common sense knew what the Left needed to do, but the Left was intrinsically weak.
Examples of Good Obituary Lines (Fiction)
He could go weeks without eating a vegetable or piece of fruit, and I don’t believe he ever ate more than two whole apples, bananas, or any other fruit in a single day for his entire life.
When she was four, she developed a habit of interrupting every member of her family—and most strangers—whenever she felt like it.
He could read the comments on YouTube for hours without ever finding motivation to give more than a thumbs up.
After graduating college and getting a job, he found it impossible to order from Subway without getting cookies.
Sometimes, when reading a book by himself, he would laugh out loud at an irrelevant idea that came to mind.
He never wore a hat in the sanctuary.
She often got irrationally angry the moment someone started talking—and sometimes just at the sight of certain people.
He could not leave a campground without uttering, “How can you tell the Boy Scouts have been here? You can’t!”
She hated being reminded of anything she ever said.
Nobody who had received a gift from her would have guessed it, but she was never taught how to wrap presents.
Not long after hearing a good idea, he routinely could be found sharing it, along with an original—and untrue—story behind how he thought of it, with others.
He started his habit of daily exercise the same week that he ended it—and was happier for it.
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Do you see? The obituaries or eulogies need to be filled with love. When you say something that is A. Untrue and B. General (like, “He loved life” or “He was loved by all”) you merely show that you didn’t even know the deceased, that you didn’t ever notice them even.
Do better. We all deserve it.
Reading Log and a Note on the Most Important Part of an Immigrant’s Education
I’ve completed these since the last group, but also have been reading math essays and have begun Milton’s Paradise Lost (which so far is much more palatable than Dante’s Divine Comedy).
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As to the education of immigrants, I can’t help but think as I read American history (mostly pre-20th century), “I have literally no connection to these events that stir my feelings so.”
And that’s when it hits me. As I, like you, am constantly bombarded with all this “immigrant immigrant immigrant” news, as I, very different from you, have married an immigrant and have an immigrant step-son, I cannot but conclude that the most important part of their training must be American history. Stop filling someone’s life with the nonsense about “you’re not from here” or “you should be proud of whichever country you left”. Instead, fill it with American History in a, “This is who you are,” mindset. America is unique. They need to know what that means—and it isn’t obvious or intuitive.
Naturally, a marketable skill should be taught as well, but even then, I cannot place this skill above learning who you are—an American.
Pumbaa’s Error
“Oh. I always thought they were balls of gas burning billions of miles away.”
How does Disney create the idea that Simba’s animism (the stars are spirits of the dead) is the right astronomical view?
Timon and Pumbaa laugh his notion off, and yet every movie watcher walks out of the theater happy that Simba believed his dad and the subsequent delusional interpretation of one bright night’s dynamic weather.
It all starts with Pumbaa’s error.
Imagine with me if the writer had an ounce of astronomy training.
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Pumbaa: Hey, Timon, ever wonder what those sparkly dots are up there?
Timon: Pumbaa, I don’t wonder; I know.
Pumbaa: Oh. What are they?
Timon: They’re fireflies. Fireflies that, uh… got stuck up on that big bluish-black thing.
Pumbaa: Oh, gee. I always thought, when their light was analyzed with prisms, they were determined to be ever-changing balls of the very same elements that make up our world, acting, in fact, under the same forces and for the same reasons which carry both the sound of my voice to you but not much farther and the heat of this desert sand to our feet but not up our legs—but were like really far away and surrounded by LOTS of empty space.
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Can you even imagine the ludicrous family tradition of past kings looking down following such a silly guess by the warthog?
No, no you cannot.
It’s not merely a killjoy, either. Plenty of ways to make the movie still work. Mufasa can talk about how his tribe had overcome great difficulties and that it took ridding themselves of envy and sabotage—and learning from whoever had something obviously better to contribute. And then Simba can simply remember this confirmable truth after a rebellious and disastrous few years of life with the poor—I mean—the wild animals.
Eureka! Marriage Realities Exposed
I concluded my recent review of Joker: Folie à Deux with the pathetic (full of emotion…) question, “Why do we hurt each other?” Well, just this second the answer came me.
“We hurt each other because we don’t think we do.”
No, I did not just plop into a very full bathtub like ol’ Archimedes. But I am reading a book on the subject of the universe and one of the thematic points is the whole “mostly empty space” thing I mentioned in discussion of Nolan’s script’s mistaken definition of quantum mechanics.
So, if you need an analogy, use this. We hurt each other because we think of each other as mostly empty space. The truth, however, is we are all full. (Wow. That’s fun. No, not “awful”, but we all are full. We are full.) We are filled space. We are space filled full. (Not empty.)
But that’s just a fun physics analogy that may or may not tickle your fancy. Don’t miss the point!
We possess the power to hurt each other unintentionally.
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PS – For kicks, the actual origin of this Eureka! moment for me is I believe one of my wife’s announced desires is surely destructive to our marriage and family and consequently insist she give it up. Whereas she believes god authored it or approved it or some shit. And as I was reading just now, after I stopped her from randomly starting the dishwasher without my dish in it and saw her eyes say, “Even this action is wrong?”, my mind wandered to the ongoing hellscape of my marriage.
Do you see? Her desire—to her—isn’t harmful to me. And my decree—to me—isn’t harmful to her. But I can assure you, as the nursery rhyme says, “Needles and pins, needles and pins, when a man marries, his trouble begins.”
The best part is Christianity is one of the last forms of order which unequivocally, unconditionally, and without exception places the husband at the very tippy top of the food chain, so much so that even in 21st century conservative, Biblical doctrine, the doctrine is simply avoided. “Why lose even more people by giving unpopular teachings airtime?” seems to be the approved stance.
Incidentally, I even unintentionally started a skirmish in a friend’s marriage (both former international missionaries) by asking them to confirm for me that they were, both 1. Not studying the bible together within their marriage and 2. He is not leading her in any semblance of a formal bible study. I asked them to merely confirm it because a newly converted friend was lamenting to me that his wife (also newly converted) wouldn’t listen to him read scripture to her. And this couple lost their composure in a big way, getting as defensive as I have ever seen—of course the wife being the dominant justifier of the state of things.
I do not know what it is like to be a woman, but I do know what it is like to live under authority. And as it isn’t terrible or tragic or unbearable, I just don’t see the issue.
One Example of Wildly Provocative and Popular, Yet Ultimately Fully Hedged, Speechmaking
President Trump just announced, “As of today it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders—male and female.”
I cannot deny that I found that utterance by the sitting POTUS exhilarating. But I also cannot deny that the assertion is completely hedged and its opponents will not be deterred. A key feature (one that folks somehow forget) of the struggle of good and evil is evil doesn’t play by the rules. The “more than two genders” crowd doesn’t care about the US government’s current policy. They don’t abide by “rules”. They are agents of chaos—by definition.
I don’t say this to discourage or because I am cynical or a pessimist. I am an optimist and this policy is important.
I just want to call attention to the hedge that most listeners didn’t hear. Only the “Official Policy of the United States government” is acting sane at the moment—not all free peoples of the Earth. Trump’s speechwriters knew he doesn’t have power over everything. In this one instance, that is a shame.
I Like My Life
Not halfway through January and here is what I have been able to knock out.
Let me be for the first to say I read way too many comics in the last two weeks. That X-Men “Epic Collection” was 500 pages. I am over halfway finished with another, not pictured. I only started reading comics recently because of trying to completely cut movies. But I can fully admit that they are or can be a bit juvenile and unsatisfying when read at the pace I have been conquering them. If you’ve ever tried to binge watch X-Files, then you know what I am talking about.
Grant’s memoir was amazing and astounding on nearly every level. What a time to have been alive.
Einstein, as I have said, was life changing.
The Second Jungle Book was, on the whole, better than the first. I will probably read only the first Mowgli story of the First and then jump to the Second with my kids when they are a ready. (Ricki-Ticki-Tavi is in the Second.)
Hiawatha can be skipped if you can call to mind any of Hollywood’s best Indian monologues from the 90s—I’m thinking specifically of the Last of the Mohicans’ “at the birth of the Sun and his brother the moon” moment when Hawkeye is wooing Cora. But it clearly was deeply influential and is therefore a must-read classic if you’ve got the time. (It’s a poem, but can basically be read as if a novel.)
Leviathon is unlike anything you have heard about it. I have to rank it tops—just clearing Einstein—as far as what you absolutely must read if you have always been interested and merely await a kick in the pants for motivation. Einstein is life changing for the reason that afterwards you will join me and an exceedingly few others in feeling good because “now you know”. But what you now know kinda reinforces the fact that you aren’t that interested in keeping up with quantum physics and beyond.
But Hobbes! Hobbes is life changing regarding its implications for your daily decisions—especially in the political part of life. I’m suggesting that, especially for Christians, a careful reading of Hobbes will more likely inspire you to pursue righteousness for the right reasons than any sermon you’ve heard or any other book you’ve read—ever.
Final Thought On Gravity/Newton/Apples/Truth Before Moving On
The #1, numero uno, reason it is silly to continue repeating the account of the falling apple is that it is incomplete! It is, forget anything about who witnessed said apple, incomplete to say, “An apple falls due to the force of gravity.” Better, maybe not perfect, would be to say, “That an apple falls taken together with that the earth pulls the apple is an example of the relationship which conventionally has been termed, in abbreviation, gravity.” To reduce that sentence/concept by words or meaning is to lose any meaning/truth.
(These are for you, H-. If you’re still alive.)
On Reading “The Divine Comedy”
Oh sweet Book, thou mantlest thyself with a smile, by what ardentcy dost thou require my time whose arrow, aimed right or left, loosed evermore sheathgone, anon to crawl, broken mirror upon, ever opening virgin wounds ere disconsidered more believable than metamorphastication of hell’s lord to heaven’s Supreme Good, be collected!
Captain’s Log 