Those being the Julies and their sisters, inasmuch as they have sisters.
I noticed some discussion among you concerning "I Heart Huckabees." I wrote a post on May 22, after I watched it the first time. The post is mostly about my take on the relevant philosophies, not the movie itself, but if you think you might like to reply, I'd love any comments.
Now, back to business....
Okay, for several of you, about three paragraphs into this post, you're going to think, "He's talking about me!" And that "me," in case you didn't catch it, is shrill and outraged. Honestly, though, this is something everyone needs to hear, often. It's not directed at or wholly inspired by any one of you. (No, not even you.) But, if it happens to speak to your own life, now, take it to heart and be glad at the coincidence that placed words into your life right where they belonged.
I'm just sayin', is all.
But here's the thing: everyone you encounter in your life is a person.
I need some snappier way of saying that, a clever phrase that will stick in your head and pop into your thoughts right when it's needed. Maybe before this post is through I'll come up with one. For now, though, we've gotta settle with the boring, apparently obvious "everyone you encounter in your life is a person."
That's a big deal, though. We live our lives inside the first-person point-of-view that so many authors have discarded as being too limited in scope. Each of us sees his life as his own story, and all the people he encounters along the way are just characters, just plot developments that push his story this way or that. Some of them we love for the impact they have on our lives. Some of them we hate, for the same reason. And the named characters keep coming back, keep affecting our lives in different ways, so maybe our feelings about that person change, shift, over the course of the story.
Even so, making another human being into a dynamic character in your story isn't enough.
Because, behind his eyes, he's living his own story. He's got a whole world, a whole life of his own to live. He's conscious and aware and trying to live his life well. Where it intersects with yours, there is conflict. In writing, we refer to all of these intersections as conflict. It could be a fistfight or an embrace, but it's still conflict. It's two stories trying to come to terms enough for each of them to move on, in their own directions.
This post isn't about the story metaphor, though. In fact, my main point is that the story metaphor completely defines most of our lives, and it's totally wrong. Or, rather, dangerously limited in scope.
Everyone you encounter -- whether it's a friend, a loved one, or a perfect stranger -- everyone you encounter is living a whole life, is a person encountering you at the same time. And every one of us (I'm convinced of this) is trying to live a good life. What exactly that means changes from day to day, but every one of us is trying to live a good life.
I know you are. Right now, you are.
And yet, even so, you make mistakes. You say something offhand to someone you really care about, and it's just devastating to them. You've done that, without ever meaning to offend, and you've seen the impact it had on their lives.
You act, trying to do something good (or at least something pleasant), and years later you see how your own actions are impacting the lives of people you've met, people you care about. Sometimes in good ways, sometimes in bad ways, and you never really know which will be which.
Sometimes you just act like a jerk. I'm not accusing you, I'm just reminding you of something you know is true. Sometimes you're in a bad mood, and something touches you off, and you just act like a total jerk. It's a short-lived thing (because you're not a jerk), and next moment you're back to trying to live a good life.
And that's okay. Life is a learning experience. You try to get better as you go along, which is the same as saying that, all the time, you're trying to live a good life.
Now...change perspectives. Think of someone you encountered yesterday. It can be a stranger, or it can be your spouse. But think of someone specific. Think of someone you encountered yesterday, and realize that that person was trying to live a good life. That person was an awareness behind his eyes, looking out on the world and making decisions about it. Maybe he said something that hurt your feelings. Maybe he acted, in a way that will impact your life down the line (for good or bad). Maybe he was just a complete jerk.
But he wasn't doing any of those things to you, y'see? He's living his life, just like you're living yours. He was making decisions, and maybe floundering and maybe just shining like the sun. We do that, sometimes, too. You do that, more often than you realize. You're just going along, trying to live a good life, and out of nowhere, BAM!, you actually do. You flare up like a nova, and shed beautiful light on the lives of everyone around you.
I've seen you do it. Otherwise I wouldn't have invited you to read my blog.
And think about your own life. Sometimes you're awesome. Sometimes you're horrible. Through it all, though, remember that you're a Child of God. You are this amazing thing, this beautiful, boundless potential, and you're living a life learning how to live up to that potential. Remember that you are everything that you could one day be. You are the brilliant, shining moments, and the cost of becoming that, the very process of becoming that, necessarily includes the sleazy, cruel, selfish moments, along with all the rest.
And that stranger who just cut you off in traffic? He's the same thing. That's one of his bad moments, but he's a Child of God, and you had better believe that there's times he glows in radiant beauty. The same is true of everyone you meet. Every person, every single person, is a little bit of divine spark trying to learn how to shine. And all of them are seeing the world through their own faulty eyes, trying to guess what it all really means (just like you do), and making decisions, and making bad choices, and stumbling through today because, please, maybe tomorrow will be better.
That includes people close to you. That includes your Mom or your Dad. It includes boyfriends and girlfriends and spouses and siblings and children who just won't treat you like you deserve. They're looking at a world they can't quite get, they're fending off frustrations and trying to find their purpose and wrestling with the injustice of it all, and when you cross their path, when you enter their life, they make a decision that will impact you.
And it may be good, and it may be bad. Switch perspectives again. You encounter someone in your life, someone important to you, someone you care about, and you make a decision that will impact that person's life. It may be good, it may be bad. You want it to be good, but you know from long, long experience, that there's equal chances something will go wrong.
All of us, every one of us, is trying to live a good life. It's fair to be hurt when someone hurts you. It's fair to be annoyed at someone acting like a jerk. But remember, always remember, every single one of those people is a little bit of divine spark, trying to learn how to shine.
I challenge you, personally, to try to see that in people. Try to see people as people, wherever you encounter them, not just as characters in the story of your life. Try to remember who they are.
And, in a very specific application of this, here's your homework. Think of someone you care about, and who you know cares about you. Someone who has hurt you so bad that you almost discarded them from the list when I said, "and who you know cares about you." Think about that person, and the thing he or she did to hurt you.
And think about a time when you made a choice about someone important to you, and you hurt them. Whether you meant to hurt them or not, you made a choice that hurt their lives.
Dwell upon these two things, and find the space behind this person's eyes. Find the space inside his or her own mind, where the offense happened. And try to recognize it for what it was, rather than what it became within your life.
Please? For me?
On the drive in to work this morning, the fog was incredible. Glancing out the window, even now, it still is.
Actually, while I was on the highway, I was thinking, "This fog isn't that impressive. It couldn't even cause an accident at 75 mph." Well, actually I thought, "at seventy-five miles per hour," because that's me.
But once I got off the highway, and down onto the streets, it was incredible. Maybe forty feet of visibility, probably closer to twenty. After that, a blank wall of white.
Driving through it, it felt like I was building a world around me as I went, forging a path through nothing, forcing memory and imagination into the shape of reality.
Too bad all that exercise led me back to work, but it was worth it for the drive. Beautiful.
As an aside: someone once said, "No autobiography is worth reading." And he meant it. Cynical as I am, I'd be tempted to agree and go around quoting him all the time, except that Benvenuto Cellini's Vita is one of the most interesting pieces of literature I've ever read.
Go get a copy. Read it. Now.
Anyway, my story.
When I was about twelve I got a video game based on a really cheesy series of Fantasy novels (the Forgotten Realms, for those of you who know enough to know). No, Daniel, this isn't "Pool of Radiance," this is "Secret of the Silver Blades." Believe it or not, my interest in "Secret of the Silver Blades" was worse than the "Pool of Radiance."
Yeah. Just the names convey the cheese factor. Of course, I was twelve, and it's not like I was hanging out with G. I. Joes or transformers or something....
Loved this game. It was awesome. I found out later it was fourth in a series (the aforementioned "Pool of Radiance" being the first). I'm certain that I invested hundreds of hours into those four games. Conceivably thousands. "Secret of the Silver Blades," alone, certainly accounted for hundreds. It had probably been out for two or three years when I got it (which is to say, antique), and I kept playing it for at least four or five years more.
And, here's the thing, it wasn't a great game. Even then, I knew it wasn't a great game. There are games that are that good, that are worth going back to. Every iteration of "Civilization" has been that good. For Toby, it's "Sacrifice." I understand great games. This was not one of them.
I kinda liked the story, though. And I really liked that I had figured out most of the map, and I could get anywhere, and I could get really powerful weapons.
And then I figured out how to manipulate saved games so that I could pass really awesome equipment from the end of the game, back to new characters just starting the game. Or, say I got a really awesome ring that would make a character super cool. I could duplicate it so every one of my characters (you could have five characters in the party) got two copies of it.
Then I figured out how to save a game where all the monsters were already dead, but certain events that gave huge experience rewards were untriggered. That meant you could create a new character, load him into this save game, run through the map and trigger all of these events, and gain several levels (the equivalent of, say, ten hours of actual gameplay) in a couple minutes. You could even remove the character from the party, reload that save game, add the character back in, and do it again for another several levels.
Okay, okay, I was a kid, everybody does a little bit of that. In FPS games it's called God Mode, and basically all of them come with God Mode as an option. It's a little bit fun.
But did I mention I did this for four or five years?
Not only that...okay, here's where some of those hundreds of hours come from. "Secret of the Silver Blades" had this huge sprawling map, with dozens of levels, and they were all laid out on an evenly-spaced square grid, which is a way of saying it would be really easy to map out the entire game on graph paper, if you had the time and patience.
And you're all already rolling your eyes, but there you have it. I did that. Some levels of the map are four pages across, taped together, and two pages longwise. Filled with corridors and sprawling rooms, and notes indicating key fights and triggered events and treasure caches. I did all of that. I would charge my party into a room, kill of all the monsters, then pace it out, from end to end, counting tiles so I could get the map exactly right.
I did it in pen. If I made a mistake, I started that page over, recopying what I'd already gotten down, then moving on.
Yeah, you're with me so far.
So, when I was sixteenish, I took this whole monstrosity I'd created: the maps, the pages and pages of notes, the save game that gives you millions of free experience points, the save game with full sets of end-game equipment set for each of the different classes, the save game with nothing but tons and tons of gems, jewels, and precious metals....
And I gave it to a friend of mine as a birthday present.
Also: I really like to listen to hip-hop music and just giggle at the scope of the obscenity of it. But, I mean, not as an occasional lark. That's basically the only music I listen to.
So, there. Between those two things, you know almost everything there is to know about me. Marvel.
On the drive to work this morning, I was listening to NPR and there was a brief discussion of the current scandal wherein the Pentagon has paid Iraqi journalists to publish pro-American stories in Iraqi newspapers.
Meh.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Freedom of the Press, like the right to vote, is a liberty that is inherently most likely to be used by those most likely to abuse it.
The thoughtful, the careful, the mature and concerned citizens are going to have a degree of self-control and reasonable restraint that will prevent them from ever remotely competing with the arrogant, brash, impulsive twits who rush out to impose their worldview on an undeserving public because it is their right.
Honestly, anyone who refers to his right in that tone of voice is probably insisting on his liberty to abuse a generous system.
I guess this gets back to the Active Way versus the Contemplative Way that I established in the KJW excerpt. I'm talking about the difference between Larry King and ... I don't even know any opinionators who I would hold up as a thoughtful and educated example. And this has nothing to do with Right of Left. Even the ones I agree with in principle, express their opinions in ways I could not condone and do so with the full protection of the State behind them.
But that's what gets to me. I'm embarrassed to hear Hannity or Limbaugh say things that I basically believe about our government, because of the way they say them. But, as a student of history, it just burns me up to hear the sea of voices decrying our government and demanding that the same government protect their right to say it.
Why? Why should a government protect the power of its opponents? Admittedly, sometimes we do. We trained bin Laden, to fight the Russians. We armed Hussein, to fight Iran. These were short-sighted mistakes, and all of us now regret that we made them, but somehow we expect the State to provide its domestic enemies with the weapons necessary to wage a war against it? It's absurd.
It's guaranteed by the Constitution. Yeah, I get that. I understand why the American government protects freedom of speech now. I just stand opposed to the initial promise. It is wrong to protect speech, particularly politically-motivated slander.
There should be some level of oversight, some extent of control, and I accept the loss of liberty that goes with it, because (and listen closely here) living in a Governed Society means the sacrifice of some individual comforts for the sake of a strong (and, in theory, supporting) community.
It makes sense that individuals would want Freedom of Speech. And, moreover, it makes a lot of sense that a community founded entirely on scandal and slander (that is, journalists) would want Freedom of the Press, specifically. It also makes sense that a man would want his neighbor's possessions, and human law is about subverting that individual desire for the sake of a community that offers security and order. We do not let men do whatever they wish -- why would we dare let them say whatever they wish, especially since saying is so much easier than doing.
Free speech is the strongest weapon against established government -- it is the foundation of Anarchy.
Now, Toby challenged me on this in one of my recent posts (for a given value of "recent"), and the same issue still stands: societies must choose the extent to which they are willing to sacrifice personal liberties for the sake of strong government. And, naturally, the government has as much capacity to abuse its powers as citizens have to abuse their liberties. These are real problems, and a totalitarian government like Hussein's Iraq can use a State-run press in abominable ways.
But that is not the inevitable result of government oversight. I think that's part of the problem with the American cultural conception of Strong Government -- we believe any government power must necessarily end in totalitarian control.
Did you know England does not have a protected Freedom of Speech? Certainly the country has been affected by the pervasive American culture, but the government today does not recognize Free Speech as an inherent right of its citizens. Of course, this isn't a huge surprise, since it was England's totalitarianism we were rejecting when we penned the Bill of Rights.
Yeah. England. Not Iraq, not North Korea, but England. And you can see any day of the week that the English population still expresses dissent, that the government is not an iron-clad structure of favoritism and nepotism. It's a free nation, a democratic nation even, but with a measure of reasonable restraint.
I've just read "V for Vendetta," a graphic novel that Daniel got me for my birthday, and it mostly focuses on the collapse of British society into a police state following World War 4. So these topics are very much on my mind, and I'm seeing in graphic detail the objections some of you would raise, but I want to make it clear: all government is a sacrifice of individual liberties for the sake of security and order. And, as I said at the top of this post, Freedom of the Press, like the right to vote, is a liberty that is inherently most likely to be used by those most likely to abuse it.
I have my doubts that I will get across everything that needs gotten, but there is a base concept of Adoption which I really need to establish.
I may have mentioned this to some extent in my earlier posts on Goverment (Monarchy specifically), but I couldn't find it if so, which means I didn't go into enough detail.
First, I'd like you to read a passage from Romans 7. It's verses 13-19, 22-23. The two verses I omitted do not significantly change the meaning of the text, so I've cut them for clarity. By all means, feel free to read the entire passage in context -- I'm just not quoting it all here.
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For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed....
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
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This is not, of course, the only place we see reference to God-the-Father or, by extension, the members of the church as his sons and daughters. In the book of Romans, though, Paul is able to draw upon that concept more fully and powerfully because of the Roman cultural practice of Adoption.
Our culture has established its own ideas concerning adoption, specifically the conception of a second-class status for adopted children. It's silly, it's an easily-dispelled idea, but it's one that persists in our culture and, honestly, that's how we feel in relation to God. When Paul says that we're the adopted sons and daughters of God, that makes perfect sense to the American mind. We're not his REAL kids, but he was generous enough to adopt us.
That's not how Adoption worked in the Roman empire.
(I referenced Goverment in my tagline, and that's about to come into play, too.)
Y'see, when we think of old-timey inheritance, we generally think of a system called "primogeniture" whereby the first-born son inherits the entire wealth (including titles) of the father. This is one of the huge stumbling blocks of monarchy as we imagine it -- that terrible corruption of passing the throne from Louis I down the line to Louis XVI.
The Romans had a system in place to prevent that, to some extent. Adoption. It was the responsibility of a Roman man to choose his own heir. It could be his first-born son, but a first-born son was not actually born with any inheritance rights. In order to pass his estate on to his first-born son, the Roman gentleman would have to adopt his son as his heir. He could just as easily adopt a nephew or a brother-in-law or, more likely, an apprentice or assistant. It was his responsibility to choose an heir who could effectively maintain the estate he would inherit.
Obviously this system was open to abuse of its own. I'm pretty sure most of you are already thinking of Nero and Caligula, and after all, who is going to try to hold an Emperor accountable for living up to his social responsibility? The Emperors did hold their followers responsible, though, and there were dozens (hundreds?) of kings within the Roman empire who were compelled to choose fitting heirs, and bound to that decision by the process of Adoption.
Adoption, then, was not an act of mercy or compassion, but one of investiture. When a Roman adopted a son, he proclaimed to the world, "I approve of this one. He deserves to one day own all the wealth and power that I possess."
And that is what God has done with us. That's the entire point of this passage in Romans. God has Adopted us into his sovereignty -- not just into the comfort of his home, but into the position of wielding his great might. We have been proclaimed worthy of becoming like God himself.
Here's the important bit "we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory."
We have been made Sons of God. We have been given all the power Christ bore when he walked the earth, but more than that. We have been promised the full power of God. This is the confidence he has shown in us. This is his expectation of us. Because adoption is a responsibility as well. We must live like Princes, in training to someday assume the throne. That's the "sharing in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory" bit. And that's an amazing position to be caught in.
And -- this is what irks me -- it's a role that we are not taught! My dad taught me about Roman adoption, and what it means to be a son of God. Other than that, I heard not a word. Have any of you heard of this before, from anyone other than me? We're taught that every one of us is a foot soldier in God's army. We're taught that we're prey the lion is stalking. We're taught to think like the Israelites, for whom God provides manna. We're taught that we're like the lillies, and God will clothe us in beauty, or that we're like the birds of the air, and God will fill our needs.
But that's not even the point of that passage. Jesus cries out, "how much more, then, will he do for you?" We are not just soldiers, we are not just cute little animals and pretty flowers. We're not even like the trackless Israelites, but like Moses who led them, all radiant from the Glory of God. We're Princes. We're Kings and Queens, arrayed before our Emperor. Stand up! Be proud, ye heavenly powers. The armies of angels are our armies.
Remember the parable of the prodigal son? Remember how he went away and sinned, and because he had squandered his wealth, he lived among the pigs, and lived like a pig. That's what we're doing, and the whole point of the story was that it was never necessary. Stand up! Go back to the wealth and the power that is your due -- not on your own merits, but because you have been adopted by the most powerful benefactor reality has ever known.
Live like it. That's your responsibility.
This is an excerpt from King Jason's War, that I enjoy. It is, here, entirely out of context, but I'm hopeful that it will still make some sense. It describes, I think, some of what's going on between the radical Liberals and the radical Conservatives, in these days.
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"It's amazing, really." Jason sighed. "They have their expectations of the world, of how it works, and the world just seems to shape itself around them."
"That is generally the way of it, with noblemen."
Jason growled, "It's not just the people. Sure, you'd expect it to be that way with people. All the commoners know that the nobles are in charge, so they conform to the world as the nobles see it. But…I mean…everything. The Eskiem certainly don't credit our Peers any authority, but look what has happened. The Peers want a war, and the events of the last few hours seem to guarantee one! Reality shaping itself around their expectations."
"There is more to it than that, Jason—"
"But the worst part is," Jason took a deep breath, eyebrows furrowing, "the worst of it is being me, living in this world of my own that doesn't conform to their expectations, but watching their world move right along in spite of me. They see a war as right and necessary, and my little objections—"
"You have not been entirely sure of your objections, Jason." Robert interrupted, softly, but Jason stopped speaking and listened closely. "Are you suddenly sure that you stand against this war?"
"Not…well, yes, but…. No, I see your point, but even so—"
"They believe, and stand by their beliefs. You doubt, you take time to consider, and your search for real understanding makes you hesitate, makes you wait for more information. Meanwhile, they act in their quick confidence, and the world has left you behind."
"It's not fair, Robert. It's not right that recklessness should have the upper hand."
Robert started to answer, but then stopped, thinking. Finally, he said, "It's not necessarily recklessness, Jason. Their path, their whole worldview, is one of confidence and action. Yours is one of contemplation and philosophy. Yours requires patience, and care, and long years to attain its end."
"But what do I do about this war? This decision must be made today, no matter my own patience."
Robert looked over and met his friend's eye. "Are you truly asking my advice? Do you want my answer to that question?" Without hesitation, Jason nodded. "Then here it is: your path has nothing to do with this war, or any one war. Your philosophy is not one that shapes decisions, but worldviews. If you stand against this war, the war will happen anyway. If you become king, you will have a lifetime to change the way this nation views the world around it. My advice, good and true, is to say your piece, and then let the Council make its decision in this matter. Then commit your reign to crafting a world where we will never have to face this decision again."
