Not a Garden Party

Posted on November 24, 2008 by ehurst

But I did remenisce with my old friends. I left a little early on my daily bicycle trek, and chose a route which took me past an old friend’s house. The last institutional church where I was a member did have some fine people there, even if the organization itself is corrupt. This fellow is one of those select few who remains on friendly terms, in part because we had shared a great deal of volunteer work together. We chatted about cycling, then I moved on.

Later, while I was helping my blind buddy do some shopping, I ran into a fine elderly lady from the same church. Again, one of the few people there who didn’t betray my friendship. I had gone to the funeral when her husband died because they were both good friends of mine. Today she had her daughter with her.

I received a very flattering compliment. The lady passed me on another aisle asking me to pray for her daughter. The younger gal is seeking a husband, and I wondered how it was she was still single. I thought perhaps her intellect might be a bit intimidating to some fellows, but it turns out she had spent a significant amount of time in and out of hospitals in her prime. Now, still younger than 40, she’s tall, shapely and attractive in the fullest sense of the word. She asked her mother if I was married.

My wife is my best friend. The most important thing she offers me is support for the calling and ministry. Just about everything else can be worked out, but without hitching her wagon to my teaching and service, nothing else will matter. The obsession in our Western culture with so-called “Romantic love” is a major distraction in the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s not whether I can be romantic with my wife — ask her. But the Kingdom comes first, and with it comes the power from God to build a powerful love and commitment in His Spirit, stronger than any “romance.”

My wife cannot be replaced. Thirty years of serving together in one calling of Christ cannot be forgotten, and nothing can take its place. However, should the Lord take her home anytime soon, I could hardly carry the load without her successor. Such a transition would be exceedingly difficult, and I’m in no hurry to experience it.

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Welcome to My World

Posted on November 23, 2008 by ehurst

I’m pretty sure the malady we call “Attention Deficit Disorder” (ADD) is not what mainstream medicine believes it to be. Because medical science currently has distinct channels in which it is forced to operate, a great deal of useful data is excluded. In our pursuit of purely objective knowledge, a whole range of included symptoms are ignored. Those ignored symptoms may be quite useful in understanding how to treat it.

ADD is recognized as a learning disability. Government bureaucracy demands certain accommodations be made for folks with disabilities. That is as it should be, in principle, but the implementation and execution are inevitably more bad than good. The harsh chemicals prescribed for ADD/ADHD kids in school are designed to accommodate the teacher, not the needs of the students. This keeps anyone from having to worry about actually meeting the ADD children where they are, and understanding their world. It excuses not investigating further, and allows for roping in thousands of students who are not at all suffering ADD, and putting them on drugs. A class of spacey and calm kids are easier than sharp-minded learners who see what the teacher doesn’t see.

ADD is less a disability than a difference in perception. At the loss of some “normal” abilities, the ADD person gains a great deal of other abilities. Truly, the euphemism “differently abled” applies here. We know ADD kids can concentrate fiercely when something has their interest, and get more done with it, as long as they are not interrupted. There’s no deficit of attention, but simply a different use of it. On the other hand, when there isn’t something drawing that rapt attention, they see all kinds of things most people miss. Their brain is sucking in all the details around them, and they can’t shut it out. The overload makes then naturally a little wonky.

It’s socially embarrassing when you enter a room and can’t ignore that small item hidden behind the photo of Mom standing on the shelf, or the variation in the tile color due to traffic and sun exposure. You can’t help noticing your host’s ears aren’t placed vertically even from each other, and there is a really odd smell in one corner. Uninhibited children talk about these things. Most folks in polite society take offense and the kid has to be disciplined in such a way as to shut them up. Do that often enough and they withdraw into a fantasy world.

Should it be the kid is pretty intelligent, too, that fantasy world would make a great setting for best-selling fiction. Seeing the world through different eyes means creativity most people can’t match. The first question ADD minds tend to ask is, “Why not?” Because they get the wrong sort of discipline most of the time, that creativity leads to dangerous behavior. The perception of risk is completely different, with oddball neurotic fears mixed into completely fearless charging off into danger. Since conventional fears are mostly wrong anyway, this difference is fertile ground for conflict. So many ADD kids are pretty sharp, and too much ill-considered conflict will make them contemptuous of you in the long run. The most galling thing is when they prove you wrong. It only takes a 20% success rate against you for them to decide you are simply being hateful. Cultivate their creativity by helping to guide them through questioning and you’ll have one of the most loyal friends for life.

An odd and frightening feature of ADD ignored by medical science is a mechanism which leads to depression and psychosis. Recall this is an alternate path for learning, for gaining and processing information. Many ADD folks figure this out instinctively, and become introspective as they seek to keep track of what happens to information. Most people are far less introspective, and tend to assume what they experience is the norm without question. Tell them something which requires them to act, and they will process the required action. They may forget, but the programmed sequence of required behavior is still there. Thus, without much thinking, they realize they forgot.

With an ADD person, the input can get lost at several points. Because they are wired for creativity instead of conventionality, they are used to making it up as they go. Tell them something they’ll need to act upon later, and the programming itself can simply disappear. Instead, they’ll proceed as if they never got the input. When they fail to carry through, they’ll be quite certain they never got the original message. When you confront them with facts to prove otherwise, it feels to them they’ve stepped into the Twilight Zone. Making fun of them will drive them inward, making fertile ground for depression. Attempt a hostile discipline for that failure, and you are in very dangerous territory. Not only do you risk a very creative response in kind, perhaps setting up an even harsher discipline, but it serves to push them too near, if not over, the edge of sanity.

They won’t necessarily become suicidal, but may become altogether sociopathic. There is a very high likelihood of substance abuse. However, an awful lot of bad habits can emulate the relief of substance abuse, which is simply a way of avoiding the reality most of humanity knows. Since ADD people often have already some questions about reality, they are never far from such flight. Indeed, they may be just fine and simply appear nuts because they question everyone else’s interpretation of things from the start. Any attempt at forcing them to conform too strictly to “the norm” feels like hatred to them, and may generate a response in kind.

God did not create us to be uniform. When He colors outside the lines of our expectations, we find ourselves in sin by previous choices. When we don’t allow Him to introduce oddball folks into our world, we reject His provision for us to know Him better. We certainly can’t trust the fallen world of human minds to provide all the answers. Afflicted by ADD, I am the first to reject conventional things. Having weathered the storms of rejection from this world, I found safety in God’s grace and mercy. Without that, I’d have been dead long ago, for reasons explained above. His grace makes it possible for me to welcome into my world all the misfits, along with all those poor “normal” folks who just don’t understand. God made room for me in His Kingdom, so I’ve got room for you, whatever you may be.

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Twighlight of Civilization

Posted on November 22, 2008 by ehurst

I suppose the name of Julie Amero won’t be long or widely remembered.

A substitute school teacher in some insignificant school district, she was victim of unsecured computers. The monitor on the system in her classroom assignment for the day was attached to a computer which was criminally unsecured. The sieve that is “security” on a Windows computer, and Windows networking, was in no wise ameliorated by the incompetent technicians in that school system. They allowed a standard attack of porn advertising to appear on that monitor, which was the excuse for an even more obscene attempt to hold Julie liable, as if it she did it on purpose.

The prosecutor, after being shown copious reason why he was being foolish, dug in his heels and insisted white was black. He wasn’t just acting a fool; he is a fool — defined in Scripture as rejecting good morals. It shows why at least some violence against government figures is justified, because reason doesn’t work. The prosecutor is, plain and simple, an evil man who took delight in using the full weight of government force to ruin Julie’s life just to make a name for himself. With a little more publicity, David Smith will be “mud.” Yeah, that’ll show `em, David. We can forget about Julie, but not you.

She acquiesced to the lesser misdemeanor charge, and while it may have been a bitter pill to swallow, she can at least can move on now without this sick cloud hanging over her head. It was less than two years ago that Julie was facing felony charges with a maximum of 40 years in prison.

Hopefully, we can help other “Julies” who may find themselves in a similar terrible situation.

I’m with you, Alex. God help us. These little things aren’t just par-for-the-course of government bumbling, but an egregious assault on those government pretends to protect. We’ll be seeing a great deal more of this as we slide quickly into a police state, simply because we lack the depth of culture to take action against it. That is, we are unwilling to be bothered with making the fools pay every time they do this. So we can expect this cancer to spread.

I’m volunteering whatever I can offer to stop it the next time.

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Forget Opera

Posted on November 21, 2008 by ehurst

(Update: This is a really old post, and they have long since fixed the problem. I still use Opera for most browsing.)

For the longest time I really liked the Opera web browser. It is quicker to load than any other full functioning browser, and processes JScript faster than anything else. It’s got a very good collection of presets for popular email services in the mail client. There are plenty of other fine features too numerous to list.

It has one great failing: shortcuts. I go to the trouble to turn off mouse gestures in everything, because I’m too clumsy to benefit. It’s bad enough FireFox still occasionally reacts, but Opera ignores every effort to change that and keystroke shortcuts. Earlier today I was posting on a website and accidentally hit the wrong keys. My natural clumsiness plagues my writing with typos, but I can deal with the task of editing most things. Not with Opera. It interprets some of the strangest key combinations. I have no idea what I hit, because that’s a part of clumsiness, but the browser closed the page and lost all my work.

Understand something: My clumsiness is an actual learning disability. I am physically wired in such a way I cannot possibly become graceful and precise in typing on a computer keyboard. I do better with laptops because the movements are much smaller, but with just a small incremental increase in the distance my fingers have to travel, and the necessity of moving my wrist at all, and the errors skyrocket. If I could simply turn off certain keystroke shortcuts, that would be fine. However, Opera does not honor such efforts.

Worse, it’s been this way since I can remember. Filing bug reports and such have changed nothing. Today’s error was just too much. Opera, your browser is junk in my book.

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Cycling Through Purpose

Posted on November 21, 2008 by ehurst

Nothing in my life escapes God’s notice. I pray for guidance on everything, and that includes my physical fitness efforts. This is His Temple I’m trying to maintain.

There is more to this than meets the eye. On a purely human level, I am aware my lifestyle will change for the simple reason we are entering an economic depression. That it could include a significant political change is is almost certain. Specific changes are hard to predict, but any effort at general fitness will pay off. You have to get in shape to get into shape, so to speak.

I believe I am as close to that as I can get. While I still have those old urges to push and workout long and hard, I’m getting less response from the flesh. I don’t get as much recovery, and it takes longer. At some point, you have to choose where to invest your efforts, and I find cycling of far greater utility right now. So, I have been investing more in cycling as opposed to running. Instead of three upper-body workouts each week, I’m cutting back to two. The other things in my life carried by conviction demand more time, so I’ll just try to keep what I have in terms of fitness.

Because I still have the mountain bike, that means my trail-building efforts will shift a bit. Instead of running trails, I’m looking at riding trails. Albeit sand is good exercise for running, it’s hard to run on, and even harder to ride. I’ll be avoiding sand patches, and trying to keep the trail in the vegetation. Instead of preferring open areas, we will be aim to explore patches of woodland with less underbrush. There happens to be quite a bit, but it means exploring and mapping (mentally, at least) and aiming for a good ride, instead of a good run.

Elements of that difference would mean switchbacks instead of running straight over grades. It also means less clearing of ground cover, because that preserves traction and stability of the soil, preventing washouts. In our previous efforts, we were simply extending the use of very rough trails left by four-wheelers abundant in this area. We’ll aim for paths too narrow for them, but smoother. When we cross deep, soft sand areas, we’ll try to add some sort of dead fall vegetation or gravel to firm up the track. There is plenty of both around here. We won’t need to mow grass so close, since it’s much easier to negotiate on wheels than on foot. In the end, there should be a lot less intensive cutting and more effort in making the trails longer.

Something tells me we’re going to see a huge revival of cycling in America. Even with gas prices dropping, people simply have less money to spend, and more time.

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Seeking Reality

Posted on November 20, 2008 by ehurst

Here in Western Civilization (such as it is), we define the question of reality in two parts.

  1. What is reality?
  2. How do we embrace it?

In a sense, all human sorrow is the result of getting either or both questions wrong. The bigger problem is all the ways people avoid the question in the first place.

The obvious addictive behavior of those abusing their bodies and minds with chemicals serves as the primary model for explaining just about all the less obvious avoidance schemes. Getting a handle on these avoidance patterns is a very good starting place. We can hardly get too far into that before battle breaks out over models and methods, simply because each school of thought arises from the initial question itself in defining reality. I would like to point out the complexity and raucous tone of the debate results from the fundamental flaw in Western assumptions about thinking itself.

The first principle assumes man is equal to the task. This assumption is seldom examined. We note he will most likely fail at some level, at various points, and we should expect to build on the incomplete understandings of those trying before us. Most of the world is comprised of humans who don’t share that assumption. We arrogantly question their ability to make sense of the world simply because our path has brought us only what we sought in the first place: material progress in creature comforts. That we have the means to leverage our success, or material power, is all the proof we need of superiority of our assumptions.

Have we truly gained so much just because we can bomb everyone into the Stone Age? There are plenty of folks who aren’t impressed. Take away all our worldly goods and we change completely. We take away all their material goods and they remain what they are. Our success in that sense means nothing to them. Because we cannot successfully analyze what is behind that, we simply mark it down to some form of truculence about reality and move on. “Why don’t they accept the obvious? Our way is clearly superior. Get on board or be left behind.” In other words, when we act on our fundamental assumptions and they don’t work, we ignore our own rules about evidence and logical analysis. While it would hardly bring us a complete answer, we refuse the obvious partial conclusion our hypothesis failed.

Could it be there is a valid logic outside our frame of reference? (sounds of loud scoffing in the background) Just because we have a handy set of disparaging labels for factors outside our analytical matrix does not mean we have dealt with the question. Sure, we are superior in our own estimation, but the rest of the world is not impressed. Does it occur to no one they are in the end willing to let us call it what we want and otherwise ignore us as they go on about their business? We call it “primitive” when people exercise a philosophical bent which has been around far, far longer than our rather young Western Civilization. Sure, we have roots in the old Grecian culture, but it’s current form is less than four centuries old. What we have now is pretty much the results of the Enlightenment.

In all our digging and seeking to regain the lost physical monuments to ancient cultures of the past, have we missed the point? Maybe those things were just the bare manifestation of what was there during its lifetime. Could we entertain the notion the biggest and fanciest Lost Wonders of the Ancient World simply marked those points in history when a civilization was no smarter than ours? Or would we be surprised if they could tell us this or that monument wasn’t really all that big of a deal to them? Maybe the real losses of significance were things inside people’s heads or their hearts, not the works of their hands.

I’ve read historical journals weeping over the loss of architectural wonders from ancient Rome because barbarian occupiers and peasant survivors cannibalized those wonders to build crude shelters from the bad winters which made Rome’s fall possible. We weren’t there, but I wonder if we wouldn’t have done worse in their place. Should the earth remain a thousand years from now, I suggest our presence in history will be a meaningless bump in the road. We have pretty toys, even some good artistic expression, but we hardly understand what’s outside the narrow walls of our physical existence.

We are addicted to our external, physical culture. It’s our whole existence as a civilization, our reality. Let’s take away the drugs and see what will stand on its own. We have squandered our opportunities, because Western man without his stuff is less than a troglodyte.

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Testing, Testing…

Posted on November 20, 2008 by ehurst

Frequent visitors will have noticed I’ve changed the theme repeatedly. It’s not that I’m so flighty, but I keep running into problems. Since I would have to pay money to WordPress to access the actual formatting controls, I’m stuck with simply accepting the themes as-is. Each one has strengths and weaknesses. I am completely unconcerned about expressing my personality through my choice, and very much concerned about whether my audience can read the darn thing.

I would welcome feedback in the comments. Aesthetics will take a back seat to function.

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Introduction

Posted on November 19, 2008 by ehurst

Okay folks, turn on your sarcasm detectors. In the past I’ve done some verbal sparring over things I’ve written elsewhere. Most of the attacks have hit nothing sensitive because people make shallow assumptions about me. Rather than answer each attack by pointing out how they missed their target, I felt it would save time and effort to address the issues recurring most frequently. This way, people who want to object to what I have to say can stop wasting time. At the same time, everyone else can get a rough idea what makes me tick.

One of my favorite pretend games is imagining I am a real writer. A few of my contemptible scribblings actually get published on a webzine called Open for Business. For some crazy reason, the guy who runs it thinks my stuff is good enough he gave me a title: Associate Editor. It’s a slick way of getting just a little bit more attention when I write to honestly important people. So while there are some benefits to this position, I’m not paid a dime for my work.

In fact, I don’t do much of anything to earn any kind of pay. I’m a disabled veteran, and I get paid to sit on my duff and do nothing — your American tax dollars at work. There was nothing even remotely heroic associated with my disability rating. It’s mostly the result of birth defects the Army didn’t detect until after I had served awhile. They were willing to let me stay in longer, but only because they desperately needed warm bodies with some rank (I made it all the way up to Sergeant E-5) in my job specialty: Military Police.

Yeah, I was paid to be an annoying government thug. I wasn’t too good at it because I had a conscience about such things. I kept stopping to think, and governments don’t like for their thugs to think. Meanwhile, I learned all about the sort of people who rise to the top of bureaucracies. Most of them deserve to be shot on sight. The system would have spat me out sooner or later, because I would eventually have refused to do something senseless and oppressive, and I was too honest.

Sure, I could make a good living. In the past I worked in public education with certification in Social Studies (History, Economics, Geography, Political Science). I loved the kids, and loved the subject matter — earning a 4.0 in pedagogy and content classes, both — but I hated the system. Right now a company is begging me to work for them at some $20/hr. or more. The work is embarrassingly easy, and even fun. But a part of the job requires I turn a blind eye to fraud, waste and abuse. I can’t do it. I’d rather live in poverty so I can sleep with a clean conscience at night. Instead, I spend my mornings with my make-believe writing career. Then around noon, I get on my bicycle and ride 10 miles to a friend’s house. He’s nearly blind, and some five days each week I help him get stuff done, run errands, keep his computer running, and mostly just keep him sane as a friend. He pays me a little, but I would do it for nothing. Friends are a lot more important than money. (He died after I first wrote this.)

Then I ride home just about in time for dinner. It’s a rough, hilly route, taking me about an hour each way. Mostly I spend the time thinking. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the majestic failures of my nation, particularly the government. Of course, in theory, it requires the people’s acquiescence. Even if they were lied to, that’s no excuse for lacking skepticism. All humans fail, most are pretty weak and passive, and plenty are just plain evil. So our nation is going down the tubes, and I suspect our so-called Western Civilization is right behind it.

That’s probably just, since Western Civilization is founded on lies. There is this broad assumption human reason can handle everything. No doubt we could eventually figure out the mechanics of everything observable, but the most important stuff can’t be observed or tested. The real essence of reality can only be revealed, and only the Creator knows what can be revealed. Yeah, I’m one of those committed Christian types who refuse to entertain questions about our accountability to the Bible. I have a degree in Religion from a Baptist college. However, I’m not the kind of Fundie who calls the Bible “infallible” because that misses the point. Actually, that sort of thinking reflects a deep infection of Western rational thought. I adhere to the Hebraic cultural logic of the Bible, which is quite different from what most Western Evangelicals teach.

The entire frame of reference in most Western Christianity is rooted in Aristotle and Aquinas. Some branches are more Platonic, but equally mistaken. The Bible assumes a much higher logic. It’s not about what things do, or what is their nature (“being”), but about serving. The focus is on the process, the manner of doing, and questions of being are ludicrous. It matters not what you do or what you are, only whom you serve. That’s just the starting point, and it would take a whole library to explain the differences between Western Christian assumptions and those of the culture from which the Bible was written.

I suppose one thing I teach which most Christians would recognize is the vast difference between those who serve Christ and those who do not. You can’t choose to serve Him. If He doesn’t choose you, it won’t happen. That’s because your spirit is dead until He brings it to life with the presence of His Spirit. Until that happens, you can’t possibly comprehend what the Bible is about. Oh, you’ll believe you got it, but you really can’t get it. You are either inside Him or outside. Nor does that imply some snotty superiority, since not one of us earns anything. We remain pretty useless, except in those times when the power of His Spirit makes things work. The only thing we can contribute to the process comes from Him in the first place: a desire to please Him and serve Him.

If your arguments against my work don’t take into account the unique logic of the Bible, you lose automatically. Not because I don’t understand common analytical logic, but because I know its limits. I can be wrong all day long, and I’ll be the first to admit it when you show me. However, my God is never wrong. While it’s quite certain I don’t understand everything about Him and His revelation, I do understand what He demands of me at any given time. When you attack something I understand is required by Him, you become a sad and silly joke. Don’t waste your breath, because I’ll be dead before my commitment changes.

Frankly I expect to die over that very thing. The history of the world runs in cycles, and right now it’s running against people with my kind of commitment to God. Unlike others, I don’t consider abstract notions like Liberty worth dying for, so I won’t be fighting for it. I have no fear of incarceration, slavery or death. However, there are some folks in this world for whom I cannot make that decision. Talk all you want about abstract rights, but I don’t really care — when any thug attacks an innocent life, it’s my duty to intervene if I can. It won’t matter if that thug wears a government badge of authority, I recognize no human authority which contradicts my best understanding of what God requires of me. Given our long slide into a police state has just about reached the point of no return, I feel it’s likely I’m going to die in the near future protecting someone from oppression.

I’m looking forward to it. There’s really not all that much in this world which holds me.

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