A Restart But Not a Hard Boot.

I am never going to post on this blog again if I don't re-establish some parameters. I can't even blog about why I'm not blogging, it seems.

So first things first, an update schedule, and a fitting punishment. I am going to tentatively claim that Monday will be blog day, starting next week. If I don't post on Monday I must share a video of myself apologizing in iambic pentameter by the end of the week. A heroic couplet. If I don't post it the line requirement doubles. And so on.

Now that that's out of the way, I can ramble a bit and you can ignore me or hang on my every word or somewhere along that continuum while I do so.

I have entered a funk, which happens to me a lot. I moved in the middle of spring and I haven't been in any positive sort of groove ever since.

This is because I feel like I need to be home to be comfortable. In typical male fashion, I think this entails essentially space over which I have dominion. Maybe it's not so oppressive as that, but I certainly don't feel like I am in an environment where I can expect any level of control over my sensory input. Wearing headphones to block out tv noise is not, in my estimation, a legitimate form of control.

Part of it also includes responsibility. If a space is "mine," then I feel it is my responsibility to care for it. And I don't feel that where I am. Thus I cannot get comfortable and my focus levels are at an all time low.

Couple this with drastically different waking hours than I am accustomed to and you have a formula for anti-productivity.

Even that attempt at personal analysis feels like an excuse. Everything feels like an excuse.

I am also frustrated by the circumstances keeping me in this position. Originally Rachael and I were going to find a place to live within the first month or so of living in Ann Arbor, but we discovered that we wouldn't get the hours we had been before moving and so the funds weren't there. It doesn't help that Ann Arbor is a pretty expensive region to live in. We keep waiting for a change, keep poking at possibilities, but nothing seems to be panning out and it's taking its toll on both of us.

Part of the reason we're locked into this region is because I want to go to school here and it doesn't make sense to sign a lease somewhere else only to get in. So bottom line is we're in A2 until March at the earliest when I find out the results of my second round of applications.

I have to learn to overcome my discontent or nothing is going to change. Thus this blog post. Because just ramming my will against my emotions because I think it'll be good for me will be nowhere near as effective as setting some concrete goals. Like updating my blog consistently again. And putting real effort into my writing. All while keeping up with my poetry and short story assignments which have the perk of colleagues to whom I am beholden.

Obviously this a step, but as humans we tend to break everything down into processes to understand them. The next step is setting aside a solid time and place for my work.

And prayer. God knows I need to be doing far more of that than I am.

I can think of a dozen different segues into other posts I have thought about making but for now I am going to end this here. It's good to be back, such as this is. If you read this all the way through, I want you to bug me about this. Hold me to my schedule. To my iambic sorries. And pray for me.

I'm not sick. I am not in trouble. But I need to be better than I am, because right now I'm not what I could be. And I want to live up to my potential.

Not just for me. For you. For God. For everything.

Sway Ring

Hmm...
This soap box is getting a little creaky...
And...
Sudsy...

Anyway, I've got more stuff on my chest I'd like to slough off.  Maybe a shower would do it better, but hey!  What else is a blog for?  Today, let's talk about swearing.

I know what you're thinking.  "Man, eff that ess!  This is bee ess, and I'm not effing gonna put up with that noise, eff-wad."

Or, you know, not that.

I'll sum up my grievance with swearing about as briefly as I can.  It makes you stupid.

Now, there's an article on cracked out there citing studies that suggest maybe venting your frustration with vehement words can increase your pain tolerance and have other health benefits, but you know what?  That's a $%^#y way to deal with your problems.

Here's how swearing makes you stupid, and makes everyone around you more stupid.

At least in today's society, swear-words are words that are being pared away from their meanings, like skin off a potato.  This is because the words are used outside contexts they were originally intended for.

Like telling people to get their "S together," or saying that you "know your S."  These sorts of uses for a word that's supposed to mean "feces" equate the contents of a person's life with something as strongly negative as our solid waste.  And seriously?  You want to compare your life and that of others to useless waste products?  Constantly?

Dumb.

Or, you know, using "F" in its several forms as nothing more than extra syllables to nominally improve the rhythm of your speech.  Because that's really worth it.

Or asking God to condemn people and things into the fires of hell, when you don't believe that God or hell exist and thus what you've said amounts to a great big pile of vague maliciousness.

So maybe what I mean to say when I say "swearing makes you stupid" is "swearing effectively communicates useless, non-constructive concepts" like senseless anger and ill-will that if you're honest with yourself you probably don't really mean.

And you know what the prevalence of this is doing?  It's setting powerful precedent for stripping things we say of meaning, turning the sprawling and magnificent edifice of language into so much drivel.

Actually, I don't know if I have anything else to say about this.  Say what you mean.

I'll try to do the same.

There.  No more soap box.

So I got a job yesterday.  I am glad of this.  I'll start after I get the background check sorted out.  That means my wife and I both have jobs and we can start earning a good bit of money.

And maybe not stay in my parents' house anymore.  And, you know, start living something that resembles a normal life.

Because to be honest, where I was at this summer was a sort of limbo.  It'll be good to move on.

Peace out.

Taller Ants

I'm just gonna sort of...
climb up on this soap box...
and...

HI GUYS.  Tolerance is dangerous.  Ah—ah—ah!  Hear me out before you string me up by my uncivilized beliefs.  I've got stuff to say.

So let's say you have neighbors, and these neighbors are different than you.  No, they don't have different levels of melanin or denser muscle construction or a condition that leaves them with a height deficit—or rather, if they do have any of these things it doesn't matter for our discussion, because seriously?  They're different because they make different choices with their lifestyle.

Choices you disagree with.

Now there's a couple ways this can go down, depending on whether you care about the choices they're making.  For the purposes of this thought experiment, let's say these folks your neighbors are Meat-Eaters.  Shudder.  Or not shudder.  The experiment's flexible.  Now also for the purpose of this experiment you and your family don't eat meat.

Here's some ways this can be the case.  Your family could have a pretty poor biological disposition towards meat, one that makes it either untenable or merely unpleasant to consume meat, so meat just isn't a thing you do.  Your family could also hold animals of any kind in such high regard that the thought of killing them and stuffing them down your gob leaves you in a case of the sweats.

In the former instance, it's unlikely you would have anything against the choice to eat meat, other than perhaps a lack of the perspective of those who can actually and literally stomach the muscle (and other organs) of beasts.  In the latter instance you have a choice to make.

You can disapprove of your neighbors' Meat-Eating, or you can shrug it away as just a different life choice than yours.  Someone who wants to make things simple would call these the intolerant and tolerant choices, respectively.

And yes, to make it clear, in our culture "tolerance" now refers to whether you disapprove of a life choice you disagree with or just impassively disagree.  If you didn't think that, reanalyze your definition.  It's fine to disagree with that definition of tolerance (and thus intolerance), but just know that—at least as far I as I read the culture—that's what people in a public mean when they're talking about tolerance.

So how is this "tolerance" dangerous?

Our cultural pressure is towards not caring what choices other people make with their lives, even friends and family.  We're not supposed to disapprove of things, except "intolerance."  So the only thing we're really supposed to disapprove of is disapproving of things.

When you don't care about the choices other people are gonna make, you're not going to do anything about it.  When you disapprove, it's entirely possible you'll at least going to say something to them.

But you're not going to go kill them, or cuss them out in their homes, because let's face it kids, that's just unconscionable behavior.  That isn't "intolerance," it's straight-up honest bigotry.

You know what's not bigotry?  Saying, "I think what you're doing is wrong, and I think you should stop."  And if they don't stop, but what they're doing doesn't warrant putting them under house arrest or some such, then you let it go, because that stuff can poison you.

You see, I hate homosexuality.  The lifestyle choice.  The lifestyle itself.  I think it's disgusting and wrong and sinful.  But it's just a different shade of the adulterous lifestyle, which I also hate and think is disgusting and wrong and sinful.  So yeah, there's a couple dozen million people in the US whose lifestyle choices I disapprove of.  And I don't mind saying it.  I also don't mind saying I think what you're doing is wrong, and I think you should stop.

And like other things I disapprove of, it sometimes makes me angry to see people making what I believe are dangerous, harmful mistakes.  But you know what, I'm not gonna kill you.  I'm probably not even going to get in a shouting match with you unless you press the issue with me, because I'd rather not have this get to be a big hairy mess that ruins the things we've got going.

I'm a middle child.  People pleaser and all that.

But okay, so you can get harassed for "intolerance" if you tell someone you think what they're doing is wrong and you think they should stop.  You know what that discourages?  Standing up for causes.

So let's say your neighbors are Meat-Eaters, but the meat they happen to be eating happens to be people.  And you really, really don't like that.  You think it pretty well desecrates the dignity of human beings, and that's just not okay.

But what if our culture says, "Eh, we've got a population surplus anyway."  Remember, this is a thought experiment.  I'm not saying our culture has espoused this unthinkable position, but I am saying that groups of people have decided to approve (or at least look the other way from) terrible things in the past, and it's probably going to happen again.  So culture's like:  "Let them eat their people, since they aren't actually killing anyone, they're just getting hobo meat from the morgue."

And you're still thinking not okay.

What do you do?

I'm gonna put my foot down here and say that cannibalism is never okay.  I've got really good, Christian friends who disagree with me—or at least I think they do.  There is a sort of debate about what happens in extreme conditions.  Now for me, if we're all caught in the wilderness and the only hope for survival is for a person to eat a person, I honestly believe it's better for everyone to die.  That is one quantification of the value I put on human life and the human body.

So in this hypothetical scenario, I'm gonna say it's definitely wrong for your neighbors to be eating people, and they need to stop doing it.  I don't care how old their tradition is or how well-ingrained into their cultural psyche it has become.  You don't eat people.  Stop it.  In fact, I think it's probably something they should be forced to stop doing.

I mean, I'm not going to go kill them in their sleep or cuss them out in their homes, because that's just unconscionable behavior.  But I might organize a group of like-minded people who are horrified by these neighbors' behavior, and we would use proper channels and social pressure to make the neighbors stop eating people.

Is that fair, whether or not we succeed?  Even though these people-eaters might be devastated by what happens—even though it ruins their way of life?  Or is that intolerance, and thus unacceptable?

Now you're probably thinking "there's a world of difference between people-eaters and homosexuals."  Yeah, and killing babies before they're born.  It's a great big world of difference.  Sure.

Not everyone agrees with how much distance there is between adultery and murder.  And if you espouse "tolerance" there isn't much room for you to disapprove of that disagreement.  I hope I've made clear that it isn't right to go campaigning against the rights of people for shelter and food, but I don't believe the pursuit of happiness gives you permission to do everything that makes you happy.

We're sick, humanity.  We like things that break our minds and our spirits.  We self-destruct as a force of habit.  It makes us "happy."  Especially when we don't know a better happiness.

I think the pursuit of happiness is a little more about the search, about weighing what is good and what is bad, and a little less about doing whatever you first think is good for you.

So yeah, you may not be convinced that tolerance is a dangerous thing to espouse, but that's okay.  I'll let you keep believing in the idea so long as you don't cram it down my throat.  In fact, let's just not cram things down peoples' throats, okay?

Feel free to comment either at the bottom of this post or on The Facebook, so long as you can keep a civil tongue.  Let's disagree, even disapprove, without resorting to maliciousness.

I'm probably gonna soap box about something else again tomorrow, in case this really wasn't your cup of tea.  Don't worry, this isn't gonna go on as long as Forget and Not Slow Down did.  I honestly don't have that much to rant about.

Okay that was a lie.  But I'm still not gonna go on about this kinda stuff too long.

Also, I have a job interview today.  Woo.

-shrugs-