"Why" from Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham (http://www.phdcomics.com/)
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Philosophy: Short Circuit to Life
Category Archives: Life
Lego Kidsfest Cincinnati 2012
I have come to believe engaging in the act of creation brings out the best in many of us.
Granted, that’s not a hard and fast rule, but I witnessed something amazing this past weekend when I attended the 2012 Cincinnati LEGO KidsFest with my niece and brother-in-law: thousands of kids and parents, building things with LEGOs, and without the anarchy one normally associates with such large gatherings of modern children and adults.
Frankly, I was flabbergasted at just how civil and fun the whole thing was. I watched hundreds of kids, most of them strangers, wade through a two foot deep pile of bricks, searching for pieces and helping other kids find what they were looking for. I watched parents and kids work together to build fantastic buildings to populate a huge outline of the United States. I watched kids and parents wait patiently in line to participate in activities without the fighting and fuss one normally associates with such things.
I blame the bricks.
From my point of view, it was easy to avoid all the fuss and fight because everyone was focused on creating something. They could see the outcome and they wanted to be a part of it, and I think everyone knew that they had to stay civil if they wanted to participate. It worked, and it was amazing.
Now, here’s where I wax philosophical about what I will grant you was really a giant commercial to sell more LEGOs: I have to admit that what I saw in that gathering could easily be a thing that could happen in our nation and our world as a whole if we tried. If we look back at our own history and think about all the times we have been united to accomplish common causes, we can see the same effect. It is possible for us to unite to accomplish amazing goals if we want to accomplish them, but the secret to such goals is that they have to be focused on creating something.
It is my fondest hope that the parents and kids at the LEGO KidsFest caught a glimmer of what I did and that it planted a seed. It’s one we all need to nurture and grow.
DLH
And they call us the typical ones
As some of you may know, my youngest sister Rebekah has Downs Syndrome. She is sweet, bright, funny, loving, and unfettered by the things the rest of us constantly struggle with in all the ways one would expect a kid with Downs to be. She’s also amazingly like all the rest of my family in ways that are almost primal versions of the rest of our habits.
I realized this in poignant detail a few weeks ago when my mom made an offhand comment the last time Rebekah stayed with us. Rebekah was going on about some thing she had once done with my wife–years ago, in fact–and my mom rolled her eyes and said something about how Rebekah never forgets anything she has ever done.
A few evenings later found my wife and me eating at a particular Steak and Shake on our way home from somewhere and it hit me. I remember, almost with exacting detail, every time I’ve ever eaten at that particular Steak and Shake since the company first built a restaurant at that location. I remember how many times it was just me. I remember how many times it was my wife and me. I remember the couple of times it was me with friends.
To drive the point home, I realized today that Rebekah and I share another trait. She loves to listen to the songs she loves (and watch the movies and TV shows she loves) over and over and over again. She knows all the words already, but that doesn’t matter, she listens anyway because she really loves them.
The other day, I heard a song for the first time that I absolutely adore. Over the past several days, I’ve probably listened to that song a few dozen times, including four times today. I will probably continue to do so for the next several days until the newness finally fades, but months and years from now I will return to that same obsession with the same intensity.
And they call us the typical ones.
All I can say is that I am glad I have my little sister to show me such an honest reflection of myself. I love her that much more for it.
DLH
Philosophy: Working ourselves to death to bore ourselves to death
What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and yet lose his soul? –Mark 8:26 (paraphrase)
Over the past several decades, I believe society has convinced itself of an insidious lie: that the goal of life is to work and save and build wealth and assets until such time as one believes one can retire and “enjoy life.” This lie came into its own in the 1960s with the advent of modern Social Security. At that moment, Americans institutionalized the idea that it was a right to stop producing at some point and live off the fat of the land.
Yet the irony in that institution is that many, if not most, people define themselves by what they do. They are their work, whether they love that work or not, and when they have no more work to do, their lives tend to become vacuous and boring. It’s no wonder that part of the dramatic increase in recent years of the prescription of powerful antidepressants has happened in the over 65 age demographic.
Further, most Americans never anticipated the consequences of this institution. While in the 1960s, the median lifespan in the mid 60s, by 2010, it had reached 78, and for the generations who will retire during the 21st century, the median age may well reach over 100. This means that the period defined by retirement, 10 years in the 1960s, will quickly stretch into 30 to 40 years before the end of this century. The amount of resources it is necessary for someone to possess to do nothing for that long is staggering to consider.
What has happened to allow this lie to take hold, I believe, is the demise of the idea that life should transition from one kind of thing to another. Our society no longer has rights of passage defined by taking on new, different, and defined responsibilities as one’s capacities and age dictate.
I blame this failing on the demise of once time-honored traditions like the cohesive extended family, the family business as the primary employer, the community as the center of everyday life, and the trend to average everyone at the national level. As these ideas and institutions have failed us, the rights of passage they naturally created have faded and died.
The circumstances of the 21st century, I believe, will demand we tackle this problem head on. Our society simply does not have the resources available to support a rapidly aging population that could foreseeably spend a third of its life not producing and, therefore, not supporting itself. This problem will be exacerbated by the incredible upheavals that resource scarcity will inevitably bring and by the fact that, at least in the US, the so-called working age population is and will continue to shrink.
And the solutions are relatively simple, actually, as long as people are willing to accept their necessity. Individuals will have to work longer, likely in a variety of jobs. They will have to change how they spend and save over the course of their lifetimes. As a society, we will have to stop focusing on accumulating stuff and start focusing on taking care of ourselves. We will have to build or rebuild social structures that allow us to share the burden of the cost of living among larger groups of people. We will have to redefine what we expect of ourselves as we inevitably pass from one age and capacity to the next.
Unfortunately, I do not believe these solutions will happen because people suddenly think they are a great idea. Instead, I believe they will come as the inevitable result of the scarcity and want the future promises to hold. But, for those who care to pay attention, their is the benefit of being able to prepare now, before things become desperate.
What must happen, though, is that we must start preparing now. These changes will be hard. They will be dramatic. They well may be controversial. But they are also necessary and will save us in the long run.
DLH
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Philosophy: Knowing one’s place
It takes generosity to discover the whole through others. If you realise you are only a violin, you can open yourself up to the world by playing your role in the concert. — Jacques Cousteau
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. –1 Corinthians 12:12-13 (ESV)
Western society lives with a strange legacy born out of the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution: we have come to believe in the idea of the solitary genius and to believe that only those who fit that category a deserving of success and admiration.
Consider, for instance, the strange popularity contest the American presidential election has become. We invest such hope into our chosen candidates, as if we were electing a monarch or a dictator rather than a chief executive working for a board of 200 million shareholders. And, we are always disappointed in the person we have chosen because, being human, that person could never have lived up to the expectations we had.
Now, I am not suggesting that anyone should give up on the idea of excellence, but even the most excellent among us can only exist as one of us. No one has ever succeeded alone, nor will anyone.
To me, what remains is that we must do two things. First, we must figure out where we fit into the complex web of interactions and relationships we call life. Then, we must figure out how to fit into that place in the most excellent way.
If we succeed, then we will have done more than most have ever done.
DLH
Read more at my Philosophy weblog…
Philosophy: Finding your own way
It has been an interesting experience for me over the past couple of years as I have come to realize that the place and undertakings I have arrived at seem to have been somehow intended for me all along. This may seem like a grandiose thing to say, but I can assure you that my two-year-so-far-adventure into things as diverse as farming and coffee roasting fulfill me more than my entire twenty year career as an IT professional.
It also turns out that the things I am undertaking now are among the hardest, most frustrating, and most demanding things I have ever done. Yet, they are worth it because they make me grow, and I have come to realize that if one is not growing, one is dying.
The world sells us a consistent lie: that the object of life’s effort is to accumulate enough so that we can rest on the laurels of what we have already done… and wait to die. What I have discovered over the past two years is how deep and all pervasive this lie turns out to be and how destructive it is to the human soul.
What I have come to realize is how important the Biblical formula of suffering producing character producing hope is to crafting us all as individuals. Without suffering, there is no character, and without character, there is no realization of hope. Yes, life can be damned frustrating and even deeply tragic at times, but every one of those frustrations and tragedies serve to make us into something more than what we were before they happened.
The secret then, I think, is to keep our heads up and to be constantly looking for our way through the things that tend to want to ensnare us at the moment. It will not usually be easy, and sometimes it may be downright crushing, but if we persevere, it will always be worth it.
DLH
Read more at my Philosophy weblog…
Partiality
Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson Via Gocomics.com
1st Anniversary
The beginning of the new school year reminds me that I have reached a milestone: one year since I started farming full-time.
It’s been a bumpy year, with big successes and catastrophic failures along the way. I’ve learned more in the past year than I think I have in the rest of my life put together, and for the first time in a very long time, I think I can say I am not the person I was a year ago.
Overall, I think I would give myself a D+ for this year. I had huge ambition and huger plans but very little concept of what I was undertaking. That’s not to say that my ambition and plans for next year are any less grand, but frankly, I was clueless last year at this time, and the past twelve months revealed that lack of understanding for everything it was.
I could go on for a long time about what I have learned, what I have realized, and what I plan to do, but I think the details of those things are best left for different posts. In the mean time, here’s to another year!
DLH