"I'm flying home tonight, I've got a ticket bound for my shore ..."
That's a line from a Michelle Tumes song that I always sing to myself when I fly home. Unfortunately I am flying home this time for the funeral of my friend and pastor, Dr. Scott G. Bauer. There are a lot of thoughts in my head about Pastor Scott, which I hope to be able to write down some time in the near future. Now is not the time, though, and I don't think is the best venue for them. Maybe later, after I've had a chance to attend the service and write to his family.
Death is a very funny thing. On the one hand I think, "would that he were not dead ..." But I also think that is a very silly thought. Death, by itself, is neither a calamity nor an ending, and in many ways it is a blessing. It is strange to me how human nature cries out for an end to death, an end to pain, an end to suffering, and yet views with horror the very thing which delivers that release. Partially of course my grief at his death is the grief of losing him ... as if he had gone on a very long trip to a place I will never visit. But there is a part of me too which abhors death itself, and I think that is a very silly part of me.
As a side note, the more I study Greek the prettier it seems to me. I think it looks pretty, too. Unfortunately I do not think it looks pretty in Roman characters. This presents me with a problem, because more and more I want my blognames to be in Greek, but when I transliterate them they look silly to me. Well, I shall have to think of something creative.
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Monday, October 20, 2003
One more thing an infantry simulator ought to have: no fourth wall. In the first person view, most shooters give the appearance of perspective without the reality. That is, it appears that your rifle projects in front of you, but in fact it is a two-dimensional projection which only occupies the vertical plane of the monitor screen. This makes handguns and all forms of melee combat fundamentally obsolete. What is the real reason that soldiers carry pistols? Not because they're afraid that they might run out of ammunition for their primary weapon! If that were the case they would replace the pistol with extra clips for their rifle. No, soldiers carry handguns because they're handy, because rifles are long and unwieldy in indoor situations, and there are some cases when you cannot use them (e.g., when you are toe to toe with your foe). If an infantry simulator gives me a rifle, I want it to exist as an object with the proper dimensions in the world. If I run into my foe I shouldn't be able to shoot him with that weapon. Similarly, suppose I am a man with a knife facing a man with a rifle. I should be able (assuming he doesn't gun me down, of course) to run up to him so close that his rifle is worse than useless, leaving him at the mercy of my knife.
Friday, October 17, 2003
It's game post time. Feel free to skip if this is not a side of me you're interested in. But just to be fair, this is connected to the themes of the last several posts, at least in my mind. Also, I'm posting this here (as opposed to at www.tribesroleplayers.org) because I have no desire to hand Marweas another piece of "we hate Sierra" prose. That said:
Tribes: Vengeance is on its way (though admittedly it's a ways off) and I'm expecting to be disappointed. Let me clarify that. I am not concerned that Vengeance will be a bad Tribes game. I am not concerned over game balance. I am not even especially concerned that Irrational is going to screw with the fabric of the Earthsiege\\Starsiege\\Tribes universe. I am not actually consciously familiar with Irrational, but if M'lakMavet has faith in them then that's good enough for me until I actually see them screw something up. I am fully expecting them to turn out a game which nails their goals dead-on.
I just don't like those goals.
And that is the reason I am expecting to be disappointed. Call me a hidebound retroactive DOS-hugger, but I still think of the "Tribes" franchise in terms of the early 1990s. And the dominating factor of the four franchise games released during that period was that they were science fiction simulators. Granted they had some of the standard science-fiction absurditiesas their base assumptions (e.g., the bigger the autocannon, the shorter the range), but if you accepted the basic fabric of the world they took themselves seriously, and (most importantly) they invited the player to take the world seriously.
The advent of the Starsiege era in the late 1990s saw, in my opinion, a fundamental shift in this doctrine: Dynamix added more of a world, but it took it less seriously. Compared to Earthsiege 2, and adjusting for the technological capabilities of the two games' eras, Starsiege was an arcade game. It had lots of good ideas, I'm not disputing that - but it didn't feel real. There was a dissonance between what you knew the world to be (e.g., full of hulking engines of death armed with a motley assortment of weapons) and what your experience of it was (e.g., a dimensionless vehicle armed exclusively with blasters). For a variety of reasons, tactics were boiled down: instead of a serious attempt to implement the "walking tank" idea by actually making HERC pilots think like tankers, the tactical problem was dogfighting in two dimensions - that is to say, instead of "like tanks, only with more options and things to worry about" the problem was "like jets, only with less options and less things to worry about." The universe claimed to have advanced, but anybody could see that the game didn't bear that claim out. You weren't presented with a simulation of the world, you were presented with a caricature.
Then we come to the Tribes series, the flaws and virtues of which I am not interested in discussing. In many ways the Tribes games have been wonderful shooters, and no doubt the next game will be too. But I don't want a shooter. I want an infantry simulator. I want the franchise to go back to its original distinctiveness, and that is not likely to happen.
Let me make one thing clear: I am not asking that the game be paced slower (something which Marweas appears to live in perpetual opposition to). I am asking that the game present a believable representation of battle armor combat. A few things that I think an infantry simulator should have but that I don't expect Vengeance to seriously contemplate:
1). The player should have subsystems which can fail. Nobody would accept a mecha simulator in which you couldn't blow off weapons and limbs, disable key subsystems, etc. That just wouldn't feel realistic. Well, that standard doesn't change in an FPS. An infantry simulator should not be peopled with moving shooting range targets. If the player (or his victim) is hit in the arm, he should lose the use of that arm. Or that leg. Or (if we're feeling ambitious) the hand, or the foot. If that means you can't shoot as well (or can't shoot certain weapons at all), or you can't run anymore ... well, that's what you get for allowing your limb to be broken.
2). A reasonable tactical model. An illustration: Earthsiege had a real-world tactical model (late 20th-century tanks). BattleTech, much as I love it, does not. There are certain things which are common to combat at all times. One of these is the supremacy of maneuver. The first problem a soldier faces is never "can I outshoot my opponent?" and it never has been. For an infantry simulator to feel real (i.e., like a simulation of something that could actually happen, in real life) the player must be presented with viable ambush alternatives. Closely related to the supremacy of maneuver is the importance of reconaissance. Reconaissance has always been and ought to always be of paramount importance, and the game model should reflect that. The game model should not push the player towards protracted gunfights like fugitives from some sort of ahistorical Old West. Use of cover is another. Riflemen, tankers, chopper jocks - all understand the value of putting something between them and incoming fire, and the game should allow that. Which means allowing people to go prone and crawl (the fact that crouch-waddling has historically been preferred to crawling makes absolutely no sense to me. You try moving while crouched, then while prone, and see which you prefer). Of course there are times when "hitting the dirt" is inappropriate (e.g., when receiving artillery in the woods) - and that should be incorporated too. But infantry combat will not feel real if there is no cover.
3). Death. Ground combat is not about killing people; it's about making the enemy stop fighting - it's about morale. It will always be about morale, whatever you wrap around the infantryman's body. In a computer game of course this is difficult, particularly in multiplayer. But you can approach the fundamental problem of ground combat if you actually let people die, instead of letting them respawn. Force people to actually take care of themselves and they'll start to behave like soldiers.
4). Weapons that people would use. Of course soldiers will always complain about the inadequacies of their weapons, and weapons will always be, for one reason or another, at least partially inadequate. But very, very rarely have people fought with wholly inadequate weapons. If you want to construct a universe where infantry can travel at 100 m/s, that's just fine. But, given such a world, soldiers would not fight with weapons which throw their projectiles at 87m/s. Heck, I have a paintball marker which can shoot at a higher velocity than that. This is not an issue in a game where men are limited to more or less their natural mobility. If you are going to postulate that men can move as fast, or faster, than cars on a freeway, you had best start paying attention to the muzzle velocities of your weapons. As it is, it would be easier to hit a skiing light with a two thousand-year old bazooka than with a spinfusor. When the discrepancy between target velocity and bullet velocity becomes that great, you've got a big problem (or else you need to explain why the battle armor tactical problem is akin to that faced by World War II submarines).
Of course Irrational isn't setting out to make an infantry simulator, and Sierra doesn't want one. Personally I'm not at all sure that the market wouldn't like one - we've been desensitized to one-life rounds ever since Counter-Strike, and it seems to me that after Soldier of Fortune 2 the idea of disabled limbs and so forth is one whose time has come. In fact the existence of battle armor would be a huge crutch to the public. For one thing you wouldn't even have to worry about injury until your shields were depleted (and wouldn't it be nice to see shields - a staple of the franchise since day one - make a real appearance in game, instead of lurking in the realms of after-market rationalization?). For another, you could postulate some sort of Elemental-style dealing with injury - sure things would be fuzzy and your broken leg might be locked in an armored cast, but you would be able to walk. And as for muzzle velocities (my number-one pet peeve with the Tribes series), well, again, that's been with the public since Counter-Strike. And personally I don't find it very hard to imagine Joe Gamer getting a lot of satisfaction out of popping poor fools out of the air left and right (as Johnny Rico reminds us, "it's tempting to get the most out of your jump gear - but don't do it!").
Tribes: Vengeance is on its way (though admittedly it's a ways off) and I'm expecting to be disappointed. Let me clarify that. I am not concerned that Vengeance will be a bad Tribes game. I am not concerned over game balance. I am not even especially concerned that Irrational is going to screw with the fabric of the Earthsiege\\Starsiege\\Tribes universe. I am not actually consciously familiar with Irrational, but if M'lakMavet has faith in them then that's good enough for me until I actually see them screw something up. I am fully expecting them to turn out a game which nails their goals dead-on.
I just don't like those goals.
And that is the reason I am expecting to be disappointed. Call me a hidebound retroactive DOS-hugger, but I still think of the "Tribes" franchise in terms of the early 1990s. And the dominating factor of the four franchise games released during that period was that they were science fiction simulators. Granted they had some of the standard science-fiction absurditiesas their base assumptions (e.g., the bigger the autocannon, the shorter the range), but if you accepted the basic fabric of the world they took themselves seriously, and (most importantly) they invited the player to take the world seriously.
The advent of the Starsiege era in the late 1990s saw, in my opinion, a fundamental shift in this doctrine: Dynamix added more of a world, but it took it less seriously. Compared to Earthsiege 2, and adjusting for the technological capabilities of the two games' eras, Starsiege was an arcade game. It had lots of good ideas, I'm not disputing that - but it didn't feel real. There was a dissonance between what you knew the world to be (e.g., full of hulking engines of death armed with a motley assortment of weapons) and what your experience of it was (e.g., a dimensionless vehicle armed exclusively with blasters). For a variety of reasons, tactics were boiled down: instead of a serious attempt to implement the "walking tank" idea by actually making HERC pilots think like tankers, the tactical problem was dogfighting in two dimensions - that is to say, instead of "like tanks, only with more options and things to worry about" the problem was "like jets, only with less options and less things to worry about." The universe claimed to have advanced, but anybody could see that the game didn't bear that claim out. You weren't presented with a simulation of the world, you were presented with a caricature.
Then we come to the Tribes series, the flaws and virtues of which I am not interested in discussing. In many ways the Tribes games have been wonderful shooters, and no doubt the next game will be too. But I don't want a shooter. I want an infantry simulator. I want the franchise to go back to its original distinctiveness, and that is not likely to happen.
Let me make one thing clear: I am not asking that the game be paced slower (something which Marweas appears to live in perpetual opposition to). I am asking that the game present a believable representation of battle armor combat. A few things that I think an infantry simulator should have but that I don't expect Vengeance to seriously contemplate:
1). The player should have subsystems which can fail. Nobody would accept a mecha simulator in which you couldn't blow off weapons and limbs, disable key subsystems, etc. That just wouldn't feel realistic. Well, that standard doesn't change in an FPS. An infantry simulator should not be peopled with moving shooting range targets. If the player (or his victim) is hit in the arm, he should lose the use of that arm. Or that leg. Or (if we're feeling ambitious) the hand, or the foot. If that means you can't shoot as well (or can't shoot certain weapons at all), or you can't run anymore ... well, that's what you get for allowing your limb to be broken.
2). A reasonable tactical model. An illustration: Earthsiege had a real-world tactical model (late 20th-century tanks). BattleTech, much as I love it, does not. There are certain things which are common to combat at all times. One of these is the supremacy of maneuver. The first problem a soldier faces is never "can I outshoot my opponent?" and it never has been. For an infantry simulator to feel real (i.e., like a simulation of something that could actually happen, in real life) the player must be presented with viable ambush alternatives. Closely related to the supremacy of maneuver is the importance of reconaissance. Reconaissance has always been and ought to always be of paramount importance, and the game model should reflect that. The game model should not push the player towards protracted gunfights like fugitives from some sort of ahistorical Old West. Use of cover is another. Riflemen, tankers, chopper jocks - all understand the value of putting something between them and incoming fire, and the game should allow that. Which means allowing people to go prone and crawl (the fact that crouch-waddling has historically been preferred to crawling makes absolutely no sense to me. You try moving while crouched, then while prone, and see which you prefer). Of course there are times when "hitting the dirt" is inappropriate (e.g., when receiving artillery in the woods) - and that should be incorporated too. But infantry combat will not feel real if there is no cover.
3). Death. Ground combat is not about killing people; it's about making the enemy stop fighting - it's about morale. It will always be about morale, whatever you wrap around the infantryman's body. In a computer game of course this is difficult, particularly in multiplayer. But you can approach the fundamental problem of ground combat if you actually let people die, instead of letting them respawn. Force people to actually take care of themselves and they'll start to behave like soldiers.
4). Weapons that people would use. Of course soldiers will always complain about the inadequacies of their weapons, and weapons will always be, for one reason or another, at least partially inadequate. But very, very rarely have people fought with wholly inadequate weapons. If you want to construct a universe where infantry can travel at 100 m/s, that's just fine. But, given such a world, soldiers would not fight with weapons which throw their projectiles at 87m/s. Heck, I have a paintball marker which can shoot at a higher velocity than that. This is not an issue in a game where men are limited to more or less their natural mobility. If you are going to postulate that men can move as fast, or faster, than cars on a freeway, you had best start paying attention to the muzzle velocities of your weapons. As it is, it would be easier to hit a skiing light with a two thousand-year old bazooka than with a spinfusor. When the discrepancy between target velocity and bullet velocity becomes that great, you've got a big problem (or else you need to explain why the battle armor tactical problem is akin to that faced by World War II submarines).
Of course Irrational isn't setting out to make an infantry simulator, and Sierra doesn't want one. Personally I'm not at all sure that the market wouldn't like one - we've been desensitized to one-life rounds ever since Counter-Strike, and it seems to me that after Soldier of Fortune 2 the idea of disabled limbs and so forth is one whose time has come. In fact the existence of battle armor would be a huge crutch to the public. For one thing you wouldn't even have to worry about injury until your shields were depleted (and wouldn't it be nice to see shields - a staple of the franchise since day one - make a real appearance in game, instead of lurking in the realms of after-market rationalization?). For another, you could postulate some sort of Elemental-style dealing with injury - sure things would be fuzzy and your broken leg might be locked in an armored cast, but you would be able to walk. And as for muzzle velocities (my number-one pet peeve with the Tribes series), well, again, that's been with the public since Counter-Strike. And personally I don't find it very hard to imagine Joe Gamer getting a lot of satisfaction out of popping poor fools out of the air left and right (as Johnny Rico reminds us, "it's tempting to get the most out of your jump gear - but don't do it!").
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
It's been a while since I updated, and I reckon it's time. I have been cast as the Pirate King in the Savoyards' production of Pirates of Penzance, which is ever so much fun. Pirates is the highlight of my week, even if Archimedes and Phoebe aren't in it this time around. I love singing with this cast - I love that it isn't just this cast, it's my cast. I am part of a company again, a company with good points and weak points and foibles and people to get to know. I love doing stage work again, singing songs where I'm encouraged to act - and oh, what a fun part this is! How wonderful it is to be able to roar at the top of my lungs one moment, and crack a joke in the middle of the song the next! And of course I love singing this music, because the numbers are expressive and the lyrics are clever and witty. And also it's no mean feat to take these inverted words and fun melodies and shape them in a way that they mean something to the audience. Succeed or fail, it's a great challenge, and lots of fun.
I just got back from my short story class, which is thankfully getting less shallow. One thing I will say for that class, though: reading Chekhov and Joyce has actually given me a greater appreciation for modern fiction, and short stories in general. It is nice to see that there are authors who had the guts to feel something other than despair and hopelessness at the state of the world - authors who could see where the world was going and write, as it were, "Hell no, we won't go!"
Of course this has also given me a greater appreciation for the fiction that I actually read. I admire the aforementioned authors for protesting, but they didn't actually offer any sort of suggestion as to where we should go - in fact, if my professor is to be believed (and on this point I think he is) they didn't think it was the writer's business to answer that question. As for me, I'm aware that the world is full of terrible things and that people are declining and paralyzed and oppressed and all that other hellish nonsense. I don't need James Joyce to tell me that.
This is why I prefer other kinds of fiction. It is not escapism, not in the dictionary sense of "The tendency to seek, or the practice of seeking, distraction from what normally has to be endured" (thank you, OED). What I am looking for is encouragement, the "trumpet's martial sound," as the policemen in Pirates put it. I read Honor Harrington and Tortall because they offer visions of character: not just of men and women who know that there is something better, but who have some idea of what that something is, and are determined to live it, come what may. It is not distraction that I seek, but inspiration: something to rouse my fighting spirit. Despair can wait. There's a war on.
I just got back from my short story class, which is thankfully getting less shallow. One thing I will say for that class, though: reading Chekhov and Joyce has actually given me a greater appreciation for modern fiction, and short stories in general. It is nice to see that there are authors who had the guts to feel something other than despair and hopelessness at the state of the world - authors who could see where the world was going and write, as it were, "Hell no, we won't go!"
Of course this has also given me a greater appreciation for the fiction that I actually read. I admire the aforementioned authors for protesting, but they didn't actually offer any sort of suggestion as to where we should go - in fact, if my professor is to be believed (and on this point I think he is) they didn't think it was the writer's business to answer that question. As for me, I'm aware that the world is full of terrible things and that people are declining and paralyzed and oppressed and all that other hellish nonsense. I don't need James Joyce to tell me that.
This is why I prefer other kinds of fiction. It is not escapism, not in the dictionary sense of "The tendency to seek, or the practice of seeking, distraction from what normally has to be endured" (thank you, OED). What I am looking for is encouragement, the "trumpet's martial sound," as the policemen in Pirates put it. I read Honor Harrington and Tortall because they offer visions of character: not just of men and women who know that there is something better, but who have some idea of what that something is, and are determined to live it, come what may. It is not distraction that I seek, but inspiration: something to rouse my fighting spirit. Despair can wait. There's a war on.
Monday, September 29, 2003
Speaking of decompression, the a cappella auditioning madness has ended and I am once more At School in fact as well as geography. I'm listening to Disney songs, which is all the proof you should need. I have played through Jedi Academy once already, and I have fairly detailed thoughts on it that I might spew forth at a later date, since it's been a while since I've had a game review post here. (I give it about an 87% as an overall gaming experience.) I am seized with a desire to see Beauty and the Beast and Moulin Rouge to celebrate the resumption of school. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am most assuredly Back To School.
I have now officially become a Testimony alumnus, which is just fine with me. Not that I won't miss the group, of course, and it would have been nice to be in a group with Archimedes too, and besides all of that the new Testimony absolutely rocks and I think they would have been a lot of fun to fellowship and sing with and serve with. Also I perceive that God is moving Testimony into another phase of his plan for the group, and it would have been really nifty to be around for that. But instead of rejoining Testimony I have joined the Stanford Savoyards in their production of Pirates of Penzance as the Pirate King. The show is going to be a lot of fun and stands a very good chance of being an excellent show, plus I love my part.
Of course the real reason I am part of the Savoyards and not part of Testimony is that I feel like God has called me to the one and not the other. I say "feel" because that's the expression, but of course analyzing this sort of thing is rather difficult. I am not part of the play because it makes me happy, although it fills me with an ineffable happiness which kept me awake for at least an hour last night. This is one of the things that makes me trust God - every time I do something because he tells me to, it ends up being the most wonderful thing, in ways that I could not have imagined, even if it was something which by all rights ought not to have been delightful at all.
And I am not a part of the play because of anything written in the word, although there is plenty of logos about the whole thing. I would not precisely call myself a theatre person, but there is something about theatre which thrills me, something about acting which makes sense to me as a way of communication in a way that even writing does not. It does make sense to go back to a place that is a part of me, and which has been neglected for a long time. It also makes sense that I be in a place where ministry would be by contact, as it were, like yeast. Ministry activities which are designed as ministry activities make no sense to me, although I will not deny that there is a place for them in the battle plan of the Kingdom. But ministering to a theatre company, or through a theatre company - that is done primarily by being a person in whom Jesus lives, whom the Spirit is transforming. It is ministry through leadership, both of which are rooted in personal excellence - and that is something which makes sense to me.
It also makes sense to me that I would leave Testimony this year, precisely because it is the start of something new, and the group is growing more and more into its existence as a ministry. The ministry of Testimony is never something I have understood very deeply, although I have done my best to be a part of it. But I can see very clearly how I was part of the work God was doing in Testimony for the past three years, and that work has been established. I daresay that if I were to remain I would stand a very good chance of getting in the way. One has the sense that something big is going down, and I don't think it's something that my gifts are well suited to. So I don't find it surprising that I have been reassigned, as it were - nor do I find it surprising that I love my new post.
Not that I know precisely why I am in the Savoyards, or "what good will come of it." One cannot go around attempting to do good all the time. For one thing there's more good things you (and here I mean "you" generally) ought to be doing than you can be doing, if all you have to go on is your own moral code or the Scriptures or whatever. For another thing you have a comparatively bad idea of what good you actually can do, having no way of knowing if any particular action will ultimately turn out for good or for bad, or how far the ramifications will go and whether or not they will be ultimately good or bad in the end. You would need to be both omniscient and atemporal to have a satisfactorily long view of something like that. And finally, you have a very poor idea of what will actually be good for you - what will give you the requisite experiences, skills, and whatnot to do important work later on in life. This is why it is much better to go around doing what one ought to do rather than go around trying to figure out how you can do the most good, or make the biggest difference in the world: you simply don't have enough information about the plan. The only way one can possibly hope for the church to make a difference in the world is by trusting God to know what he's about, and stick to the plan regardless of how "important" it seems (we cannot all blow up the Death Star. Where would Luke have been if the man in charge of shipping those proton torpedoes to Yavin 4 had decided that logistics wasn't as "important" as flying X-Wings?). The Watchmaker must not only be in the watch (thank you, Alanna); he must be communicating to the cogs what to do - and they have to be used to listening for instructions. If we don't have that, the cosmic Resistance which is the church might as well be Norsemen - fighting on the right side, but doomed to impotence.
I have now officially become a Testimony alumnus, which is just fine with me. Not that I won't miss the group, of course, and it would have been nice to be in a group with Archimedes too, and besides all of that the new Testimony absolutely rocks and I think they would have been a lot of fun to fellowship and sing with and serve with. Also I perceive that God is moving Testimony into another phase of his plan for the group, and it would have been really nifty to be around for that. But instead of rejoining Testimony I have joined the Stanford Savoyards in their production of Pirates of Penzance as the Pirate King. The show is going to be a lot of fun and stands a very good chance of being an excellent show, plus I love my part.
Of course the real reason I am part of the Savoyards and not part of Testimony is that I feel like God has called me to the one and not the other. I say "feel" because that's the expression, but of course analyzing this sort of thing is rather difficult. I am not part of the play because it makes me happy, although it fills me with an ineffable happiness which kept me awake for at least an hour last night. This is one of the things that makes me trust God - every time I do something because he tells me to, it ends up being the most wonderful thing, in ways that I could not have imagined, even if it was something which by all rights ought not to have been delightful at all.
And I am not a part of the play because of anything written in the word, although there is plenty of logos about the whole thing. I would not precisely call myself a theatre person, but there is something about theatre which thrills me, something about acting which makes sense to me as a way of communication in a way that even writing does not. It does make sense to go back to a place that is a part of me, and which has been neglected for a long time. It also makes sense that I be in a place where ministry would be by contact, as it were, like yeast. Ministry activities which are designed as ministry activities make no sense to me, although I will not deny that there is a place for them in the battle plan of the Kingdom. But ministering to a theatre company, or through a theatre company - that is done primarily by being a person in whom Jesus lives, whom the Spirit is transforming. It is ministry through leadership, both of which are rooted in personal excellence - and that is something which makes sense to me.
It also makes sense to me that I would leave Testimony this year, precisely because it is the start of something new, and the group is growing more and more into its existence as a ministry. The ministry of Testimony is never something I have understood very deeply, although I have done my best to be a part of it. But I can see very clearly how I was part of the work God was doing in Testimony for the past three years, and that work has been established. I daresay that if I were to remain I would stand a very good chance of getting in the way. One has the sense that something big is going down, and I don't think it's something that my gifts are well suited to. So I don't find it surprising that I have been reassigned, as it were - nor do I find it surprising that I love my new post.
Not that I know precisely why I am in the Savoyards, or "what good will come of it." One cannot go around attempting to do good all the time. For one thing there's more good things you (and here I mean "you" generally) ought to be doing than you can be doing, if all you have to go on is your own moral code or the Scriptures or whatever. For another thing you have a comparatively bad idea of what good you actually can do, having no way of knowing if any particular action will ultimately turn out for good or for bad, or how far the ramifications will go and whether or not they will be ultimately good or bad in the end. You would need to be both omniscient and atemporal to have a satisfactorily long view of something like that. And finally, you have a very poor idea of what will actually be good for you - what will give you the requisite experiences, skills, and whatnot to do important work later on in life. This is why it is much better to go around doing what one ought to do rather than go around trying to figure out how you can do the most good, or make the biggest difference in the world: you simply don't have enough information about the plan. The only way one can possibly hope for the church to make a difference in the world is by trusting God to know what he's about, and stick to the plan regardless of how "important" it seems (we cannot all blow up the Death Star. Where would Luke have been if the man in charge of shipping those proton torpedoes to Yavin 4 had decided that logistics wasn't as "important" as flying X-Wings?). The Watchmaker must not only be in the watch (thank you, Alanna); he must be communicating to the cogs what to do - and they have to be used to listening for instructions. If we don't have that, the cosmic Resistance which is the church might as well be Norsemen - fighting on the right side, but doomed to impotence.
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
Well, I'm back from the big O-Show, the last big show that I will sing with Testimony for the general Stanford public for the forseeable future. O-Show (Orientation Show) is the biggest a cappella event of the year, actually, with all eight a cappella groups (and, this year, three dance groups) singing their best for the freshman class and whoever else decides to show up (which lots of people do; Memorial Auditorium is not a small place, and it's reduced to standing room only). As I write this, O-Show is still going on, but I (obviously) am not there.
This is not because I didn't want to see the other groups. I'm sure it would have been very entertaining, what with everybody bringing out their best and all. I just needed to decompress after our performance. Some people seem to think that I don't get nervous before a show. That's not true (well, it was true of some Chaminade Players shows ... but with those I had the benefits of a character to get into and hours upon hours to just be still and know). If I seem calm before a show it's probably because I'm channeling all the nervousness into good backstage behavior, with the aid of a naturally placid disposition and lots of practice. But afterwards I need to decompress, and I felt like I would explode if I stayed in a sweltering auditorium (it's been really hot up here) with no time for myself, to reflect on the show and be thankful.
This is not because I didn't want to see the other groups. I'm sure it would have been very entertaining, what with everybody bringing out their best and all. I just needed to decompress after our performance. Some people seem to think that I don't get nervous before a show. That's not true (well, it was true of some Chaminade Players shows ... but with those I had the benefits of a character to get into and hours upon hours to just be still and know). If I seem calm before a show it's probably because I'm channeling all the nervousness into good backstage behavior, with the aid of a naturally placid disposition and lots of practice. But afterwards I need to decompress, and I felt like I would explode if I stayed in a sweltering auditorium (it's been really hot up here) with no time for myself, to reflect on the show and be thankful.
Tuesday, September 09, 2003
For the last several days I've been playing the demo for Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. Given that the demo contains only two levels and no multiplayer component, this probably strikes some of you as rather strange. If so, believe me: it undoubtedly strikes my family as stranger. I can't help it. I require my lightsaber. If at all possible, I require two lightsabers. I may even require a saber staff. But it's more likely I require two lightsabers, and right now this is the only way I can get them.
Part of the appeal here is, undeniably, that Jedi Academy has been clearly designed to give players (and specifically, Star Wars fans) what they want in a game like this. The saber combat model is better than ever: more special moves (more than triple!), more styles. We've got customizable characters and sabers - all eye candy, of course, with no actual bearing on gameplay. But a game is more than the gameplay (one of my pet peeves in games is when designers forget that). Gameplay is an important aspect of a game, of course, but there are others. If all we cared about was gameplay, graphics would have peaked with chess. But we want more than graphics, too. We want a game to spin a world - or, if the world already exists, we want the game to know about it.
This is not true for all games, of course, but it is true of the design philosophy behind the overwhelming majority of modern computer games, and it is this which has allowed Jedi Academy's demo to enthrall me so: the little things that say, "this is a Star Wars game" (and a good Star Wars game. I do not love all Star Wars products, but there are few things I enjoy more than a good Star Wars products). A few examples: the saber staff is in the game, and therefore we have zabraks as a playable race (Darth Maul's species). The moves are not all from the movies, either; some come from the books (e.g., the introduction of thrusting moves, which come from Mara Jade in the Heir to the Empire trilogy). And then there's the fact that the game is giving us things we want to see: the Stouker concussion rifle returns, we have dual sabers and saber staves, we have really really cool moves, old favorites like Chewbacca and the Falcon, the list goes on and on. I can't wait until I get the full version.
Part of the appeal here is, undeniably, that Jedi Academy has been clearly designed to give players (and specifically, Star Wars fans) what they want in a game like this. The saber combat model is better than ever: more special moves (more than triple!), more styles. We've got customizable characters and sabers - all eye candy, of course, with no actual bearing on gameplay. But a game is more than the gameplay (one of my pet peeves in games is when designers forget that). Gameplay is an important aspect of a game, of course, but there are others. If all we cared about was gameplay, graphics would have peaked with chess. But we want more than graphics, too. We want a game to spin a world - or, if the world already exists, we want the game to know about it.
This is not true for all games, of course, but it is true of the design philosophy behind the overwhelming majority of modern computer games, and it is this which has allowed Jedi Academy's demo to enthrall me so: the little things that say, "this is a Star Wars game" (and a good Star Wars game. I do not love all Star Wars products, but there are few things I enjoy more than a good Star Wars products). A few examples: the saber staff is in the game, and therefore we have zabraks as a playable race (Darth Maul's species). The moves are not all from the movies, either; some come from the books (e.g., the introduction of thrusting moves, which come from Mara Jade in the Heir to the Empire trilogy). And then there's the fact that the game is giving us things we want to see: the Stouker concussion rifle returns, we have dual sabers and saber staves, we have really really cool moves, old favorites like Chewbacca and the Falcon, the list goes on and on. I can't wait until I get the full version.
Friday, September 05, 2003
I just finished reading Lady Knight, which is the fourth of Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small series and the third quartet set in Tortall (well, the fifth if you count the two quartets she wrote for "younger readers"). I have a tradition of only reading Tamora Pierce books when the entire quartet is available in mass market paperback, since I find all other sizes of book annoying to hold. However, I am thinking that I ought to get myself a set of Tortall books in hardcover, for posterity.
I want a copy of these books for two reasons. One, I'd like it if my children could read them. Two, my paperback copies won't last forever in storage, and I want to have a copy of them. I doubt that any other set of books (well, I suppose we can except Scripture) has stuck with me the way these have. Their imprint is on every word of Phoenix Earth (the influences on Phoenix Earth are many and varied, of course, but Pierce's Immortals quartet would be high on a list of influences ranked by level of influence). I can't imagine what Phoenix Earth would look like without the framework laid down by that first campaign - and what would that have looked like with no neomagic, no astral plane, no dragons? It all comes from Tortall.
But more importantly, and dearer to my heart, their imprint is on me. It was from Pierce's books, way back in elementary school, when I got my first glimpse of heroism, and all the things that are important to me - everything, from the fact that I like to dance to the way I process my relationship to Jesus - are ultimately founded on heroism. It was from Pierce's books that I first learned to work hard, whatever the odds - that I learned that a noble (read hero, man, woman, or whatever appellation makes most sense to you, but I meant and mean noble, literally) never complains, never gives up. It was from Pierce's books that I learned that the spirit which will not be conquered cannot be conquered, and that if you throw enough hard work at a situation you will win through. From Pierce's books I learned to despise bullies and cowards, to love courage and hate physical violence. And of course my entire attitude towards women stems from Pierce's books, the result of concluding some time in middle school that most of mankind treated most of womankind neither the way they deserved nor the way they truly wanted, and I was determined to be different.
I say "learned" but that's not quite right. I would have said that from Pierce's books I "vowed," but of course that's not quite right either, because it wasn't that conscious. It was a more unconscious process than that (but not a passive one) as I filtered through the messages that are found in those books - many excellent, some not - and the results of that filtering process sunk deep into my bones. I have, I admit, a certain suspicion that I was intended to find The First Adventure in the Canoga Park public library, that these books were intended to spark in me and provide fodder for the deep-seated (God-seated) love of heroes and adventure that forms such an inextricable part of my academic life, my Christianity, my masculinity, and - I suspect - will form such an inextricable part of my romantic life as well. I would not like to lose these books because they fell apart on me and were out of print. It will be good to pull them out every now and then - and I admit I have hopes that my wife and children will read them one day and go, "ohhhhhhh ... that explains a lot."
Along the same lines, but on a lighter note, I like lightsabers. A lot. I particularly like strong, capable, no-nonsense girls with lightsabers, which means I love Mara Jade (who ought to look more like the art in Mysteries of the Sith and less like Shannon Baksa, no offense to said model). It also means I am really, really looking forward to the release of Jedi Academy and Knights of the Old Republic (for the PC; I know it's out for X-Box) this fall. One of the perks to going back to school is that the start of fall is one of the major game-release seasons, and I am really looking forward to getting my hands on a lightsaber again. For the character interaction in Knights of the Old Republic, which I hear is good. For the chance to go, "I recognize that move!" (I recently watched the lightsaber duel from the end of Phantom Menace. If you look, you really can recognize basically all the stances and moves in the Jedi Knight games from that choreography. Thank you, Ray Park). And of course for all the other things that that lightsabers mean.
I want a copy of these books for two reasons. One, I'd like it if my children could read them. Two, my paperback copies won't last forever in storage, and I want to have a copy of them. I doubt that any other set of books (well, I suppose we can except Scripture) has stuck with me the way these have. Their imprint is on every word of Phoenix Earth (the influences on Phoenix Earth are many and varied, of course, but Pierce's Immortals quartet would be high on a list of influences ranked by level of influence). I can't imagine what Phoenix Earth would look like without the framework laid down by that first campaign - and what would that have looked like with no neomagic, no astral plane, no dragons? It all comes from Tortall.
But more importantly, and dearer to my heart, their imprint is on me. It was from Pierce's books, way back in elementary school, when I got my first glimpse of heroism, and all the things that are important to me - everything, from the fact that I like to dance to the way I process my relationship to Jesus - are ultimately founded on heroism. It was from Pierce's books that I first learned to work hard, whatever the odds - that I learned that a noble (read hero, man, woman, or whatever appellation makes most sense to you, but I meant and mean noble, literally) never complains, never gives up. It was from Pierce's books that I learned that the spirit which will not be conquered cannot be conquered, and that if you throw enough hard work at a situation you will win through. From Pierce's books I learned to despise bullies and cowards, to love courage and hate physical violence. And of course my entire attitude towards women stems from Pierce's books, the result of concluding some time in middle school that most of mankind treated most of womankind neither the way they deserved nor the way they truly wanted, and I was determined to be different.
I say "learned" but that's not quite right. I would have said that from Pierce's books I "vowed," but of course that's not quite right either, because it wasn't that conscious. It was a more unconscious process than that (but not a passive one) as I filtered through the messages that are found in those books - many excellent, some not - and the results of that filtering process sunk deep into my bones. I have, I admit, a certain suspicion that I was intended to find The First Adventure in the Canoga Park public library, that these books were intended to spark in me and provide fodder for the deep-seated (God-seated) love of heroes and adventure that forms such an inextricable part of my academic life, my Christianity, my masculinity, and - I suspect - will form such an inextricable part of my romantic life as well. I would not like to lose these books because they fell apart on me and were out of print. It will be good to pull them out every now and then - and I admit I have hopes that my wife and children will read them one day and go, "ohhhhhhh ... that explains a lot."
Along the same lines, but on a lighter note, I like lightsabers. A lot. I particularly like strong, capable, no-nonsense girls with lightsabers, which means I love Mara Jade (who ought to look more like the art in Mysteries of the Sith and less like Shannon Baksa, no offense to said model). It also means I am really, really looking forward to the release of Jedi Academy and Knights of the Old Republic (for the PC; I know it's out for X-Box) this fall. One of the perks to going back to school is that the start of fall is one of the major game-release seasons, and I am really looking forward to getting my hands on a lightsaber again. For the character interaction in Knights of the Old Republic, which I hear is good. For the chance to go, "I recognize that move!" (I recently watched the lightsaber duel from the end of Phantom Menace. If you look, you really can recognize basically all the stances and moves in the Jedi Knight games from that choreography. Thank you, Ray Park). And of course for all the other things that that lightsabers mean.
Monday, September 01, 2003
So yesterday was the fiftieth anniversary celebration for my Uncle Gilbert and Aunt Eva. Actually they're my great-uncle and great-aunt, but we never call them that. It was about a hundred miles away but it was pretty fun all the same. The room they rented in the hotel was packed with Asian people I didn't know, which was kind of weird. Nobody actually asked me why I was there (which is also funny ... ever thought how easy it would be to crash a big family reunion?) but I kind of felt like if they had the best I would have been able to come up with was "well, the car stopped here, and I got out." Fortunately the adults of my party had some idea of who was related to who, so I was able to find out that I was in fact the grand-nephew of the couple of honor.
Despite being in a room full of unknown relatives, I did have a good time. For one thing, we got to sit next to the minister who administered the renewal of vows and his wife, and they were a lot of fun even though I mostly sat and listened to them talking with my parents. They were interested in what I was doing, and it was nice to be able to talk about that with Christians who I thought would understand the answers. It's hard to talk about big decisions in life to people who don't presuppose that God has a plan for everyone's life and is interested in communicating that plan to them. I also found out that one of my cousins frequents Gaskell's, so perhaps I should get myself out to one of those one of these days. Especially if I could go when a lot of Stanford people were going, or go with Phoebe and Neani and Archimedes. That would probably be fun.
So, back to why I had a good time. Apparently Uncle Gilbert and Auntie Eva have been dancing since the fifties (they met at a dance when they were introduced by Gilbert's date, who was the mother of the minister and his wife at our table ... how cute is that?) and their friends like to dance, too. So during the cake cutting my other aunt Stephanie grabs Auntie Eva and my cousin Denise (whom everyone calls Dee-Dee, but I don't actually know how that's spelled) and tells them that I like to dance and they should dance with me. This was somewhat embarassing but turned out to be a good thing. Said cousin is apparently in her forties but looks and acts (at least on the dance floor) like she's in her mid to late twenties, and she grabbed me as soon as the dancing started (with "In the Mood," hee hee. I love that song). That was fun. It's always fun when a pretty girl (I know she's not really a girl, but you wouldn't say that if you'd seen her) asks you to dance. Anyway, the dance floor needed to be bigger for all the couples out there, but I had a lot of fun dancing with various relatives and impressing them. And I will admit that it makes me smile inside when a pretty girl enjoys dancing with me. I guess a lot of people noticed me because they kept asking Dee-Dee and Eva who I was, and there were things being said like, "that's my grand-nephew!" So that too was a little embarassing but there was no harm done and I was glad that people enjoyed dancing with me. I enjoyed dancing with them. Also, the live music (which was just one middle-aged Chinese guy and a vocalist) was really, really good. I usually don't like live music but these guys were great, especially when you consider there were two of them and only one instrumentalist.
It's ironic that the best time dancing I've had all summer should be with a ballroom crowd, but there you have it. Of course it was mostly so much fun because the crowd was full of fun, friendly people, which is really the most important factor. I even danced a tango with Auntie Eva, which she could follow pretty well - which is impressive when you consider that she had never seen my quasi-20s, quasi-cross-step tango before (and when you consider the level of my tango skill). It was kind of a mess of a dance, but it was a lot of fun anyway. Also, the crowd wasn't strictly ballroom (ha ha) since they also knew swing (east coast and jitterbug only ... it's funny to think that most of my generation's "old people" are too young to have learned eight-count lindy hop when they were teenagers). So they were actually pretty easy-going about style, and that made for a fun time.
This is an application of the dancing skill that I hadn't really considered when I decided to take Social I two years ago. All I was thinking of then was not feelnig left out of the unofficial Testimony activity, and getting to spend time with Blue Rose. But this is the second time I've made a big impression (quite by accident, mind) at a large family-style event just by dancing. Go figure. Still, it will be fun to be back on campus when I can dance with people I feel comfortable with ... where people don't waltz ballroom, and know how to lindy, and care about things like counterbalancing and centripetal force. Seeing Shanah and Rose and Chariessa and Phoebe and Lady and Neani and the Ailouriskai and Tigranassa, and some of the folks from Waltz Week/FNW as well ... I mean, that'll be fun. And all of the guys, too, but it's been a long time since I've held a girl's right hand and had that instant jolt, like I was holding a live wire, or felt my partner waltz me around. I look forward to it.
Despite being in a room full of unknown relatives, I did have a good time. For one thing, we got to sit next to the minister who administered the renewal of vows and his wife, and they were a lot of fun even though I mostly sat and listened to them talking with my parents. They were interested in what I was doing, and it was nice to be able to talk about that with Christians who I thought would understand the answers. It's hard to talk about big decisions in life to people who don't presuppose that God has a plan for everyone's life and is interested in communicating that plan to them. I also found out that one of my cousins frequents Gaskell's, so perhaps I should get myself out to one of those one of these days. Especially if I could go when a lot of Stanford people were going, or go with Phoebe and Neani and Archimedes. That would probably be fun.
So, back to why I had a good time. Apparently Uncle Gilbert and Auntie Eva have been dancing since the fifties (they met at a dance when they were introduced by Gilbert's date, who was the mother of the minister and his wife at our table ... how cute is that?) and their friends like to dance, too. So during the cake cutting my other aunt Stephanie grabs Auntie Eva and my cousin Denise (whom everyone calls Dee-Dee, but I don't actually know how that's spelled) and tells them that I like to dance and they should dance with me. This was somewhat embarassing but turned out to be a good thing. Said cousin is apparently in her forties but looks and acts (at least on the dance floor) like she's in her mid to late twenties, and she grabbed me as soon as the dancing started (with "In the Mood," hee hee. I love that song). That was fun. It's always fun when a pretty girl (I know she's not really a girl, but you wouldn't say that if you'd seen her) asks you to dance. Anyway, the dance floor needed to be bigger for all the couples out there, but I had a lot of fun dancing with various relatives and impressing them. And I will admit that it makes me smile inside when a pretty girl enjoys dancing with me. I guess a lot of people noticed me because they kept asking Dee-Dee and Eva who I was, and there were things being said like, "that's my grand-nephew!" So that too was a little embarassing but there was no harm done and I was glad that people enjoyed dancing with me. I enjoyed dancing with them. Also, the live music (which was just one middle-aged Chinese guy and a vocalist) was really, really good. I usually don't like live music but these guys were great, especially when you consider there were two of them and only one instrumentalist.
It's ironic that the best time dancing I've had all summer should be with a ballroom crowd, but there you have it. Of course it was mostly so much fun because the crowd was full of fun, friendly people, which is really the most important factor. I even danced a tango with Auntie Eva, which she could follow pretty well - which is impressive when you consider that she had never seen my quasi-20s, quasi-cross-step tango before (and when you consider the level of my tango skill). It was kind of a mess of a dance, but it was a lot of fun anyway. Also, the crowd wasn't strictly ballroom (ha ha) since they also knew swing (east coast and jitterbug only ... it's funny to think that most of my generation's "old people" are too young to have learned eight-count lindy hop when they were teenagers). So they were actually pretty easy-going about style, and that made for a fun time.
This is an application of the dancing skill that I hadn't really considered when I decided to take Social I two years ago. All I was thinking of then was not feelnig left out of the unofficial Testimony activity, and getting to spend time with Blue Rose. But this is the second time I've made a big impression (quite by accident, mind) at a large family-style event just by dancing. Go figure. Still, it will be fun to be back on campus when I can dance with people I feel comfortable with ... where people don't waltz ballroom, and know how to lindy, and care about things like counterbalancing and centripetal force. Seeing Shanah and Rose and Chariessa and Phoebe and Lady and Neani and the Ailouriskai and Tigranassa, and some of the folks from Waltz Week/FNW as well ... I mean, that'll be fun. And all of the guys, too, but it's been a long time since I've held a girl's right hand and had that instant jolt, like I was holding a live wire, or felt my partner waltz me around. I look forward to it.
Sunday, August 24, 2003
I am currently sick, and therefore my last day at The Museum Company turned out to be yesterday, instead of today like it should have been. As a direct result of being sick, I have slept in for many many hours and am now blogging since I have been meaning to do that for a while and now my energy level is low enough that other things have been pushed down on the priority list.
I'd like to post a bit of errata regarding my last post. I have revised my definition of harm in a way that I think is much more satisfactory, so that it more closely resembles the everyday definition of harm. As my parents argue, God wouldn't bother to heal people if sickness and injury weren't a cause of concern for him. (I was inclined to argue that God healed people - or, conversely, gave them beautiful things - because he likes to delight his children. But Mom and Dad pointed out that that casts God in the role of the bad parent, for a good parent acts out of his or her own beliefs about what is good for a child, not the child's beliefs. And God is not a bad parent; if he were, he wouldn't call himself our father so often.) I still maintain that physical harm is about the least important kind of harm you can suffer: I would say a good man who can look forward to an eternity without death is harmed much less by starving to death than is a bad man who lives in every kind of luxury but has not bothered to attend to the fact that he is an immortal creature. But of course it would be better for the good man not to starve to death. This modification is made possible by the newly recognized distinction between whether or not something is harmful, and whether or not it harms you. For instance, if a man is wearing a bullet-proof vest, a bullet will not harm him (well it might, but bear with me). But that does not mean that the bullet is not harmful.
I think this is something like what it must be like to be one of the "spiritual men" that Paul talks about: what does a humble, obedient, consistently growing man have to fear? But of course most men are not pneumatikoi, and for the rest of us the bullets are very real dangers. And this is something else I like about admitting that even trivial, ephemeral harms are harms nonetheless: it means that God cares very much about what is going on with me right now, down to the smallest detail: even the fact that I am sick right now (and of course I am going to get better, and in a hundred years, or after the resurrection of the dead, what will it matter that I had a cold on August 24, A.D. 2003?) is of supreme importance to God. He cares very much about the people who are starving, and the people who are being blown to bits, and about all those people who are suffering evils which, when compared to the prospect of suffering the second death after the aforementioned resurrection, are really very trivial things. And of course God cares about the states of their souls as well - he cares very much about all of it.
So this all sounds much more like the God that I know than my previous definition of harm did, which makes me happy. It also rather answers my previous question about why we are told to do things like feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and care for widows who have nobody else to take them in. My previous confusion (for those of you with short memories) was that I couldn't see how that did anybody any good: the physical circumstances are so fleeting, after all, and surely the only harm that was real harm was the harm which echoed through eternity. (Of course if I had been trying to think about it from God's perspective, instead of the perspectives of either the charitable man or the recipient of his charity, I would have immediately spotted a glaring fallacy in this way of thinking: for to God, who is outside of time altogether, there is no such thing as "fleeting." The word doesn't make any sense if you take away the dimension of time. God has all the time in the world for every knee that has ever been scraped.) And so I can now see that when we are told to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, et. al., we are being told to alleviate suffering, to undo harm that has been done. That is answer enough for me - but if I wanted to wax big picture, I might also speculate that since suffering is the result of the brokenness of the world, charity is our resistance movement's small way of combating that: it is sabotage, just as much as intercessory prayer or evangelism. And of course we resistance fighters ought to sabotage the enemy in every way we can.
Now I still have a problem with people who imagine that differences of wealth or power ought to be squashed all the time, for I still fail to see how differences in the distribution of wealth or power cause harm. They may cause harm, of course: and in such cases they ought to be combated. But surely they don't always cause harm: Bill Gates has a great deal more money than I do, but how does that hurt me? And, to be sure, I don't have as much political clout as many rich and powerful businessmen - but am I hurt thereby? I do not think so. And I daresay that a person can have much less money than I have grown up with, and much less political power as well, and still be well beyond the point of actually being harmed. But of course there does come a point at which a person is being truly oppressed (as opposed to inconvenienced), or really starved (as opposed to being forced to eat plain food instead of champagne and caviar), or what have you - and that is another matter altogether.
I'd like to post a bit of errata regarding my last post. I have revised my definition of harm in a way that I think is much more satisfactory, so that it more closely resembles the everyday definition of harm. As my parents argue, God wouldn't bother to heal people if sickness and injury weren't a cause of concern for him. (I was inclined to argue that God healed people - or, conversely, gave them beautiful things - because he likes to delight his children. But Mom and Dad pointed out that that casts God in the role of the bad parent, for a good parent acts out of his or her own beliefs about what is good for a child, not the child's beliefs. And God is not a bad parent; if he were, he wouldn't call himself our father so often.) I still maintain that physical harm is about the least important kind of harm you can suffer: I would say a good man who can look forward to an eternity without death is harmed much less by starving to death than is a bad man who lives in every kind of luxury but has not bothered to attend to the fact that he is an immortal creature. But of course it would be better for the good man not to starve to death. This modification is made possible by the newly recognized distinction between whether or not something is harmful, and whether or not it harms you. For instance, if a man is wearing a bullet-proof vest, a bullet will not harm him (well it might, but bear with me). But that does not mean that the bullet is not harmful.
I think this is something like what it must be like to be one of the "spiritual men" that Paul talks about: what does a humble, obedient, consistently growing man have to fear? But of course most men are not pneumatikoi, and for the rest of us the bullets are very real dangers. And this is something else I like about admitting that even trivial, ephemeral harms are harms nonetheless: it means that God cares very much about what is going on with me right now, down to the smallest detail: even the fact that I am sick right now (and of course I am going to get better, and in a hundred years, or after the resurrection of the dead, what will it matter that I had a cold on August 24, A.D. 2003?) is of supreme importance to God. He cares very much about the people who are starving, and the people who are being blown to bits, and about all those people who are suffering evils which, when compared to the prospect of suffering the second death after the aforementioned resurrection, are really very trivial things. And of course God cares about the states of their souls as well - he cares very much about all of it.
So this all sounds much more like the God that I know than my previous definition of harm did, which makes me happy. It also rather answers my previous question about why we are told to do things like feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and care for widows who have nobody else to take them in. My previous confusion (for those of you with short memories) was that I couldn't see how that did anybody any good: the physical circumstances are so fleeting, after all, and surely the only harm that was real harm was the harm which echoed through eternity. (Of course if I had been trying to think about it from God's perspective, instead of the perspectives of either the charitable man or the recipient of his charity, I would have immediately spotted a glaring fallacy in this way of thinking: for to God, who is outside of time altogether, there is no such thing as "fleeting." The word doesn't make any sense if you take away the dimension of time. God has all the time in the world for every knee that has ever been scraped.) And so I can now see that when we are told to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, et. al., we are being told to alleviate suffering, to undo harm that has been done. That is answer enough for me - but if I wanted to wax big picture, I might also speculate that since suffering is the result of the brokenness of the world, charity is our resistance movement's small way of combating that: it is sabotage, just as much as intercessory prayer or evangelism. And of course we resistance fighters ought to sabotage the enemy in every way we can.
Now I still have a problem with people who imagine that differences of wealth or power ought to be squashed all the time, for I still fail to see how differences in the distribution of wealth or power cause harm. They may cause harm, of course: and in such cases they ought to be combated. But surely they don't always cause harm: Bill Gates has a great deal more money than I do, but how does that hurt me? And, to be sure, I don't have as much political clout as many rich and powerful businessmen - but am I hurt thereby? I do not think so. And I daresay that a person can have much less money than I have grown up with, and much less political power as well, and still be well beyond the point of actually being harmed. But of course there does come a point at which a person is being truly oppressed (as opposed to inconvenienced), or really starved (as opposed to being forced to eat plain food instead of champagne and caviar), or what have you - and that is another matter altogether.
Saturday, August 09, 2003
I'm also home from visiting Hearst Castle today after a three-day trip that made me think that Cambria would be a good place for a honeymoon (though I still might hold out for either Hawaii or Disneyworld, given my affordable druthers). If you're not familiar with Hearst Castle, it was the dream home of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst, one of the great early twentieth-century American millionaires, and his home in San Simeon is fabulous. I mean, simply phenomenal ... heck, just the outdoor pool is phenomenal. The decor isn't all to my taste but that is just one jaw-dropping estate.
I'm never quite sure what to think of Hearst Castle, really. I mean, on the one hand, there's kind of an urge to sputter in outrage that anybody should be living in such opulence in the middle of the Great Depression. On the other hand, I'm not really sure what to fault him for. Was he using his money irresponsibly? I don't think I'd say that of a man who owned 92 businesses and woke up at 5:00 AM every morning to run them. It's not a question of whether or not he deserved the money, or whether or not he "earned" it. Hearst was certainly doing his part to build up the American economy. Money is like heat - it doesn't exist unless it's being transferred between people. That's what causes depressions, after all: people stop spending money. A hearty exchange of money makes for a hearty economy, and a hearty economy makes for places where most poor people have clean, running hot and cold water, microwave ovens, and televisions.
Nor can I really object to people like Hearst having so much more money than the rest of the nation (or the world). For one thing, distributing the nation's (or the world's) wealth is sort of a nonsensical idea. That sort of talk treats "wealth" as if it's a commodity - as if you could distribute wealth the same way you distribute acres of land. But it seems to me that "wealth" is not that sort of thing at all. Wealth is basically the same thing as value. If something has a high "price" it has a high value. And value is of course what determines price. Take the case of the Faberge egg. To some people an original Faberge is worth tens of thousands of dollars. To me it's worth zero. If I am "wealthy," my wealth consists in a certain number of people valuing me (or my services) a certain amount. That may be unfair, but that is the way it is. And in any case, I see no injustice in "unfairness." If Jenny wants help with her stats homework, I am useless to her (value zero) whereas Archimedes is of great use to her (value nonzero). Is that fair? Not really ... but so what?
And of course I can't complain that Hearst lives (well, lived) in luxury while many live in great hardship, because that is to say that it is better to live in luxury than hardship. And that is not true at all. When Christians are told to rejoice in hardships, and when we are told to search, like Paul, for the secret to being content in all circumstances, the God who tells us these things means them. It is not good for a man to be very wealthy (c.f. the young rich man who came to Jesus); it is not good for a man to be very poor. But of course it is not bad for a man to be very wealthy (God did not make Solomon wealthy as punishment) any more than it is bad for a man to be very poor (it was not bad for Paul to be destitute - or Jesus either, for that matter). We may say that we would prefer luxury to hardship, but that is only because we are very foolish people. For we recognize all the time that money will not make you happy, and that happiness comes from within, regardless of circumstance - truly regardless of circumstance, not "regardless of luxury." What we really want is to feel that we are worthwhile people doing worthwhile work, content with our lot and satisfied that love and are loved. And of course if a man thinks that he can achieve that through the presence or absence of wealth - or if he imagines that he can bestow that upon his fellow man by bestowing or taking away wealth - he is a very silly fellow.
Where does this leave charity? I am not honestly sure - but I doubt very much that the person who admonished his pupils, "the poor shall always be with you" seriously meant for them to create a system where the only poor people are lazy slobs. In the first place, God does not always give people their just deserts this side of death. That is one of the things we love about him - for if he were to be fair instead of just we would all be dead, and living out a very unhappy death at that. But more importantly, it seems to me that God's admonition to look after the poor was not an admonition to get rid of them. I imagine that that would be rather like asking the French resistance to eject the Germans. That is a job properly left to the actual invasion force. I personally suspect that this has to do with love, which is something that is not of moral value to the receiver but is nevertheless of great value to the receiver - and of moral value to the giver. But I am not really sure of much in this regard, other than that we should not give an answer that is tantamount to saying that it is morally inferior for a person to be destitute than not. This may make charity one of those things that look morally arbitrary from the human perspective. But many such things are of immeasurable value to humans all the same - and the one who designed the human being in those seemingly morally arbitrary ways is not limited to the human perspective.
I'm never quite sure what to think of Hearst Castle, really. I mean, on the one hand, there's kind of an urge to sputter in outrage that anybody should be living in such opulence in the middle of the Great Depression. On the other hand, I'm not really sure what to fault him for. Was he using his money irresponsibly? I don't think I'd say that of a man who owned 92 businesses and woke up at 5:00 AM every morning to run them. It's not a question of whether or not he deserved the money, or whether or not he "earned" it. Hearst was certainly doing his part to build up the American economy. Money is like heat - it doesn't exist unless it's being transferred between people. That's what causes depressions, after all: people stop spending money. A hearty exchange of money makes for a hearty economy, and a hearty economy makes for places where most poor people have clean, running hot and cold water, microwave ovens, and televisions.
Nor can I really object to people like Hearst having so much more money than the rest of the nation (or the world). For one thing, distributing the nation's (or the world's) wealth is sort of a nonsensical idea. That sort of talk treats "wealth" as if it's a commodity - as if you could distribute wealth the same way you distribute acres of land. But it seems to me that "wealth" is not that sort of thing at all. Wealth is basically the same thing as value. If something has a high "price" it has a high value. And value is of course what determines price. Take the case of the Faberge egg. To some people an original Faberge is worth tens of thousands of dollars. To me it's worth zero. If I am "wealthy," my wealth consists in a certain number of people valuing me (or my services) a certain amount. That may be unfair, but that is the way it is. And in any case, I see no injustice in "unfairness." If Jenny wants help with her stats homework, I am useless to her (value zero) whereas Archimedes is of great use to her (value nonzero). Is that fair? Not really ... but so what?
And of course I can't complain that Hearst lives (well, lived) in luxury while many live in great hardship, because that is to say that it is better to live in luxury than hardship. And that is not true at all. When Christians are told to rejoice in hardships, and when we are told to search, like Paul, for the secret to being content in all circumstances, the God who tells us these things means them. It is not good for a man to be very wealthy (c.f. the young rich man who came to Jesus); it is not good for a man to be very poor. But of course it is not bad for a man to be very wealthy (God did not make Solomon wealthy as punishment) any more than it is bad for a man to be very poor (it was not bad for Paul to be destitute - or Jesus either, for that matter). We may say that we would prefer luxury to hardship, but that is only because we are very foolish people. For we recognize all the time that money will not make you happy, and that happiness comes from within, regardless of circumstance - truly regardless of circumstance, not "regardless of luxury." What we really want is to feel that we are worthwhile people doing worthwhile work, content with our lot and satisfied that love and are loved. And of course if a man thinks that he can achieve that through the presence or absence of wealth - or if he imagines that he can bestow that upon his fellow man by bestowing or taking away wealth - he is a very silly fellow.
Where does this leave charity? I am not honestly sure - but I doubt very much that the person who admonished his pupils, "the poor shall always be with you" seriously meant for them to create a system where the only poor people are lazy slobs. In the first place, God does not always give people their just deserts this side of death. That is one of the things we love about him - for if he were to be fair instead of just we would all be dead, and living out a very unhappy death at that. But more importantly, it seems to me that God's admonition to look after the poor was not an admonition to get rid of them. I imagine that that would be rather like asking the French resistance to eject the Germans. That is a job properly left to the actual invasion force. I personally suspect that this has to do with love, which is something that is not of moral value to the receiver but is nevertheless of great value to the receiver - and of moral value to the giver. But I am not really sure of much in this regard, other than that we should not give an answer that is tantamount to saying that it is morally inferior for a person to be destitute than not. This may make charity one of those things that look morally arbitrary from the human perspective. But many such things are of immeasurable value to humans all the same - and the one who designed the human being in those seemingly morally arbitrary ways is not limited to the human perspective.
I finally went dancing last Friday, at a swing/salsa club called Memories. Clara (=Maelana) came with me, which was probably for the best since that way I had a few more decent dances and I had someone to be uncomfortable with. It wasn't that Memories was an unwelcoming place, or that it was populated with unfriendly people (though it was populated with very few people). The first problem was that most of the people there weren't very good. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but it became a problem when coupled with the fact that the way people danced swing (swung?) out there was really outlandish.
For one thing, they were doing Hollywood. Fair enough; Savoy vs. Hollywood is a nonissue so far as I'm concerned. But the way they danced Hollywood was with a lot of footwork and very little rotation - I mean, like, people would spend whole blocks of music facing one another doing footwork and maybe some underarm turns or stuff like that, like they were doing six-count lindy in eight. When they did rotate it wasn't counterbalanced; they pulled in to each other and kind of spun on the balls of their feet.
Now, I don't mean to sound like a dance snob - there's nothing wrong with swinging that way. But like I said, most of the people there weren't very good (by which I mean that a lot of them were flashy but their lead/follow skills were pretty lousy, you could tell just by watching the couples). The trouble was therefore that I didn't know enough to match my partners' styles, and only a few of them could follow me with any sort of ease - and of course, to be fair, it's neither fun nor fair if your lead keeps throwing stuff at you that you've never seen. So the whole situation was rather unfortunate. I danced with one girl (who was actually a fairly good follow) and went into a four-bar liquid that made her dizzy as a first-time waltzer. Fortunately she told me, so I backed off into six-count for a while ... but when I went back into a regular swing-out she got dizzy again. And again, it was fortunate that she told me - but I don't know how to swing in eight-count without rotating. Very surreal.
For one thing, they were doing Hollywood. Fair enough; Savoy vs. Hollywood is a nonissue so far as I'm concerned. But the way they danced Hollywood was with a lot of footwork and very little rotation - I mean, like, people would spend whole blocks of music facing one another doing footwork and maybe some underarm turns or stuff like that, like they were doing six-count lindy in eight. When they did rotate it wasn't counterbalanced; they pulled in to each other and kind of spun on the balls of their feet.
Now, I don't mean to sound like a dance snob - there's nothing wrong with swinging that way. But like I said, most of the people there weren't very good (by which I mean that a lot of them were flashy but their lead/follow skills were pretty lousy, you could tell just by watching the couples). The trouble was therefore that I didn't know enough to match my partners' styles, and only a few of them could follow me with any sort of ease - and of course, to be fair, it's neither fun nor fair if your lead keeps throwing stuff at you that you've never seen. So the whole situation was rather unfortunate. I danced with one girl (who was actually a fairly good follow) and went into a four-bar liquid that made her dizzy as a first-time waltzer. Fortunately she told me, so I backed off into six-count for a while ... but when I went back into a regular swing-out she got dizzy again. And again, it was fortunate that she told me - but I don't know how to swing in eight-count without rotating. Very surreal.
Saturday, July 26, 2003
Tomorrow evening the family is going to see Tomb Raider 2: The Cradle of Life. I am way excited. I actually rather enjoyed the first one (and not just because I could identify almost all of the guns on sight, thanks to my Modern Phoenix Earth research), and I think that the sequel actually looks quite good. I'm not expecting it to be Pirates of the Caribbean - now there's a movie that will put a light in your eye - but I am expecting to enjoy the fight scenes (even though they're probably going to be missing that little something which makes me giggle in my seat).
And of course I am expecting to enjoy Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft. Lara Croft is the only woman character I can think of who is cooler than Trinity (no, I haven't played any of the Tomb Raiders). I am sure that many a pundit out there in the wide wide world has, is, or will criticize Lara as nothing more than the incarnation of "sex sells" - and I will not deny that I find Jolie rather sexy in that wetsuit, or whatever it is she's wearing on the posters and billboards - but there's more to it than that.
I don't mean that there's more to it than that she's sexy. That is precisely the point, and you need look no further than that - although you should recognize that being smart, self-possessed, and skillful is part of Lara's sex appeal. And of course it is the sex appeal that is the point, not the body - the body is merely a means to an end, and Lara is particularly potent because she includes the aforementioned three S's along with the body (I say body deliberately because there is more that is attractive about Lara - and Jolie - than just the breasts). But the end result of all that is sex appeal.
And is there really anything wrong with that? Of course there is many a movie that uses sex appeal irresponsibly, and a great many individuals among the movie-going public are so hopelessly immature and untutored that they really shouldn't be availing themselves of this at all. But surely we will admit that sex appeal has its legitimate uses. For instance, I should fault very much the spouse who cannot be bothered to be sexy for his or her partner. Sexiness is fundamentally a skill. Everyone has to learn it (although some admittedly have inborn talent in this area), and refusing to learn to be sexy in the eyes of your spouse is not only reprehensible behavior in a married person; it is an insult to the partner and the marriage bond itself. It says, "I have more important things to do than learn how to live in your world" - for of course our ideas of sex appeal are very close to the center of our personal worlds. Learning to be sexy is not only a pleasurable gift. It is one of the supreme compliments - a growing-closer which values and assimilates part of the beloved's core identity. It is, I would venture to say, one of the ways in which we submit ourselves to the reality of a married couple being a single organism (though not a single personality, of course - let us not confuse the two). And therefore I would call it a great obedience, and a great good.
Now I am personally inclined to believe that married people are going to have a very hard time with this if they do not give it a good deal of thought beforehand, for learning how to be sexy (much less learning how to be romantic, of which this is a sub-skill) is neither an easy nor an intuitive skill. And so I would say that it does young men (at least - young women I suspect benefit from this as well) to watch movies and read books and sing songs that deal with both the fundamental and individual nature of sex appeal. But even without that, I find that when I watch movies designed to "sell sex" I have one or two responses - and the two are not very often mixed at all. In the case of movies which are actually about sex, in whole or in significant part, I do find myself thinking thoughts which are perfectly natural but most unfitting. But in the case of movies where the sex appeal is present but not the point (e.g., Pirates of the Caribbean, Charlie's Angels 2) I find myself appreciating the beauty\\sex appeal of the women on screen - but I am not thinking about that. I am thinking of how good it is that mankind has sex and beauty, how pleasing it is that these things are neither physical nor mental nor emotional but all three, and possibly more - I am thinking of how wonderful it will be to share this goodness with an appropriate woman, when I am (and for whom I will be) an appropriate man. I am thinking, I daresay, of something much higher than how hot Kiera Knightly is.
I do not want to sound like I am trying to excuse boorish and ungentlemanly lust for movie stars. Such behavior is reprehensible and no apology can be made for it. But I do not want to sound like I am being mystical about the effect of beauty in art, either. I find that this general pattern of behavior is consistent to other things as well. When a person watches Black Hawk Down or Gettysburg, for instance, his thoughts are not drawn to the horror of infantry combat even though that is the subject of such films. His thoughts are fixed on the higher thing which that horror reveals - namely the nobility of love, for one's comrades or (in a few rare cases) one's home; the nobility of love so strong for those things that one is willing to die in the most horrible way for them. When a person watches a romantic movie (name any you like; my personal favorite is Beauty and the Beast) he is not particularly thinking of the joy found between the couple on screen, even though that is the subject of such films. He is rather thinking of the nobility of love for another person, and the excellence of being romantic for their sake - and it is this which the on-screen romance is designed to point to. And so too, I think, it is possible to watch a movie about how sexy Charlie's Angels are, and not be thinking about how sexy Charlie's Angels are - to find one's thoughts instead drawn above the subject of the film (yet by the subject of the film) to the nobility of love, and the excellence of expressing it through sex appeal.
So I am looking to seeing Tomb Raider very much.
And of course I am expecting to enjoy Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft. Lara Croft is the only woman character I can think of who is cooler than Trinity (no, I haven't played any of the Tomb Raiders). I am sure that many a pundit out there in the wide wide world has, is, or will criticize Lara as nothing more than the incarnation of "sex sells" - and I will not deny that I find Jolie rather sexy in that wetsuit, or whatever it is she's wearing on the posters and billboards - but there's more to it than that.
I don't mean that there's more to it than that she's sexy. That is precisely the point, and you need look no further than that - although you should recognize that being smart, self-possessed, and skillful is part of Lara's sex appeal. And of course it is the sex appeal that is the point, not the body - the body is merely a means to an end, and Lara is particularly potent because she includes the aforementioned three S's along with the body (I say body deliberately because there is more that is attractive about Lara - and Jolie - than just the breasts). But the end result of all that is sex appeal.
And is there really anything wrong with that? Of course there is many a movie that uses sex appeal irresponsibly, and a great many individuals among the movie-going public are so hopelessly immature and untutored that they really shouldn't be availing themselves of this at all. But surely we will admit that sex appeal has its legitimate uses. For instance, I should fault very much the spouse who cannot be bothered to be sexy for his or her partner. Sexiness is fundamentally a skill. Everyone has to learn it (although some admittedly have inborn talent in this area), and refusing to learn to be sexy in the eyes of your spouse is not only reprehensible behavior in a married person; it is an insult to the partner and the marriage bond itself. It says, "I have more important things to do than learn how to live in your world" - for of course our ideas of sex appeal are very close to the center of our personal worlds. Learning to be sexy is not only a pleasurable gift. It is one of the supreme compliments - a growing-closer which values and assimilates part of the beloved's core identity. It is, I would venture to say, one of the ways in which we submit ourselves to the reality of a married couple being a single organism (though not a single personality, of course - let us not confuse the two). And therefore I would call it a great obedience, and a great good.
Now I am personally inclined to believe that married people are going to have a very hard time with this if they do not give it a good deal of thought beforehand, for learning how to be sexy (much less learning how to be romantic, of which this is a sub-skill) is neither an easy nor an intuitive skill. And so I would say that it does young men (at least - young women I suspect benefit from this as well) to watch movies and read books and sing songs that deal with both the fundamental and individual nature of sex appeal. But even without that, I find that when I watch movies designed to "sell sex" I have one or two responses - and the two are not very often mixed at all. In the case of movies which are actually about sex, in whole or in significant part, I do find myself thinking thoughts which are perfectly natural but most unfitting. But in the case of movies where the sex appeal is present but not the point (e.g., Pirates of the Caribbean, Charlie's Angels 2) I find myself appreciating the beauty\\sex appeal of the women on screen - but I am not thinking about that. I am thinking of how good it is that mankind has sex and beauty, how pleasing it is that these things are neither physical nor mental nor emotional but all three, and possibly more - I am thinking of how wonderful it will be to share this goodness with an appropriate woman, when I am (and for whom I will be) an appropriate man. I am thinking, I daresay, of something much higher than how hot Kiera Knightly is.
I do not want to sound like I am trying to excuse boorish and ungentlemanly lust for movie stars. Such behavior is reprehensible and no apology can be made for it. But I do not want to sound like I am being mystical about the effect of beauty in art, either. I find that this general pattern of behavior is consistent to other things as well. When a person watches Black Hawk Down or Gettysburg, for instance, his thoughts are not drawn to the horror of infantry combat even though that is the subject of such films. His thoughts are fixed on the higher thing which that horror reveals - namely the nobility of love, for one's comrades or (in a few rare cases) one's home; the nobility of love so strong for those things that one is willing to die in the most horrible way for them. When a person watches a romantic movie (name any you like; my personal favorite is Beauty and the Beast) he is not particularly thinking of the joy found between the couple on screen, even though that is the subject of such films. He is rather thinking of the nobility of love for another person, and the excellence of being romantic for their sake - and it is this which the on-screen romance is designed to point to. And so too, I think, it is possible to watch a movie about how sexy Charlie's Angels are, and not be thinking about how sexy Charlie's Angels are - to find one's thoughts instead drawn above the subject of the film (yet by the subject of the film) to the nobility of love, and the excellence of expressing it through sex appeal.
So I am looking to seeing Tomb Raider very much.
Friday, July 25, 2003
People continue to comment on the July 10 post, but I don't know how many folks in the reading public (which, for all I know, consists solely of the people commenting - but probably there's at least one other person) check that comment box which persists in reading [0]. So here's a transcript of the ongoing dialogue, which can continue here:
#1
Well said. Interesting to read this so soon after I had a long conversation about religion with a friend yesterday.
Juka
#2
I agree with your statement that "the nature of God is not an idea to be built; it's a truth to be discovered." But then how do you go about discovering that truth among the sheer proliferation of religions and people's "obvious" freedom of choice in this area? If it were something we could figure out as easily as we perform physics experiments, I think there would be a lot more religious agreement in the world, and less of a difference between "agreeing" and "believing." But since this doesn't seem to be the case, we have to have some other way of evaluating the choices. With a lack of definitive proof, it seems reasonable that people would turn to their gut feelings as all they have to fall back on. Sure gut feelings are unreliable, but so is listening to other people and their various ideas about God. There are so many ideas out there -- who's right? When it comes right down to it, I'd rather be true to myself and risk being wrong, than be true to someone else and risk being wrong. Obviously, being true to God would be best, but it's not generally clear how to do that when your beliefs are still in the process of getting sorted out.
I'm a little curious about your last sentence, where people should just ask what their beliefs imply. You seem to be saying that they should just take what they already believe and work from there. I suppose that's good, assuming they already have definite beliefs of some kind. But what about the people who aren't sure what they believe, or are wavering in their beliefs?
Anyway, this is all the sort of stuff that tends to be on my mind these days, so it's interesting to hear your thoughts on it.
Graham
#3
Definitely well said. It made me happy to read this on Friday. Your wordcraft never ceases to amaze me. I'm looking forward to catching up with you soon! :)
Blue Rose
#4
As to my last statement, I didn't necessarily mean to imply that they should just take what they already believe and run with it - though unless you're actively putting your current beliefs on hiatus for the purpose of re-evaluation I think that's a good rule of thumb. If your beliefs have no implications for your life, I would question in what practical sense you actually "believe" them. On the other hand, if you're one of those people who thinks that Islam is true but just can't "believe" the words of the Prophet, I'd suggest that you're fooling yourself: what you're really feeling, I'd wager, is a belief in Islam coupled with a self-deceiving reluctance to acknowledge that a belief in Islam necessitates living your life like a Muslim - and if you don't know what living like a Muslim is, then it behooves you to find out or else your belief in Islam is fundamentally useless to you and you might as well not believe it at all. What I meant to imply in my last sentence was that if you're waiting for religion to whack you upside the feelings, you've got a long wait ahead of you. Once you acknowledge the truth of a religion you owe it to your self-honesty to knuckle down and figure out what life as a follower of that creed is like, whatever your feelings.
As for evaluating other religions, it seems to me that you've got essentially three possible tacks to take. You could just despair of ever evaluating all the religions on the market and just give up. If you're evaluating other religions at all obviously you've decided not to take this route, so we can pass it by. Or you could decide to withhold judgment until you've evaluated all the religions you're aware of - an impractical task in my opinion; you'll be dead and moldering in the grave before you finish getting a handle on humanity's multiplicity of religions.
So the third option is to evaluate starting at some religion that seems plausible or attractive in some subjective way, and then stop once you've decided that that one is true. Unsatisfyingly ad hoc (of course, so is quantum mechanics, and so what?), but it seems like the only practical possibility - and chances are the choice you settle on will necessarily exclude all others. For example, you simply cannot believe Christianity and consider other religions to be true where they differ from the Christian creed; to do so denies one of the fundamental tenets of Christianity - and I think that will turn out to be true for most religions if you're serious about the claims they make.
As for my personal evaluations, which is really all I can comment on since I've really only seriously evaluated Christianity ... I'd say they come twofold. My own religious experience is a nice personal touch, but I consider feelings to be an inadequate rubric for this sort of thing and all religions have genuine religious experiences - nor does my creed necessitate that I consider those other experiences fraudulent. What it really comes down to for me is the history of the Jews and the resurrection of Jesus. Given those two facts, and what they imply about Jesus' words, I go with Christianity. I'd much rather evaluate a creed by historical events than its philosophy. In the first place, I find history much more concrete in its verdicts than philosophy and therefore much more amenable to actual evaluation. In the second, while nothing is free of interactor bias, I trust my ability to evaluate history objectively much more than my ability to evaluate philosophy objectively ... perhaps others better trained in philosophy can evaluate religious creeds on something more universal than whether or not they like it, but "whether or not I like it" is about the size of my ability to evaluate philosophy unless you allow me some basic axioms. And if we're evaluating religious philosophy, basic axioms seem unfair to allow; there's no set of axioms that no significant portion of the population will disagree with. Historical axioms may be up for debate, but I find that they vary less than philosophical ones do ... and they're up for debate less often.
Natalie
#5
Hi, Eric, this is Ryan Mitchell.
It's been a long time, hasn't it? I suppose it's a bit odd to be hearing from me, but I stumbled back upon your blog by accident, and I felt compelled to comment.
Since we last saw each other I've had a wealth of important experiences, and having read this last post of yours, I would have felt irresponsible had I not taken the time to voice my agreement. In the fairly recent past I have become a very firm devotee of a Buddhist practice called Falun Gong, and I have also been studying Jungian psychology. Exposure to these complementary perspectives has changed a lot about the way I look at the world, by far for the better.
As I have come to restructure my life around the Law, I have also come to appreciate genuine religious sentiment of the kind you describe. In my view both Christianity and Buddhism are equally reliable paths to the end goal of subsuming one's imperfect ego to the intrinsic wholeness of all things existing.
You might be extremely interested by Jung's work - he is what I would call a great defender of faith, refusing to hide beneath the dogmas proclaimed by so many psychologists in their efforts to deny the inexplicability of so much of human experience.
That which is inexplicable to cause-and-effect formulations,
oops, got cut off - suffice it to say that that which cannot be explained by cause-and-effect formulations or by the highest reasoning of the human mind must, thus, since we live in an ordered universe, be a sign of higher formulations and reasoning beyond our understanding.
The inexplicable actions of human minds themselves, the structures of our societies, even our capacity for thinking at all; these do indeed defy what we know of the universe.
Religion is the invaluable framework we have been given for enlightening to the connecting principles which supersede causality and acknowledge that, as human beings, we are equally creatures of matter and of spirit: our understanding should not reflect only the physical reactions we see in nature around us, but also the deeply veiled eternal Act of Creation from which all our reactions, physiological or psychological, have stemmed.
All that said, I would also like to say peace be with you. I speak to you with that which is foremost in my heart, the comradery of those who have meditated on things greater than themselves.
Your Cousin in Faith,
Ryan
#6
Thanks for commenting, Ryan. It has been a long time, and it's good to hear from you.
Christianity and Buddhism may be equally reliable paths to subsuming one's imperfect ego to the intrinsic wholeness of all things existing; I wouldn't know. That isn't the end goal of Christianity, and not something which Christianity concerns itself about. The end goals of Christianity are to overcome one's rejection of God and to produce people who live as sons of God. The ego is perfected but never subsumed, and the perfection which it is patterned after is infinite but by no means "all things existing;" it is one particular Thing out of a great many which exist. Nor is Christianity particularly concerned with "religious sentiment;" it is a religion which expects the believer to carry on irregardless of the presence or absence of religious sentiment.
It is also a religion which is concerned with much more than the Act of Creation. If the Act of Creation was all there was to it, the Christians would say that there would be no need for Christianity - or rather that Christianity as a religion would be irrelevant, since all the things that accompany life in Christ would be as natural as breathing. It is only because there is more to the Big Picture than the Act of Creation - primarily the Fall - that Christianity as a religion exists. That is a cause-and-effect statement, it seems to me, and therefore I would say that Christianity does not reject cause-and-effect as something it should be concerned about.
Natalie
#7
I've been meaning to ask, Eric--what exactly does Jesus say on the subject of pantheism (the theory that everything in existence is part of the substance of God--that God = everything)?
Casey
#8
As Lewis points out in Mere Christianity, he didn't have to say much (I don't think he ever discusses it explicitly): he was talking to Jews, who reject such doctrine as blasphemous nonsense (they rejected the idea that *Jesus* is God as blasphemous nonsense; c.f. John 10:33. Note that the Greek quoting Ps. 82:6 is a little deceptive). Both the religion of the Greeks and the Achaemenid Persians before them differentiate between the divine and the rest of the world, so I wouldn't expect Jesus to talk about it very much. Everyone in his audience would have taken it as axiomatic that a rock is not God.
I have a hard time imagining that anybody would come to the Scriptures of the Jews and/or Christians and conclude that either religion regards pantheism as anything other than blasphemous nonsense, unless of course they were pantheists already. But I think it's fairly easy to detect the denial of pantheism in the way people phrase things: for instance, "My Father is greater than all" (John 10:29). Or consider John 14:16-17: "And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another helper, that he may abide with you forever - the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him." If the world was of the same stuff as the Holy Spirit there would be no problem here, any more than there is a problem for the Father to receive the Son.
Natalie
#9
Very true. I note that there is one quote attributed to Jesus that carries the vague suggestion of pantheism--"Lift the stone and you will find me, cleave the wood and I am there." But then, that was from the gospel of Thomas, which is also reported to contain a story in which a six year old Jesus uses his divine powers to smite a group of children that were making fun of him.
Casey
#10
Interesting, however, that Jesus doesn't seem to speak much to the eastern religions, such as Buddhism (which is what made me think of this). The religions that do carry the suggestion of pantheism (as Ryan refers to the "cosmic whole" below) don't really seem to get their share of explanations in Jesus' gospel. What is a Christian to say to a pantheist?
Casey
#11
I feel I should point out that one of the reasons the Gospel of Thomas was rejected from the canon (besides the fact that it was written about two hundred years after the fact) is that it doesn't jive doctrinally with the other things. But as to pantheism, I'm really not sure there's anything to say. If it isn't patently obvious to you that a rock lacks one or more of the criteria for godhood, I'm not convinced that there's any way to argue around to that point. What Christianity does offer is an alternate cosmology backed by historical verifiability. If Christianity is true then pantheism isn't, so if I were personally in the mood to debate pantheism I would prefer to talk about the verifiability of Christianity - talking about the criteria for godhood is just going to get me talking in circles.
Jesus didn't come to teach, though. If his job on Earth was primarily to dispense moral and philosophical doctrine (which wouldn't, I think, be very much use to us - we don't follow moral or philosophical doctrine and we never will no matter who gives it to us) then we might expect him to provide teachings which systematically deal with all the wrong philosophies which he, as God, would be in a position to identify. On the other hand, how does a physics teacher explain to someone that the universe is not actually composed of celestial spheres? Rather than wasting a lot of time arguing about evidence for and against celestial spheres, he's much more likely to say "look, here's the real picture of the universe" - without mentioning celestial spheres at all, probably.
Natalie
#12
Lewis puts forth a deconstruction of Pantheism in 'Miracles', if anyone's interested.
To return to your original post, E, I do not think that people regard the existence of hell as a contradiction to God, per se.
As you describe him, God is the 'I am'. Not the 'I am supposedly'; not the 'I should be according to your perception', but the 'I am'.
If we have been trained in our educations to be skeptical of accepting without careful examination, then it is perhaps natural to raise concerns over the fact that one of God's most well-known characteristics appears compromised by one of his creations.
'Take it or leave it' probably isn't the most comforting answer, because it does nothing to address the injustice that another perceives in the embodiment of justice.
It's ironic how steep a hill this question is though. Of those that I've seen, the nonchristians have oftentimes attempted to surmount it, but have stopped short. The Christians have overcome it and ran all the way down, with a peace of mind that is perhaps puzzling to those who have not submitted their wills to the One whom they yet do not trust.
The question I tend to ask when faced with a person in such a dilemma is whether they realize that they are not presently standing on neutral ground; that hell is not a destination for punishment, but rather a denial of entry to better pastures. To go to hell, as I see it, is not entry into a jail, but simply never escaping an island.
And in that sort of situation, it is not that God punishes Man, but rather that Man never finds God.
The skeptics oftentimes do actively resist God and Christianity. But there is great danger in confounding evaluatory rigor with denial...
BTW: I'm thrilled to find somebody who posts entries as long as mine. ;)
You know me as the failed Testimony Bass and dormmate of one Mr. Russell and Mr. Mues.
Jase
#13
I agree. I always thought of Hell almost as God's last gift to Christianity--a way of saying, "Alright...if you don't want to come live with me, that's alright--I'll make a place just for you. Just don't blame me if it turns out you don't like it."
Casey
#14
I think that nine times out of ten objections to damnation center go something like this: "Well, look, I'm a good man - or anyway a halfway decent one - and I want to get to heaven just like anyone else, so isn't it horribly unjust and unloving for God to even create the possibility that I might not get there? Or maybe I'm not good enough to get into heaven, but what about someone like Ghandi?"
This is a case of dissecting Christianity out of context: it is looking at the doctrine of damnation, but not at any of the context which makes damnation anything other than an absurdity. But if you look at in context - if you realize that damnation must be taken with the rest of Christianity and that the whole thing hangs together - you immediately come up against the fact that you are not a "good man." You are not even remotely a halfway decent man. You will also run up against the fact that the doctrine of salvation has nothing to do with being "good enough." The very idea of being good enough to be saved is absurd. It would be like a man saying, "I am good enough to bear children." The idea of "good enough" is a million miles away from being relevant, because however good a man I may be, I am missing something vital.
How anybody can object to something like that I don't know, short of rejecting Christianity wholesale - which is what I have been trying to get at all along. Not, that is, unless they say something like this: "Well look, okay. We'll admit that I'm a sniveling wicked little wretch of a human being who has no hope of getting into heaven. Well, isn't that where God is supposed to come in? I mean, I *want* to get into heaven! Who doesn't?"
And that of course is exactly the conundrum identified by and solved by Christianity. I think a man would be very self-deceiving if he honestly asked that question of the sky and then refused to swallow his pride and become a practicing Christian (because of course he would not have reached that point except in intellectual relation to Christianity). But the real heart of the problem I think is in the last part: "I want to get into heaven! Who doesn't?"
I find that a lot of people run into a difficulty when they think of heaven or hell as a place that you are sent to. If I were God, I think I might have phrased those parts of the Scriptures more like Lewis did: in terms of becoming either a heavenly or hellish creature. But I can see the objection to that illustration and I think the geographical one really does make more sense, if you bother to think about it. I think it is like this:
Suppose a man in Los Angeles wants to get to New York. With this sole objective in mind, he hops into the Pacific and begins to swim towards the Arctic. What are we to say to such a man? We should correct him, of course - he is not heading for New York, and in fact could overshoot the Arctic by a million miles and still not end up in New York. But suppose once we correct him he says to us, "F*ck you and your geographical bigotry! I want to get to New York, and I'm going to get there my way! If I have to follow your instructions I don't want to get there anyway!" What are we to make of such a man? Does he want to get to New York or not?
(Of course that illustration is imperfect too, since you might get to New York by way of Moscow even if you started in Los Angeles. You would be very silly, but it could be done. But that is more like getting to the Christ-life by way of a very long and convoluted route, not like getting to it by way of Hinduism.)
Anyway, I think that is at the root of peoples' suspicion that hell is a really unfair feature of the universe. They simply refuse to believe that behavior X or attitude Y is, in reality, walking away from God (it is not bigotry to point out that heading for the Arctic will not get you to New York; it is merely a consequence of reality). And it is then that we run into Twilight's point. God has (only he knows why) this fanatical devotion to letting human beings make their own decisions. If a human being spends all its life trying to get away from God it would fail, unless there was some "place" like hell where God was not - else it would be like Jonah running away from God by heading for Italy.
Natalie
#1
Well said. Interesting to read this so soon after I had a long conversation about religion with a friend yesterday.
Juka
#2
I agree with your statement that "the nature of God is not an idea to be built; it's a truth to be discovered." But then how do you go about discovering that truth among the sheer proliferation of religions and people's "obvious" freedom of choice in this area? If it were something we could figure out as easily as we perform physics experiments, I think there would be a lot more religious agreement in the world, and less of a difference between "agreeing" and "believing." But since this doesn't seem to be the case, we have to have some other way of evaluating the choices. With a lack of definitive proof, it seems reasonable that people would turn to their gut feelings as all they have to fall back on. Sure gut feelings are unreliable, but so is listening to other people and their various ideas about God. There are so many ideas out there -- who's right? When it comes right down to it, I'd rather be true to myself and risk being wrong, than be true to someone else and risk being wrong. Obviously, being true to God would be best, but it's not generally clear how to do that when your beliefs are still in the process of getting sorted out.
I'm a little curious about your last sentence, where people should just ask what their beliefs imply. You seem to be saying that they should just take what they already believe and work from there. I suppose that's good, assuming they already have definite beliefs of some kind. But what about the people who aren't sure what they believe, or are wavering in their beliefs?
Anyway, this is all the sort of stuff that tends to be on my mind these days, so it's interesting to hear your thoughts on it.
Graham
#3
Definitely well said. It made me happy to read this on Friday. Your wordcraft never ceases to amaze me. I'm looking forward to catching up with you soon! :)
Blue Rose
#4
As to my last statement, I didn't necessarily mean to imply that they should just take what they already believe and run with it - though unless you're actively putting your current beliefs on hiatus for the purpose of re-evaluation I think that's a good rule of thumb. If your beliefs have no implications for your life, I would question in what practical sense you actually "believe" them. On the other hand, if you're one of those people who thinks that Islam is true but just can't "believe" the words of the Prophet, I'd suggest that you're fooling yourself: what you're really feeling, I'd wager, is a belief in Islam coupled with a self-deceiving reluctance to acknowledge that a belief in Islam necessitates living your life like a Muslim - and if you don't know what living like a Muslim is, then it behooves you to find out or else your belief in Islam is fundamentally useless to you and you might as well not believe it at all. What I meant to imply in my last sentence was that if you're waiting for religion to whack you upside the feelings, you've got a long wait ahead of you. Once you acknowledge the truth of a religion you owe it to your self-honesty to knuckle down and figure out what life as a follower of that creed is like, whatever your feelings.
As for evaluating other religions, it seems to me that you've got essentially three possible tacks to take. You could just despair of ever evaluating all the religions on the market and just give up. If you're evaluating other religions at all obviously you've decided not to take this route, so we can pass it by. Or you could decide to withhold judgment until you've evaluated all the religions you're aware of - an impractical task in my opinion; you'll be dead and moldering in the grave before you finish getting a handle on humanity's multiplicity of religions.
So the third option is to evaluate starting at some religion that seems plausible or attractive in some subjective way, and then stop once you've decided that that one is true. Unsatisfyingly ad hoc (of course, so is quantum mechanics, and so what?), but it seems like the only practical possibility - and chances are the choice you settle on will necessarily exclude all others. For example, you simply cannot believe Christianity and consider other religions to be true where they differ from the Christian creed; to do so denies one of the fundamental tenets of Christianity - and I think that will turn out to be true for most religions if you're serious about the claims they make.
As for my personal evaluations, which is really all I can comment on since I've really only seriously evaluated Christianity ... I'd say they come twofold. My own religious experience is a nice personal touch, but I consider feelings to be an inadequate rubric for this sort of thing and all religions have genuine religious experiences - nor does my creed necessitate that I consider those other experiences fraudulent. What it really comes down to for me is the history of the Jews and the resurrection of Jesus. Given those two facts, and what they imply about Jesus' words, I go with Christianity. I'd much rather evaluate a creed by historical events than its philosophy. In the first place, I find history much more concrete in its verdicts than philosophy and therefore much more amenable to actual evaluation. In the second, while nothing is free of interactor bias, I trust my ability to evaluate history objectively much more than my ability to evaluate philosophy objectively ... perhaps others better trained in philosophy can evaluate religious creeds on something more universal than whether or not they like it, but "whether or not I like it" is about the size of my ability to evaluate philosophy unless you allow me some basic axioms. And if we're evaluating religious philosophy, basic axioms seem unfair to allow; there's no set of axioms that no significant portion of the population will disagree with. Historical axioms may be up for debate, but I find that they vary less than philosophical ones do ... and they're up for debate less often.
Natalie
#5
Hi, Eric, this is Ryan Mitchell.
It's been a long time, hasn't it? I suppose it's a bit odd to be hearing from me, but I stumbled back upon your blog by accident, and I felt compelled to comment.
Since we last saw each other I've had a wealth of important experiences, and having read this last post of yours, I would have felt irresponsible had I not taken the time to voice my agreement. In the fairly recent past I have become a very firm devotee of a Buddhist practice called Falun Gong, and I have also been studying Jungian psychology. Exposure to these complementary perspectives has changed a lot about the way I look at the world, by far for the better.
As I have come to restructure my life around the Law, I have also come to appreciate genuine religious sentiment of the kind you describe. In my view both Christianity and Buddhism are equally reliable paths to the end goal of subsuming one's imperfect ego to the intrinsic wholeness of all things existing.
You might be extremely interested by Jung's work - he is what I would call a great defender of faith, refusing to hide beneath the dogmas proclaimed by so many psychologists in their efforts to deny the inexplicability of so much of human experience.
That which is inexplicable to cause-and-effect formulations,
oops, got cut off - suffice it to say that that which cannot be explained by cause-and-effect formulations or by the highest reasoning of the human mind must, thus, since we live in an ordered universe, be a sign of higher formulations and reasoning beyond our understanding.
The inexplicable actions of human minds themselves, the structures of our societies, even our capacity for thinking at all; these do indeed defy what we know of the universe.
Religion is the invaluable framework we have been given for enlightening to the connecting principles which supersede causality and acknowledge that, as human beings, we are equally creatures of matter and of spirit: our understanding should not reflect only the physical reactions we see in nature around us, but also the deeply veiled eternal Act of Creation from which all our reactions, physiological or psychological, have stemmed.
All that said, I would also like to say peace be with you. I speak to you with that which is foremost in my heart, the comradery of those who have meditated on things greater than themselves.
Your Cousin in Faith,
Ryan
#6
Thanks for commenting, Ryan. It has been a long time, and it's good to hear from you.
Christianity and Buddhism may be equally reliable paths to subsuming one's imperfect ego to the intrinsic wholeness of all things existing; I wouldn't know. That isn't the end goal of Christianity, and not something which Christianity concerns itself about. The end goals of Christianity are to overcome one's rejection of God and to produce people who live as sons of God. The ego is perfected but never subsumed, and the perfection which it is patterned after is infinite but by no means "all things existing;" it is one particular Thing out of a great many which exist. Nor is Christianity particularly concerned with "religious sentiment;" it is a religion which expects the believer to carry on irregardless of the presence or absence of religious sentiment.
It is also a religion which is concerned with much more than the Act of Creation. If the Act of Creation was all there was to it, the Christians would say that there would be no need for Christianity - or rather that Christianity as a religion would be irrelevant, since all the things that accompany life in Christ would be as natural as breathing. It is only because there is more to the Big Picture than the Act of Creation - primarily the Fall - that Christianity as a religion exists. That is a cause-and-effect statement, it seems to me, and therefore I would say that Christianity does not reject cause-and-effect as something it should be concerned about.
Natalie
#7
I've been meaning to ask, Eric--what exactly does Jesus say on the subject of pantheism (the theory that everything in existence is part of the substance of God--that God = everything)?
Casey
#8
As Lewis points out in Mere Christianity, he didn't have to say much (I don't think he ever discusses it explicitly): he was talking to Jews, who reject such doctrine as blasphemous nonsense (they rejected the idea that *Jesus* is God as blasphemous nonsense; c.f. John 10:33. Note that the Greek quoting Ps. 82:6 is a little deceptive). Both the religion of the Greeks and the Achaemenid Persians before them differentiate between the divine and the rest of the world, so I wouldn't expect Jesus to talk about it very much. Everyone in his audience would have taken it as axiomatic that a rock is not God.
I have a hard time imagining that anybody would come to the Scriptures of the Jews and/or Christians and conclude that either religion regards pantheism as anything other than blasphemous nonsense, unless of course they were pantheists already. But I think it's fairly easy to detect the denial of pantheism in the way people phrase things: for instance, "My Father is greater than all" (John 10:29). Or consider John 14:16-17: "And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another helper, that he may abide with you forever - the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him." If the world was of the same stuff as the Holy Spirit there would be no problem here, any more than there is a problem for the Father to receive the Son.
Natalie
#9
Very true. I note that there is one quote attributed to Jesus that carries the vague suggestion of pantheism--"Lift the stone and you will find me, cleave the wood and I am there." But then, that was from the gospel of Thomas, which is also reported to contain a story in which a six year old Jesus uses his divine powers to smite a group of children that were making fun of him.
Casey
#10
Interesting, however, that Jesus doesn't seem to speak much to the eastern religions, such as Buddhism (which is what made me think of this). The religions that do carry the suggestion of pantheism (as Ryan refers to the "cosmic whole" below) don't really seem to get their share of explanations in Jesus' gospel. What is a Christian to say to a pantheist?
Casey
#11
I feel I should point out that one of the reasons the Gospel of Thomas was rejected from the canon (besides the fact that it was written about two hundred years after the fact) is that it doesn't jive doctrinally with the other things. But as to pantheism, I'm really not sure there's anything to say. If it isn't patently obvious to you that a rock lacks one or more of the criteria for godhood, I'm not convinced that there's any way to argue around to that point. What Christianity does offer is an alternate cosmology backed by historical verifiability. If Christianity is true then pantheism isn't, so if I were personally in the mood to debate pantheism I would prefer to talk about the verifiability of Christianity - talking about the criteria for godhood is just going to get me talking in circles.
Jesus didn't come to teach, though. If his job on Earth was primarily to dispense moral and philosophical doctrine (which wouldn't, I think, be very much use to us - we don't follow moral or philosophical doctrine and we never will no matter who gives it to us) then we might expect him to provide teachings which systematically deal with all the wrong philosophies which he, as God, would be in a position to identify. On the other hand, how does a physics teacher explain to someone that the universe is not actually composed of celestial spheres? Rather than wasting a lot of time arguing about evidence for and against celestial spheres, he's much more likely to say "look, here's the real picture of the universe" - without mentioning celestial spheres at all, probably.
Natalie
#12
Lewis puts forth a deconstruction of Pantheism in 'Miracles', if anyone's interested.
To return to your original post, E, I do not think that people regard the existence of hell as a contradiction to God, per se.
As you describe him, God is the 'I am'. Not the 'I am supposedly'; not the 'I should be according to your perception', but the 'I am'.
If we have been trained in our educations to be skeptical of accepting without careful examination, then it is perhaps natural to raise concerns over the fact that one of God's most well-known characteristics appears compromised by one of his creations.
'Take it or leave it' probably isn't the most comforting answer, because it does nothing to address the injustice that another perceives in the embodiment of justice.
It's ironic how steep a hill this question is though. Of those that I've seen, the nonchristians have oftentimes attempted to surmount it, but have stopped short. The Christians have overcome it and ran all the way down, with a peace of mind that is perhaps puzzling to those who have not submitted their wills to the One whom they yet do not trust.
The question I tend to ask when faced with a person in such a dilemma is whether they realize that they are not presently standing on neutral ground; that hell is not a destination for punishment, but rather a denial of entry to better pastures. To go to hell, as I see it, is not entry into a jail, but simply never escaping an island.
And in that sort of situation, it is not that God punishes Man, but rather that Man never finds God.
The skeptics oftentimes do actively resist God and Christianity. But there is great danger in confounding evaluatory rigor with denial...
BTW: I'm thrilled to find somebody who posts entries as long as mine. ;)
You know me as the failed Testimony Bass and dormmate of one Mr. Russell and Mr. Mues.
Jase
#13
I agree. I always thought of Hell almost as God's last gift to Christianity--a way of saying, "Alright...if you don't want to come live with me, that's alright--I'll make a place just for you. Just don't blame me if it turns out you don't like it."
Casey
#14
I think that nine times out of ten objections to damnation center go something like this: "Well, look, I'm a good man - or anyway a halfway decent one - and I want to get to heaven just like anyone else, so isn't it horribly unjust and unloving for God to even create the possibility that I might not get there? Or maybe I'm not good enough to get into heaven, but what about someone like Ghandi?"
This is a case of dissecting Christianity out of context: it is looking at the doctrine of damnation, but not at any of the context which makes damnation anything other than an absurdity. But if you look at in context - if you realize that damnation must be taken with the rest of Christianity and that the whole thing hangs together - you immediately come up against the fact that you are not a "good man." You are not even remotely a halfway decent man. You will also run up against the fact that the doctrine of salvation has nothing to do with being "good enough." The very idea of being good enough to be saved is absurd. It would be like a man saying, "I am good enough to bear children." The idea of "good enough" is a million miles away from being relevant, because however good a man I may be, I am missing something vital.
How anybody can object to something like that I don't know, short of rejecting Christianity wholesale - which is what I have been trying to get at all along. Not, that is, unless they say something like this: "Well look, okay. We'll admit that I'm a sniveling wicked little wretch of a human being who has no hope of getting into heaven. Well, isn't that where God is supposed to come in? I mean, I *want* to get into heaven! Who doesn't?"
And that of course is exactly the conundrum identified by and solved by Christianity. I think a man would be very self-deceiving if he honestly asked that question of the sky and then refused to swallow his pride and become a practicing Christian (because of course he would not have reached that point except in intellectual relation to Christianity). But the real heart of the problem I think is in the last part: "I want to get into heaven! Who doesn't?"
I find that a lot of people run into a difficulty when they think of heaven or hell as a place that you are sent to. If I were God, I think I might have phrased those parts of the Scriptures more like Lewis did: in terms of becoming either a heavenly or hellish creature. But I can see the objection to that illustration and I think the geographical one really does make more sense, if you bother to think about it. I think it is like this:
Suppose a man in Los Angeles wants to get to New York. With this sole objective in mind, he hops into the Pacific and begins to swim towards the Arctic. What are we to say to such a man? We should correct him, of course - he is not heading for New York, and in fact could overshoot the Arctic by a million miles and still not end up in New York. But suppose once we correct him he says to us, "F*ck you and your geographical bigotry! I want to get to New York, and I'm going to get there my way! If I have to follow your instructions I don't want to get there anyway!" What are we to make of such a man? Does he want to get to New York or not?
(Of course that illustration is imperfect too, since you might get to New York by way of Moscow even if you started in Los Angeles. You would be very silly, but it could be done. But that is more like getting to the Christ-life by way of a very long and convoluted route, not like getting to it by way of Hinduism.)
Anyway, I think that is at the root of peoples' suspicion that hell is a really unfair feature of the universe. They simply refuse to believe that behavior X or attitude Y is, in reality, walking away from God (it is not bigotry to point out that heading for the Arctic will not get you to New York; it is merely a consequence of reality). And it is then that we run into Twilight's point. God has (only he knows why) this fanatical devotion to letting human beings make their own decisions. If a human being spends all its life trying to get away from God it would fail, unless there was some "place" like hell where God was not - else it would be like Jonah running away from God by heading for Italy.
Natalie
Monday, July 14, 2003
Thursday, July 10, 2003
I do appreciate one thing about Heinlein's portrayal of God, though: he treats it like a real thing.
One of the things that I find most deplorable (and baffling) about the way I perceive a great portion of my peers evaluating religion is that they treat it like an idea to be accepted or rejected. I suspect that this is one of the nefarious side effects of the idea of freedom of religion. It is obvious that everybody has the right to choose their own religion (and accept the consequences thereof, which may include summary execution depending on your locale), but somewhere along the line I perceive that people have gotten this idea that religion is something made up. With surprising frequency in the past couple weeks (and for my whole thinking Christian life) I've run into the attitude that "I just can't believe God would be like that" or some inconsequential variant thereof. The nature of God is not an idea to be built; it's a truth to be discovered. Saying "I just can't believe God would be like that" is every bit as ridiculous as Einstein refusing to believe in quantum mechanics, or the Church refusing to believe Copernicus.
Interruption: "I just can't believe God would do that" is a valid criterion by which to judge events on a spiritual plane, once the nature of God has been determined to a reasonable degree.
But, on the other hand, if that is what you're looking for and refuse to acknowledge it for no better reason than "I just can't believe it" then you should at least have the decency to admit that you're deceiving yourself through denial. Take hell, for instance. I don't understand the nature of hell particularly well (nor do I intend to waste much skull sweat over it, since I do understand it well enough to know that what hell is or isn't has nothing to do with me), but it's amazing the number of times a conversation with someone who's wondering about Christianity comes to the point where Someone says, "I just can't believe in a God who would create hell." That statement betrays a fundamental unreadiness to believe in God: because you're still treating God like a picture you can customize, instead of a [metaphorically] living, breathing individual who is what he is whether you like it or not.
Now sometimes someone will say that (or an equivalent statement) and actually be trying to point to a contradiction that goes something like this:
Axiom: God is good (or loving, or merciful, or whatever alleged attribute of God you want to include).
Axiom: Hell exists.
Contradiction
The proof is oftentimes that spotty, too, since if you try to pin down the intermediate steps you usually run into a question of definitions: either "what is good?" or "what is hell?" I'm only aware of one workable definition of the former, and it's one that Someone usually finds unsatisfying (I'm sure Watson felt the same way about Holmes' "when you've eliminated all other possibilities" axiom). As for the latter, I don't know enough to answer the question very well and I doubt that many other people do either, which makes it silly to use it in an attempt to catch Christianity in a contradiction. (I'm not aware of the Christian God ever having actually been caught in a contradiction: so far as I know all anybody has on him are issues in which there is no contradiction, or issues in which there might be contradictions but nobody's really very sure. In the face of a record where all the questions we can deal with turn out in God's favor, I'm not inclined to lose sleep over the question marks.)
What really gets me about this issue is that it often seems to be the last obstacle to friends who "agree intellectually" with Christianity but can't bring themselves to "believe." I strongly suspect this to be drawing a dichotomy where none exists. What that must really mean, I think, is that someone believes Christianity but can't bring themselves to act like a Christian - or, more likely, doesn't know what acting like a Christian means. After all, there's nothing to "believe" about Christianity other than the question of "true, false, or not sure." If you "agree intellectually" with Christianity you must have checked the "true" box; you "believe" it definitionally in the same way that you "believe" in quantum mechanics.
The tragedy of it all is that people have been conditioned to think that "believing" a religion is the truly important part about it. Maybe that's true with other religions; I don't know, but that's not what Christianity is like at all - and if someone who "agrees intellectually" with it has missed that point, then his or her study of the religion leaves out a crucial point. Believing Christianity really is like believing quantum mechanics. The utility of quantum has nothing to do with its truth or falsehood; the utility is in the implications. Believing in quantum mechanics doesn't enrich your life any: seeing that quantum mechanics implies lasers (and a million other things) does. Acknowledging the theory to be true doesn't get you anywhere; you have to figure out how to apply it. Similarly, the meat of Christianity - I might almost call it the point - is in its implications for your life. Those implications depend upon acknowledging the "theory" to be true, but they are not the same thing, and the leap from Christ's death to invincible joy and contentedness (and a million other things) is about as obvious as the leap from Copenhagen to supermarket scanners. The relationship is there, it's just work - very worthwhile work - to figure it out. But people who keep looking for that relationship by asking "do I/can I believe this?" are going to be eternally frustrated. What they should be asking is "I believe this: what does it imply?"
One of the things that I find most deplorable (and baffling) about the way I perceive a great portion of my peers evaluating religion is that they treat it like an idea to be accepted or rejected. I suspect that this is one of the nefarious side effects of the idea of freedom of religion. It is obvious that everybody has the right to choose their own religion (and accept the consequences thereof, which may include summary execution depending on your locale), but somewhere along the line I perceive that people have gotten this idea that religion is something made up. With surprising frequency in the past couple weeks (and for my whole thinking Christian life) I've run into the attitude that "I just can't believe God would be like that" or some inconsequential variant thereof. The nature of God is not an idea to be built; it's a truth to be discovered. Saying "I just can't believe God would be like that" is every bit as ridiculous as Einstein refusing to believe in quantum mechanics, or the Church refusing to believe Copernicus.
Interruption: "I just can't believe God would do that" is a valid criterion by which to judge events on a spiritual plane, once the nature of God has been determined to a reasonable degree.
But, on the other hand, if that is what you're looking for and refuse to acknowledge it for no better reason than "I just can't believe it" then you should at least have the decency to admit that you're deceiving yourself through denial. Take hell, for instance. I don't understand the nature of hell particularly well (nor do I intend to waste much skull sweat over it, since I do understand it well enough to know that what hell is or isn't has nothing to do with me), but it's amazing the number of times a conversation with someone who's wondering about Christianity comes to the point where Someone says, "I just can't believe in a God who would create hell." That statement betrays a fundamental unreadiness to believe in God: because you're still treating God like a picture you can customize, instead of a [metaphorically] living, breathing individual who is what he is whether you like it or not.
Now sometimes someone will say that (or an equivalent statement) and actually be trying to point to a contradiction that goes something like this:
Axiom: God is good (or loving, or merciful, or whatever alleged attribute of God you want to include).
Axiom: Hell exists.
Contradiction
The proof is oftentimes that spotty, too, since if you try to pin down the intermediate steps you usually run into a question of definitions: either "what is good?" or "what is hell?" I'm only aware of one workable definition of the former, and it's one that Someone usually finds unsatisfying (I'm sure Watson felt the same way about Holmes' "when you've eliminated all other possibilities" axiom). As for the latter, I don't know enough to answer the question very well and I doubt that many other people do either, which makes it silly to use it in an attempt to catch Christianity in a contradiction. (I'm not aware of the Christian God ever having actually been caught in a contradiction: so far as I know all anybody has on him are issues in which there is no contradiction, or issues in which there might be contradictions but nobody's really very sure. In the face of a record where all the questions we can deal with turn out in God's favor, I'm not inclined to lose sleep over the question marks.)
What really gets me about this issue is that it often seems to be the last obstacle to friends who "agree intellectually" with Christianity but can't bring themselves to "believe." I strongly suspect this to be drawing a dichotomy where none exists. What that must really mean, I think, is that someone believes Christianity but can't bring themselves to act like a Christian - or, more likely, doesn't know what acting like a Christian means. After all, there's nothing to "believe" about Christianity other than the question of "true, false, or not sure." If you "agree intellectually" with Christianity you must have checked the "true" box; you "believe" it definitionally in the same way that you "believe" in quantum mechanics.
The tragedy of it all is that people have been conditioned to think that "believing" a religion is the truly important part about it. Maybe that's true with other religions; I don't know, but that's not what Christianity is like at all - and if someone who "agrees intellectually" with it has missed that point, then his or her study of the religion leaves out a crucial point. Believing Christianity really is like believing quantum mechanics. The utility of quantum has nothing to do with its truth or falsehood; the utility is in the implications. Believing in quantum mechanics doesn't enrich your life any: seeing that quantum mechanics implies lasers (and a million other things) does. Acknowledging the theory to be true doesn't get you anywhere; you have to figure out how to apply it. Similarly, the meat of Christianity - I might almost call it the point - is in its implications for your life. Those implications depend upon acknowledging the "theory" to be true, but they are not the same thing, and the leap from Christ's death to invincible joy and contentedness (and a million other things) is about as obvious as the leap from Copenhagen to supermarket scanners. The relationship is there, it's just work - very worthwhile work - to figure it out. But people who keep looking for that relationship by asking "do I/can I believe this?" are going to be eternally frustrated. What they should be asking is "I believe this: what does it imply?"
Everybody seems to have "current reading" lists. My blog is sort of feature-impoverished, in that it has no link list, no vital stats, and no reading list, but nevertheless I do read. I'm currently reading (re-reading) Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. It's interesting this time around, since I have come to a more conscious understanding of the ways in which I process art. One of those ways - in some cases the primary way - is symbolically: the work stands for or evokes something which is only somewhat related to its nominal subject matter. In some cases I think my symbols are fairly universal: the fact that Charlie's Angel's 2 evokes a fantasy world full of life, love, friendship, and beauty is I think fairly obvious to most people who have seen the movie.
In the case of Stranger what attracts me to the book is not so much what it's about (what it's about is heartbreakingly laughable) but the little nuggets of "preach it, brother!" moments that are scattered throughout all of Heinlein's writings. Attend one such:
"Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy - in fact, they're almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other."
This is a truth so elementary that I was taught it in religion classes in 6th grade (and if you've seen Chaminade's religion classes, you know that something has to be pretty elementary indeed to get included in one of them). It is nevertheless the sort of thing that I wish were copied down onto large heavy tomes whose sole purpose was to whack every human being on the planet upside the head once daily in the (vain) hope that they would then take notice of it.
Of course in Stranger things tend to go in interesting directions, morally speaking. A few paragraphs later Jubal is still talking:
"If a man swore on his own Bible that he refrained from coveting his neighbor's wife because the code forbade it, I would suspect either self-deception or subnormal sexuality. Any male virile enough to sire a child has coveted many women, whether he acts or not.
"Now comes Mike and says, 'There is no need to covet my wife ... love her! There's no limit to her love, we have everything to gain - and nothing to lose but fear and guilt and hatred and jealousy.'"
This is a point that I happen to agree with, in a symbolic sort of way. The idea that a human being can only be in a satisfying pair-bonding relationship with one other human being seems rather silly to me. I'm not at all well-read on the relevant anthropology but I strongly suspect that the jealousy which we expect would arise in a group marriage would be a result of either cultural conditioning or (more likely) the fact that most human beings can't choose a really good mate to save their life when they're only trying to pick one. If someone like a Valentine Michael Smith really could get a group of truly mature people of character and re-write their cultural conditioning from the birthroom on up, I'd actually lay pretty good odds that he could get an honestly successful group marriage.
Except for one thing.
That one thing is the definition of a "truly mature person of character." One of the tricks I've learned about reading science fiction is that you should never assume that it takes place in your world. Even if the setting of the story is "present day" you can assume no more than the author's words allow you to infer. In the case of Stranger, even though it takes place in the early 21st century on Earth, you can't assume the existence of God. And that is the one factor that keeps this marvellous book from being a truly excellent book; it is forever a "what-if God didn't exist?" fantasy. Of course the divine is explicitly present - but it is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Peter, and Paul. When you throw that God into the equation the book's moral fantasy falls apart, as can easily be seen by the following:
Axiom: "'Love' is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own." (Jubal Harshaw)
Axiom: God is grieved (== !happy) by group marriage.
Conclusion: He does not truly love who enters into group marriage.
Of course you will notice that the second axiom is up for debate, and I'm not actually positive I believe it myself. Pornography in Stranger makes for a stronger example, but I was going with marriage so I decided not to switch gears. Nevertheless I can appreciate the symbolic essence of Mike's philosophy of sex: that it is fundamentally a goodness and ought to be delighted in, and that much of what we take for granted about the morality of sex is circumstantial at best, blind prejudice at worst. The trick for the real world is figuring the actual God into the evaluations which that basic truth calls for.
In the case of Stranger what attracts me to the book is not so much what it's about (what it's about is heartbreakingly laughable) but the little nuggets of "preach it, brother!" moments that are scattered throughout all of Heinlein's writings. Attend one such:
"Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy - in fact, they're almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other."
This is a truth so elementary that I was taught it in religion classes in 6th grade (and if you've seen Chaminade's religion classes, you know that something has to be pretty elementary indeed to get included in one of them). It is nevertheless the sort of thing that I wish were copied down onto large heavy tomes whose sole purpose was to whack every human being on the planet upside the head once daily in the (vain) hope that they would then take notice of it.
Of course in Stranger things tend to go in interesting directions, morally speaking. A few paragraphs later Jubal is still talking:
"If a man swore on his own Bible that he refrained from coveting his neighbor's wife because the code forbade it, I would suspect either self-deception or subnormal sexuality. Any male virile enough to sire a child has coveted many women, whether he acts or not.
"Now comes Mike and says, 'There is no need to covet my wife ... love her! There's no limit to her love, we have everything to gain - and nothing to lose but fear and guilt and hatred and jealousy.'"
This is a point that I happen to agree with, in a symbolic sort of way. The idea that a human being can only be in a satisfying pair-bonding relationship with one other human being seems rather silly to me. I'm not at all well-read on the relevant anthropology but I strongly suspect that the jealousy which we expect would arise in a group marriage would be a result of either cultural conditioning or (more likely) the fact that most human beings can't choose a really good mate to save their life when they're only trying to pick one. If someone like a Valentine Michael Smith really could get a group of truly mature people of character and re-write their cultural conditioning from the birthroom on up, I'd actually lay pretty good odds that he could get an honestly successful group marriage.
Except for one thing.
That one thing is the definition of a "truly mature person of character." One of the tricks I've learned about reading science fiction is that you should never assume that it takes place in your world. Even if the setting of the story is "present day" you can assume no more than the author's words allow you to infer. In the case of Stranger, even though it takes place in the early 21st century on Earth, you can't assume the existence of God. And that is the one factor that keeps this marvellous book from being a truly excellent book; it is forever a "what-if God didn't exist?" fantasy. Of course the divine is explicitly present - but it is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Peter, and Paul. When you throw that God into the equation the book's moral fantasy falls apart, as can easily be seen by the following:
Axiom: "'Love' is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own." (Jubal Harshaw)
Axiom: God is grieved (== !happy) by group marriage.
Conclusion: He does not truly love who enters into group marriage.
Of course you will notice that the second axiom is up for debate, and I'm not actually positive I believe it myself. Pornography in Stranger makes for a stronger example, but I was going with marriage so I decided not to switch gears. Nevertheless I can appreciate the symbolic essence of Mike's philosophy of sex: that it is fundamentally a goodness and ought to be delighted in, and that much of what we take for granted about the morality of sex is circumstantial at best, blind prejudice at worst. The trick for the real world is figuring the actual God into the evaluations which that basic truth calls for.
Saturday, June 21, 2003
I'm typing this from Rose and Shanah's apartment, on Blue Rose's nifty Dell QuietKey keyboard. This is because the QuietKey has my endorsement as the best keyboard I've ever typed on. The keys are so springy! But the reason I have access to this marvel of inputting power is that I'm staying in Rose and Shanah's apartment for the first half of the Stanford Waltz Week and Waltz Weekend. I'm currently pleasantly exhausted from the day's classes, which included a lot of pivots so my right wrist and hand were kind of sore for a while. Shanah says that I pull more than I have to when I pivot, which is true. It's a habit I've picked up from pivoting with people who don't do their half of the work, and it's kind of hard for me to change that habit when I pivot with someone who knows what she's doing. If you read this, though, I really do appreciate it when my partners do their share, even if I sometimes forget to back off.
I've said it before and I'll probably say it again: I like dancing. I love the music we dance to; I love the pageantry of asking someone to dance; I love the wonderful feeling of competence; I love the social dynamic; I love the movement. (I am also not entirely unappreciative of the fact that it affords me the opportunity to dance and flirt with pretty girls.)
There is something excellent about dance that makes me smile. I've been smiling a lot up here, and I think it kinds of weirds my hostesses out, but I can't help it. One of the things I discovered this year (been discovering for a long time, like an archaeologist dusting off a find that he can already basically identify) is one of my primary motivators. This motivator is aristeia if I may use the word; excellence if I may not. I do not mean truth, although I don't think something is liable to be truly excellent if it isn't also true. But really, the fact that Rose's mouse is white ... that may be true, but it's not really excellent. Nor do I particularly mean beauty - although excellence is beautiful. Something may be beautiful (e.g., Chicago) and also not be excellent in the way that inspires me.
But excellence, now ... excellence is, if I may borrow a Victorian term, improving. Reading Honor Harrington, for instance, makes me a better person, because it illuminates a critical aspect of personhood: good character. Honor novels are entertaining and well written, but more importantly they allow me to spend time in the company of noble people (an all too rare occurrence in the real world, so I'll take it where I can find it). I mean the kind of nobility that shows you something that is not only true but grand, that inspires you to be better than who you are.
Better than who you are. I recently read Richard Bach's Illusions, and while I enjoyed the book it reminded me of one of my pet peeves: the idea that things are just as they should be right now. Maybe they are, but I'm a romantic so I refuse to believe that without a much stronger case behind it than anybody's ever presented to me. I don't want this world. I don't want this me. I'm relatively happy with the way things are, but I want something better all the same. That doesn't mean I'm unhappy right now because I don't have a better world or a better me; I've got a pretty good one of both all things considered. But good things are not the sort of things which you should ever stop wanting more of. I want to be a better me. I want to be the kind of person that brings out the best in people, and I want to be the kind of person who sees the best in people, like in the old Amy Grant song:
I may not be every mother's dream for her little girl
And my face may not grace the mind of everyone in the world
But that's all right, as long as I can have one thing, I pray:
When people look inside my life, I want to hear them say
He has his Father's eyes.
Okay, in the original it's "she has," but you get the picture. I want to be the sort of person who brings out the best in people by care, yes, but also by inspiration. It is in the nature of excellence to inspire people to great things, and I want to be an excellent person. Because it is also in the nature of excellence that excellence is a good thing, and I want good things. Rambling? Yes. But you get the picture.
I've said it before and I'll probably say it again: I like dancing. I love the music we dance to; I love the pageantry of asking someone to dance; I love the wonderful feeling of competence; I love the social dynamic; I love the movement. (I am also not entirely unappreciative of the fact that it affords me the opportunity to dance and flirt with pretty girls.)
There is something excellent about dance that makes me smile. I've been smiling a lot up here, and I think it kinds of weirds my hostesses out, but I can't help it. One of the things I discovered this year (been discovering for a long time, like an archaeologist dusting off a find that he can already basically identify) is one of my primary motivators. This motivator is aristeia if I may use the word; excellence if I may not. I do not mean truth, although I don't think something is liable to be truly excellent if it isn't also true. But really, the fact that Rose's mouse is white ... that may be true, but it's not really excellent. Nor do I particularly mean beauty - although excellence is beautiful. Something may be beautiful (e.g., Chicago) and also not be excellent in the way that inspires me.
But excellence, now ... excellence is, if I may borrow a Victorian term, improving. Reading Honor Harrington, for instance, makes me a better person, because it illuminates a critical aspect of personhood: good character. Honor novels are entertaining and well written, but more importantly they allow me to spend time in the company of noble people (an all too rare occurrence in the real world, so I'll take it where I can find it). I mean the kind of nobility that shows you something that is not only true but grand, that inspires you to be better than who you are.
Better than who you are. I recently read Richard Bach's Illusions, and while I enjoyed the book it reminded me of one of my pet peeves: the idea that things are just as they should be right now. Maybe they are, but I'm a romantic so I refuse to believe that without a much stronger case behind it than anybody's ever presented to me. I don't want this world. I don't want this me. I'm relatively happy with the way things are, but I want something better all the same. That doesn't mean I'm unhappy right now because I don't have a better world or a better me; I've got a pretty good one of both all things considered. But good things are not the sort of things which you should ever stop wanting more of. I want to be a better me. I want to be the kind of person that brings out the best in people, and I want to be the kind of person who sees the best in people, like in the old Amy Grant song:
I may not be every mother's dream for her little girl
And my face may not grace the mind of everyone in the world
But that's all right, as long as I can have one thing, I pray:
When people look inside my life, I want to hear them say
He has his Father's eyes.
Okay, in the original it's "she has," but you get the picture. I want to be the sort of person who brings out the best in people by care, yes, but also by inspiration. It is in the nature of excellence to inspire people to great things, and I want to be an excellent person. Because it is also in the nature of excellence that excellence is a good thing, and I want good things. Rambling? Yes. But you get the picture.
Saturday, May 31, 2003
I've been working more on Phoenix Earth lately, after a long period of just not thinking about it much. I'm really happy with the work that's been done recently: revamping the specialization system, making a few tweaks to the combat system, and carefully crafting my villains' character sheets. Of course I am on the one hand merely excited to be back in that world. But on the other hand I am also excited to have the dream revived. Why? At the end of Out of the Silent Planet, C.S. Lewis writes the following:
"'Anyway,' he continued, 'what we need for the moment is not so much a body of belief as a body of people familiarized with certain ideas. If we could even effect in one per cent of our readers a change-over from the conception of Space to the conception of Heaven, we should have made a beginning.'"
If you are familiar with Lewis' other fiction, I think you will perceive that this is the man himself speaking. And it is an effort to which I would like to direct Phoenix Earth. There is more to it than that, of course; for my players the game certainly stands on its own (though, I should note, the world does not). I don't mean for Phoenix Earth to be an evangelistic tool, but I do hope that it is useful for the intellectual life of those who come into contact with it. I consider a childhood spent among fantasy and science fiction to be one of my humblest but most useful intellectual tools. It frees me, to a large extent, from the plausibility fallacy. That fallacy looks like this: when a historian reads an account of, say, the Red Sea crossing (or the Persians' repulsion from Delphi, or any other ancient miracle you care to name) they tend to dismiss it because such things are simply too absurd to be countenanced. That doesn't seem like a particularly good argument to me, and I find myself much less prone to it simply because such things do not seem particularly strange to me.
I should be very pleased if Phoenix Earth gives my friends the tools to consider the spiritual realm unfettered by the tendency to say, "now hold on, doesn't that strike you as ridiculous?" It's all well and good for The DM to consider that the admission of the reality of the spiritual world would demystify it - but that's precisely the problem. The virtue of the spiritual is not that it's mystic but that it's real. If that be not admitted, you're not only gutting the "mystic" system you're considering, you're still playing with mere make-believe. And why then is the "mystic" worthy of anything but our recreational time?
"'Anyway,' he continued, 'what we need for the moment is not so much a body of belief as a body of people familiarized with certain ideas. If we could even effect in one per cent of our readers a change-over from the conception of Space to the conception of Heaven, we should have made a beginning.'"
If you are familiar with Lewis' other fiction, I think you will perceive that this is the man himself speaking. And it is an effort to which I would like to direct Phoenix Earth. There is more to it than that, of course; for my players the game certainly stands on its own (though, I should note, the world does not). I don't mean for Phoenix Earth to be an evangelistic tool, but I do hope that it is useful for the intellectual life of those who come into contact with it. I consider a childhood spent among fantasy and science fiction to be one of my humblest but most useful intellectual tools. It frees me, to a large extent, from the plausibility fallacy. That fallacy looks like this: when a historian reads an account of, say, the Red Sea crossing (or the Persians' repulsion from Delphi, or any other ancient miracle you care to name) they tend to dismiss it because such things are simply too absurd to be countenanced. That doesn't seem like a particularly good argument to me, and I find myself much less prone to it simply because such things do not seem particularly strange to me.
I should be very pleased if Phoenix Earth gives my friends the tools to consider the spiritual realm unfettered by the tendency to say, "now hold on, doesn't that strike you as ridiculous?" It's all well and good for The DM to consider that the admission of the reality of the spiritual world would demystify it - but that's precisely the problem. The virtue of the spiritual is not that it's mystic but that it's real. If that be not admitted, you're not only gutting the "mystic" system you're considering, you're still playing with mere make-believe. And why then is the "mystic" worthy of anything but our recreational time?
Sunday, April 20, 2003
I've been talking with M'lakMavet and Archimedes lately about games, and their artistic potential. M'lak will have an article out on it soon, but I have a few thoughts of my own that I thought I might as well share, especially since that last post about the war has been up so long.
By way of preface, the interactive aspect of gaming doesn't invalidate it as art. Hamlet is never the same twice, and people have done some pretty wacky stuff to it (and other Shakespeare plays) over the centuries, but the fact that the end product depends so heavily on who actually executes the show doesn't invalidate theatre as art. The difference of course is that you can name examples of great theatre, but not examples of great games. Oh, you can name any number of "great games" according to the standards by which games are judged - but not according to the standards by which all other art is judged. I wager it's a safe bet that none of the games we've seen so far will be played in our children's time, let alone in five hundred years. And it doesn't count if they're played for sentimental value, or the novelty of history. People may remember Bach's music fondly, but ultimately they play it because it's phenomenal music no matter how old it is. We have no games like that.
But one day, hopefully, that will change - if game developers become artists, or artists became game developers. But still I think there are some major mental tasks to complete before we get a really great game. One of those is figuring out what the strengths of the medium as an art form actually are. Interactivity is the most obvious answer - but what does that really mean? And what about interface? Should games strive for a simple interface, as Archimedes would have it? Quite possibly - after all, the more intuitive the interface the more complete the immersion, and immersion is something that even today's poor excuses for games are fairly good at. Presumably we should seek after immersion.
But will there perhaps be a place for an art form where the interface is actually part of the experience? Before you scoff, remember how much cooler sims can be inside a cockpit pod, as at Virtual World. In some ways of course that's just a way of increasing the immersion factor: controlling a BattleMech with two sticks and foot pedals is more believable than doing it with a mouse and keyboard. But in some cases the interface is difficult for difficulty's sake (e.g., virtually every fighting game known to man). Imagine a game where you have to master the interface (which, for a large part of gaming history, was virtually the entire point) to really enjoy the game. You might scoff, but technical proficiency as the price to participate doesn't doom an art form. Else where would musicians be, or dancers, or painters, or filmmakers? Of course you can often enjoy their products passively (and so can you enjoy a game without playing it, as the Koreans have taught us with their devotion to StarCult ... er, Craft). But even passive enjoyment isn't necessary: virtually nobody who doesn't already know how to waltz enjoys watching other people do it. And yet the waltz was a viable, extremely popular form of art for decades, and social dance in general continues to be a viable popular art today. So I will not dismiss the possibility of a genre of games which are real art but require you to master their interfaces to really enjoy them. Maybe one day my son will describe such a game to me with the same glow with which I describe the waltz or lindy hop to a non-initiate, and he'll smile at my benign ignorance as I smile at so many others'.
Another hurdle is technical mastery. I think that game developers have their standards insufficiently high when it comes to the technical execution of their craft. Perhaps this seems surprising to say of an industry where graphics and system demands supercede each other so rapidly, but when it comes to game design itself the rate of progress is not nearly so fast. StarCraft's level of play balance is still exceptional, and not the rule - but why? Is it because all the RTS designers worth their salt work for Blizzard? Maybe, but I doubt it. Why is it that game designers think that a game is complete if it has a fantastic multiplayer component but a lackluster single-player, or vice versa? StarCraft makes me think that the idea of the single vs. multiplayer game ought to be more of a niche concept than it seems to be: the play balance in StarCraft is equally necessary for the single player and multiplayer (assuming you're into high standards of quality), since you play all three races against one another and the tactical problem therefore needs to have a multiplayer-like balance (unless of course you're not interested in creating an interesting tactical problem, which is deplorable in a designer of combat-based games). Granted that's probably not how Blizzard thought of it - but why not?
It occurs to me that aside from the non-acknowledgement of games as art (which is I think the root of the problem of people's perception of them) one of the problems people have with games is that they cause you to spend all your time inside, pretending ("posing," perhaps is a more accurate term), or both. Besides the fact that those objections are obviously silly (why then is acting okay?), it occurs to me that we object to anybody spending all their time in "idle" artistic activity. It's not okay to spend all your time inside at your paints or your books any more than your games (though large portions of time devoted to them may be acceptable). As for posing, I think that's a misunderstanding of what the pretending in games is actually pretending. Hint: it's more than just what's on the screen. Which is true of all good pretending. I may never be a hoplite, but I can still take my place in line of dance, raise my arm to high port, and charge ahead into the mill of Terpsichore.
By way of preface, the interactive aspect of gaming doesn't invalidate it as art. Hamlet is never the same twice, and people have done some pretty wacky stuff to it (and other Shakespeare plays) over the centuries, but the fact that the end product depends so heavily on who actually executes the show doesn't invalidate theatre as art. The difference of course is that you can name examples of great theatre, but not examples of great games. Oh, you can name any number of "great games" according to the standards by which games are judged - but not according to the standards by which all other art is judged. I wager it's a safe bet that none of the games we've seen so far will be played in our children's time, let alone in five hundred years. And it doesn't count if they're played for sentimental value, or the novelty of history. People may remember Bach's music fondly, but ultimately they play it because it's phenomenal music no matter how old it is. We have no games like that.
But one day, hopefully, that will change - if game developers become artists, or artists became game developers. But still I think there are some major mental tasks to complete before we get a really great game. One of those is figuring out what the strengths of the medium as an art form actually are. Interactivity is the most obvious answer - but what does that really mean? And what about interface? Should games strive for a simple interface, as Archimedes would have it? Quite possibly - after all, the more intuitive the interface the more complete the immersion, and immersion is something that even today's poor excuses for games are fairly good at. Presumably we should seek after immersion.
But will there perhaps be a place for an art form where the interface is actually part of the experience? Before you scoff, remember how much cooler sims can be inside a cockpit pod, as at Virtual World. In some ways of course that's just a way of increasing the immersion factor: controlling a BattleMech with two sticks and foot pedals is more believable than doing it with a mouse and keyboard. But in some cases the interface is difficult for difficulty's sake (e.g., virtually every fighting game known to man). Imagine a game where you have to master the interface (which, for a large part of gaming history, was virtually the entire point) to really enjoy the game. You might scoff, but technical proficiency as the price to participate doesn't doom an art form. Else where would musicians be, or dancers, or painters, or filmmakers? Of course you can often enjoy their products passively (and so can you enjoy a game without playing it, as the Koreans have taught us with their devotion to StarCult ... er, Craft). But even passive enjoyment isn't necessary: virtually nobody who doesn't already know how to waltz enjoys watching other people do it. And yet the waltz was a viable, extremely popular form of art for decades, and social dance in general continues to be a viable popular art today. So I will not dismiss the possibility of a genre of games which are real art but require you to master their interfaces to really enjoy them. Maybe one day my son will describe such a game to me with the same glow with which I describe the waltz or lindy hop to a non-initiate, and he'll smile at my benign ignorance as I smile at so many others'.
Another hurdle is technical mastery. I think that game developers have their standards insufficiently high when it comes to the technical execution of their craft. Perhaps this seems surprising to say of an industry where graphics and system demands supercede each other so rapidly, but when it comes to game design itself the rate of progress is not nearly so fast. StarCraft's level of play balance is still exceptional, and not the rule - but why? Is it because all the RTS designers worth their salt work for Blizzard? Maybe, but I doubt it. Why is it that game designers think that a game is complete if it has a fantastic multiplayer component but a lackluster single-player, or vice versa? StarCraft makes me think that the idea of the single vs. multiplayer game ought to be more of a niche concept than it seems to be: the play balance in StarCraft is equally necessary for the single player and multiplayer (assuming you're into high standards of quality), since you play all three races against one another and the tactical problem therefore needs to have a multiplayer-like balance (unless of course you're not interested in creating an interesting tactical problem, which is deplorable in a designer of combat-based games). Granted that's probably not how Blizzard thought of it - but why not?
It occurs to me that aside from the non-acknowledgement of games as art (which is I think the root of the problem of people's perception of them) one of the problems people have with games is that they cause you to spend all your time inside, pretending ("posing," perhaps is a more accurate term), or both. Besides the fact that those objections are obviously silly (why then is acting okay?), it occurs to me that we object to anybody spending all their time in "idle" artistic activity. It's not okay to spend all your time inside at your paints or your books any more than your games (though large portions of time devoted to them may be acceptable). As for posing, I think that's a misunderstanding of what the pretending in games is actually pretending. Hint: it's more than just what's on the screen. Which is true of all good pretending. I may never be a hoplite, but I can still take my place in line of dance, raise my arm to high port, and charge ahead into the mill of Terpsichore.
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