Diary of a Blogger: Day 7

About a week ago I was reading an interview by Jesse Gardner with blogger Tim Challies, who has been blogging daily since 2003. The thought struck me that I might like to try blogging every day. I decided I would give it a try--write one blog post every day for the rest of the year. Thus far I’m a week in. It hasn't gotten too exciting yet, but it has been interesting.

I have had a blog for over a year now, and I have always had ideas of things to post on it. However, I was rarely able to take the time to work on an idea that I had until I felt ready to post it. Now, I know I have to post something, so I am finally putting pen to paper on ideas I have had for over a year. I have found this phenomenon to be the most interesting part of blogging daily. Nothing else has worked to get me blogging. It has never been for lack of ideas--I just never made the time to do it. Now I have an outlet for what I have wanted to write, because I know I have to write something.

At this stage I am not really worried about the people reading the blog. My main motivation is for my own personal development. After reading the Challies interview, ideas that had been floating around in my head for a few months came together. I suddenly saw blogging as being a way to do three things. The first is to develop my mind. I expressed in a previous post that I was disturbed by what I perceived to be the effects of social networking--shallowness. I see blogging as a way to develop my mind in the opposite direction. The second thing is discipline. I saw in blogging an opportunity to develop discipline through doing something daily that is public, something where people will ask me, “Why no post today?” The third thing is writing. I have read before (it was a post by Jesse Gardner, actually) that he found that practicing writing was the key to being able to write well. Combine that with the ideas put forth in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, that practice is one of the keys to success at something, and you get what I am thinking--blogging every day gives me the opportunity to practice writing and thinking as never before, and practice it in such a way that it bears some sort of fruit.

I don’t know if I will make it all the way to the end of this year. The rest of the year is a long time, and the hard part--the fall semester--is yet to begin. That may well kill my blogging. But I hope it doesn’t. I see blogging as a chance to practice doing a specific thing daily. That is a skill that applies to many other things in my life that I need to improve on by doing them daily. So keep checking back here at the Alien Thinker. Caveman Economics is the main series I am working on currently, so you should see those posts come out every few days. Other than that, I have a bunch of ideas for different themes up my sleeve. A couple have already appeared, such as the “Photo of the Day,” or “Song of the Day,” but I also hope to do reviews of books when I finish reading them (or thoughts as I read them). One theme I am particularly excited about is my (hopefully) soon-to-be-launched “Electronics Dissassembly” theme, where I blog about my experiences while taking apart, and maybe putting back together, an old electronic device (complete with gory photos of dismembered circuit boards...). Also, keep your eyes open for the occasional poem or other fictional work--Adventures in Flandendale would be my most recent one (although I do like Lyrical Lemonade--over on my literary blog. I don’t plan to continue posting there, at least not for now).

Adventures in Flandendale

Garon walked up the rocky path towards the top of the mountain with a well-worn wooden staff in his right hand. The sun was setting in the West, and he was headed in that general direction, although the path wound back and forth around trees that had probably been there for centuries. The leafy canopy above him  protected the lush, low bushes that hugged the forest floor, but the path he traversed was too well-traveled by men to be populated by any flora.

The trees also proved to be a theatre for myriads of singing birds, whose calls back and forth flooded his ears. In addition to the birds, insects, such as the ubiquitous cicada and the occasional cricket, lent their raucous sounds to the orchestral performance. And although the forest was peaceful at this time of the evening, it was by no means quiet.

He came to the top of the mountain, where a clearing sloped gently towards more trees and the valley beneath. He looked west over all the land of Ashbon, a vast, fruitful valley between two major ranges of mountains. The people of this valley, by virtue of the mountains surrounding them, were rather isolated from the rest of the country. They had their own ways of living, and were seldom influenced from the outside. Most who travelled through Ashbon saw its isolation as a good thing. Not much good can be said for the moral development of a society as it grows more interconnected and more urban. Ashbon had avoided the moral degradation that afflicted much of the world outside the valley, and was consequently home to many pious and wise philosophers--old men who had tired of the wild and fast-paced world their former homes had become.

His journey today took him to the home of one such man, Elendor of Flandendale. Elendor was an old man now, slow moving and grey-haired, but still one who silenced a crowded room with a single word from somewhere behind the grey mass of beard that extended halfway down his torso. His words were rare and significant, always clearly and precisely pronounced. One knew when Elendor had spoken. Garon had been Elendor’s apprentice many years back, when Elendor’s hair was only speckled with grey. That was back in the country to the east, a land that was now no longer named in polite society. Elendor had left the land to the east shortly before the Great Revolution, and found his solace in the hills above Ashbon. He preferred to live away from people, not wanting to have to move again from a dangerous society. Thus he built a small cottage on the mountain tops, and lived overlooking the valley, unable to see or hear any squabbles between the peoples, but available to those who sought his counsel, if they would take the effort to come visit him.

Garon studied the cottage as he approached it. Smoke still twirled listlessly upward from the chimney, and the garden was still lush with crops--Elendor had cultivated vegetables from his youth, and found great enjoyment in the practice. The picket fence that protected his plants was looking a bit out of shape, but Garon knew Elendor would not leave it that way for long. He always mended his fence in July. The stone walk had been extended slightly, and was still precisely straight. Garon opened the gate, and it creaked, but only slightly. Although he usually walked quietly, he measured his steps even more carefully inside the garden, as if the beauty of the garden demanded reverence. He closed the gate behind him and moved to the porch, where he ducked his head under the low roof and used his staff to knock on the door.

As the door creaked open, the old man smiled widely, and said, “It has been to-oo-... lo... ng... si...n...ce I...”

“Why is Windows doing updates in the middle of my game?” exclaimed a perturbed George. His favorite game, Adventures in Flandendale, was about to get to the best part--the voice of old Elendor. But no, Bill Gates software decided that it knew better how to run a computer, and was doing automatic updates just to kill CPU time. He hit escape to pause the game, and irately grabbed his wallet, slapped his bedroom door open and stepped onto the sidewalk of the bustling city street where he lived. He was supposed to meet his girlfriend for dinner at the quaint Italian restaurant on twelfth street, and he might as well be early. “At least Bill Gates isn’t making me late for my dinner dates,” he thought to himself as the sound of horns and the whine of a diesel engine attacked his eardrums.

Caveman Economics Part II: The Requirements for Work

Caveman Economics is a way of looking at complex economic concepts by taking them down to the simplest possible level--the solitary caveman on a deserted island. Part I explored the first principle of economics--that work is the basis of all economics, because work is required for survival, or the satisfaction of wants and needs. Before building up from the first principle, I would go a little lower and look at the requirements for work.

Returning to the Caveman Economics approach, imagine once again that you are a caveman trying to survive on a deserted island. You have to do a number of things to ensure survival, all requiring work. However, the amount of work you can do is limited by two things: energy and time.

All work requires a certain amount of energy. Without energy you cannot do work. Some tasks are more energy intensive than others. A task that requires more energy would be considered to take more work. The energy used to accomplish a task places a cost on that task. Chasing a small bush pig would take more work than picking berries. But it could also be more rewarding at the end of the day to have some meat to eat. If you only have a certain amount of energy, you have to choose what you want to use your energy to accomplish. Do you want to chase the bush pig, or do you pick berries and work on your shelter? Essentially, you decide how important a task is, and whether or not a task is worth the energy it would take to accomplish.

Time places a second value parameter on work. Each day has a certain amount of time, and in that time, there are certain things you need to accomplish, and certain things you want to accomplish. Each task takes a certain amount of time to complete, so one must decide which tasks are worth the time they take and which tasks are not worth the time they take. Going back to previous example, is the potential reward of eating a bush pig for dinner worth the extra time it takes to chase one, or are berries acceptable because they only take a few minutes to pick? Once again, one must decide whether or not the result of the task is worth the time it will take to accomplish.

Time and energy are limited resources. Thanks to their limited nature, they place a cost on any work that one performs. In order to survive, one must weigh the time and energy costs of various tasks against the importance of those tasks. The importance of a task stems from its position on the list of a person’s needs and wants, which will be the subject of the next post in this series.

Photo of the Day: Keys

I interrupt Caveman Economics to post a photo--something I have wanted to do for quite a while. This photo is of some of my keys. As I was looking for a photo that I could post, I saw the keys. Somehow my keys seem to come out well when I photograph them. Looking at the photo, I began to reflect on keys, and what keys mean.

Keys essentially mean responsibility. Think of the keys you encounter in your life--house keys, car keys, work keys, friends’ keys. Each of these keys opens a door somewhere, and gives you the power to enter that door, and bring with you anyone you choose. That power requires great responsibility. Think more specifically of car keys--those keys give you the power to enter and drive a car. Teenagers around the age of fifteen (sometimes even earlier) begin to experience an itch in their fingers for car keys. They want the power to drive. But that power to go from place to place requires responsibility for one’s own life, the lives of other passengers, the vehicle itself, and the lives of other drivers on the road. That’s pretty big responsibility for one key.

The amount of responsibility, and consequently the number of keys, tends to increase proportionally with age. I am reminded of something off of Jeff Foxworthy’s album “Totally Committed.” He says “Whoever's stealing my good sunglasses and my cassette cases is leaving me keys. 'Cause I've got keys. I've got keys to crap I've never owned! You put all my keys together, I could be a high school janitor tonight.” As one grows older, areas of responsibility increase. One buys a car, a house and gets a job as a supervisor. One gets married and has children. Each one of these areas gives you added responsibility and usually keys. I have found the same trend in my life--as I have grown older, I have gained more and more keys. And with that growth in keys has come more responsibility.

My last thought about keys is something that most people may don’t realize--passwords are the same basic concept as keys. Passwords give you access to and power over something. If you think about your password more like it is a key, does that change the way you view it? The most popular password is “password.” No joke. That’s like taping the key to the door handle so that you don’t lose it. Passwords are like keys, and should be treated as well as, if not better than, physical keys.

Think about the keys (and passwords) that you have in your life. What responsibility do they carry?

Caveman Economics Part I

The concepts of economic systems can seem rather intimidating at first--supply and demand, unemployment, inflation, money supply, GDP growth, and so on, can seem comparable in complexity to computing jargon. This is not helped by our current government and media who seem to throw around vague economic concepts as if they have such great complexity that no mere mortal can dare to attempt to understand any of them (only our beloved “experts” can give us even a sliver of enlightenment). But economics is actually really simple. You see, a large economy like the US is simply made up of millions of individuals and corporations who interact on relatively simple terms. Economics happens when you go to Walmart and buy groceries or even a TV. Even if you were to be stranded on a deserted island, your very survival depends on economics, but in a vastly simpler, less interconnected way.

Once the grand economic concepts are brought down to the level of the solitary caveman, they are relatively easy to figure out. After figuring out how these concepts apply at the caveman level, you have a basis to scale that understanding upwards, seeing a large economy as simply a vast number of interacting cavemen. This is a calculus-style approach--understand the problem in one instance, and scale it up to a very large number of small instances. I plan this post to be the first in a series of posts using the Caveman Economics (calculus-style) approach to explain economic principles from the ground up.

I don’t remember when I discovered what I consider to be the foundational principle of economics, but it wasn’t in school. Somehow the textbooks seem to have missed the most important concept. This most important thing is that all economics is based on work. How can this be so? Let us take the Caveman Economics approach. Imagine you are marooned on a deserted island. Essentially, you have just been made a caveman. How does a caveman survive on an island with no-one around (think Castaway starring Tom Hanks)? Obviously there are certain needs that must be met. You will need water, food, and shelter. How do you go about obtaining these things? You will have to explore your new home to find a freshwater stream that you can drink from. You will probably then look for a cave near the stream, so that you don’t have to try to build something without tools. You will also look for some fruit or something that you can eat without having to cook it. That will get you through the first day. Every single thing you have to do to survive (even for just one day) requires work. If you don’t work, you won’t eat, you won’t sleep safely, you won’t drink; you will die. The Bible said this years ago: “If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.” (II Thessalonians 3:10). Work is necessary for survival, and is thus the cornerstone of economics, because the first concern of economics is satisfying the needs of man.

Stay tuned for more Caveman Economics...

Song of the day: How B.o.b Airplanes relates to American Christianity

I enjoy poetry. I haven't always enjoyed poetry, but I have come to appreciate its significance as a means of symbolically communicating that which one cannot necessarily communicate with prose. But this post is not totally about poetry--it is about a song. I like song lyrics for some reason--maybe it’s because they are essentially poetry. But I think it is more because I like to engage with song lyrics--that is, ponder the meaning, intention and ramifications of the philosophy espoused by the lyrics. I see this as a legacy of my upbringing, where even the philosophical significance of a road-side billboard was free game to be called into question. For example, on seeing a billboard that said, “All you need is love,” my father might ask, “Is that statement true?” and for the next five minutes or so we would discuss the elements of truth and limitations of the statement, “All you need is love.” In a similar manner, I ponder within my own mind the elements of truth and limitations of song lyrics I hear.

Today’s song is B.o.B’s Airplanes. It’s a very romantic song, in the sense of romanticism--seeking to return to a better past. Whenever I hear this song, there is one line that catches my attention every time: “But nowadays we rappin’ to stay relevant.” This line comes from the following part of the song:

Somebody take me back to the days

Before this was a job, before I got paid

Before it ever mattered what I had in my bank

Yeah back when I was tryin' to get into the subway

And back when I was rappin' for the hell of it

But now a days we rappin' to stay relevant

I'm guessin that if we can make some wishes outta airplanes

Then maybe oh maybe I'll go back to the days

Before the politics that we call the rap game

And back when ain't nobody listened to my mix tape

And back before I tried to cover up my slang

But this is for the Cada, what's up Bobby Ray

So can I get a wish to end the politics

And get back to the music that started this s**t

So here I stand and then again I say

I'm hopin' we can make some wishes outta airplanes

Somehow I always think of American Christianity when I hear these lines. I think of television preachers and famous speakers; megachurches and seeker-sensitivism. And I want to go back to the days before church was a business. Before it ever mattered how many people sat in the pews on Sunday morning, or how much money came into the offering plate. Back when it didn’t matter whether you gathered in a school gym or a tall cathedral. Back when it was all about the truth and how God applied it to the heart.

You see, now a days, we preachin’ to stay relevant.  American Christianity has become largely all about covering up, not slang, but the offensiveness of its message. Seeker-sensitivism says that we can attract people to Christ. Unfortunately, the very message of the Gospel is offensive. To cover up its offense is to dilute it. Instead of diluting the truth, we need to speak the full truth in love.

With that said, though, “going back to the days,” is really a misnomer. Throughout church history, there have been those who have compromised the truth in their quest for outward results. Thus, “going back to the days,” even if it was possible, is not the real answer. The answer lies in “going back to the truth.” The truth is always with us in the Scriptures--no time travel necessary. There are churches in America that aren’t focused on numbers or statistics or a business model, but on faithfully proclaiming the truth in the Scriptures. Those are the places we need to go back to, because they will lead us back to the truth.

The Power of Words

I've been thinking a lot about words recently. I've come to believe that words have power. Words have power because they carry ideas, and ideas motivate actions. Words have the power to carry ideas because they carry meaning. Words are used by one person to communicate meaningful ideas to another person.

Today, however, our postmodern culture teaches us to use words vaguely. When we communicate, our words are less precise in meaning, and more steeped in connotation and innuendo than denotation and precision. We talk of feeling more, and thinking less.

Our culture today is addicted to social networking. It has become an almost sad irony that it is difficult to have a real face-to-face conversation with someone without them pulling out their phone at some stage to perform some social-networking function. And homework is always performed as a multi-task between writing the paper, and placing one’s two cents on that hilarious status that everyone is commenting on.

I am convinced that this social networking addiction is having an effect on our minds. I have read articles about how the way we use the web is changing the way we think. Think about the way you look for information on the internet. There isn’t much reading going on until you find what you are looking for. Until then, it is just skimming to find where to click. The same occurs, I think, with social networking.

Think about the general gist of most tweets or facebook statuses. Generally speaking, they probably end up being a random funny statement, followed by likes and witty comments in response. Everything is short, not much meaningful is exchanged, but everyone has a good laugh while staring at a screen.

This focus on the trivial and witty seems to be spilling over into real conversations. Think about the general pattern of your conversations with friends. Someone says something funny, and others respond in a series of witty comments. The pattern may just be a human pattern, but I think the spillover really shows in the triviality of those verbal exchanges. We have a good laugh, but in the end of the day, what have we really done? We have communicated meaningless trivia, rather than deep significance.

I have decided to focus on blogging as a way to train my mind away from the shallow trivia of status updates, and toward the deep thoughts that really matter. I hope that this focus will spillover into my conversations with others. I hope that by focusing on thinking more deeply, I will seek to talk about deeper things with others, and thus in turn encourage them to think and talk more deeply.

This is not to say that social networking is useless. I plan to use social networking as a tool to share the deeper thinking of my blog. But social networking is a tool, not a destination. I want to use it as the tool it should be, and keep ideas in their proper place.