Getting The “Cancers” Out Of Your Life
August 25, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
I think we all “tolerate” certain things in our lives that we shouldn’t because we hope for change that won’t happen.
On the difficult end of the spectrum is the parent who is simply habituated to be oppressive, terrorizing, suffocating, controlling, guilt-inducing or whatever. Sometimes you can have an otherwise positive relationship with this person, but every time you are with him or her, you feel it… like a nagging tumor in your soul that you just wish you could rip out.
But then there is the god-awful, micro-managing boss who’s always looking over your shoulder, questioning you and causing anxiety. Or the employee who’s always making excuses, and wearing your patience thin. Or the girl you have a crush on who despises you and uses you and treats you with contempt.
It doesn’t even have to be a person. In my own experience, the 24 hour news cycle had a similar dampening effect on my soul. As does the addictive qualities of soda.
I’ve found it useful throughout life to identify the things that weigh on your soul, tear you down, eat you up… and to treat them like cancerous tumors. Painful to remove, sometimes impossible to remove, but even then, worth managing as well as possible.
The main point is to be aware of the things that drag you down. That keep you from having a pure spirit. And then to do the hard surgical work to get them out of your life.
The Hymn of Hell
August 25, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
It may be that the most influential book I’ve read is Charles Williams Descent Into Hell. It made vivid for me the way in which pure selfishness is really self-destructive. It’s a great psychological portrayal of what happens to the person who turns inward, at the expense of those around him or her.
And it confirmed my suspicion that the warm-up tune ME ME ME ME MEEEEEEEEEEEEE is really the hymn of hell.
Half the sugar please
August 12, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
Instead of having sugar loaded and no sugar at all (artificial sweeteners) I wish companies would offer a “light on the sugar” option. I hate artificial sweeteners, but I also hate the sickening sweetness of most products (e.g. Gatorade, etc.)
When I stop for a Mocha or some other coffee drink, I almost always ask them “is there any chance i could get that with half the sugar?” And lately a lot of the local spots will do that for me, though normally it makes more sense to ask for “half the syrup”
I just don’t get it. Why not the middle road?
Gender, Conformity and Punishment in Schools
July 19, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
Over 60 percent of students in Texas get suspended or expelled. That’s ridiculous in its own right.
But let’s look at the numbers:
83% African American male students
70% African American female students
74% Hispanic male students
58% Hispanic female students
59% Anglo male students
37% Anglo female students
Disregarding all the other obvious variables (class, race, etc.) one clear pattern is that male students are systematically punished in public schools (at least Texas public schools) more than female students at a rate between 13% – 18%
Based on anecdotal evidence (my parents taught high school students and my brother recently graduated from high school) and the frequency of news reports, an objective observer would be smart to infer that most school fights these days occur between girls. So realistically, the bias in punishment could be even more skewed. I wonder what the boys are being punished for. Could it be that the system is simply intrinsically biased against male behavior?
Evolution Has Form On Many Levels
July 15, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
I think this is the most important high-level insight that evolutionary biology has gained over the last 2-3 decades. Evolution has form, on many different levels. By form, I mean that it seems to be tightly constrained and on metaphorical “rails” – you might say that evolution seems “predisposed” towards certain solutions over others – sometimes governed by the organism (epigenetics) and sometimes by the very structure and nature of the building blocks (proteins, etc.). And while the idea that evolution has form does not completely undermine the notion of “blindness” in evolution, it does provide a great deal of “food for thought” for those of us who are not committed to a “blind” universe. Perhaps there’s a whole lot more to evolution than selfish genes.
And check out convergence:
Map of Life
Beware of the detachment trap
June 24, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | 1 Comment
As one who has tried out a lifestyle of detachment and found myself numb and gray and lifeless as a result… I can say with certainty that life is much better full of color. The color of emotion and commitment and ambition and striving and getting better.
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”
- CS Lewis
It all comes down to displacement
June 23, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
The more displaced we are from our proper environment, the more problems we encounter, ceteris paribus.
Are women more monogamous (less promiscuous) than men?
June 22, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
I received the following email yesterday:
“My whole life, I’ve just assumed that women are more monogamous than men. i’m not sure why or when i started believing this. do you think it’s true? i see all my friends girlfriends cheating on them and i’m starting to think i’ve been wrong. but why would i have believed this in the first place if its so wrong?”
First, read this.
We’ve basically inherited the attitude of The Victorians: that women are the fairer sex. That’s where your belief about women and their naturally monogamous instincts came from. In more ancient times, quite the opposite view was held. I’m not going to get into my own views on this, other than to say that I believe both sexes are opportunistically promiscuous by nature, and for different reasons.
Female promiscuity is just more complex and less out in the open (though that is changing with our evolving society: think of all the female teachers who are having sex with their male teenager students). Male promiscuity comes down to spreading seed as far and wide as possible without pissing off another male. Female promiscuity developed under conditions that required consideration of having a strong, stable, capable male to provide protection and food for her and her offspring. Female promiscuity therefore is loaded with maternal instinct: what’s going to be best for me and my babies. And sometimes that involves being more discreet about infidelity to the provider/protector.
There is also the issue of attractiveness. As far as I remember, recent studies have shown that women are naturally attracted to men who have slept around (pre-selection) whereas men are turned off by women who have slept around (decreases likelihood that her baby will be his baby).
Hope that helps. I think men and women are equally promiscuous (and therefore equally likely to be successful at monogamy), they just go about it in different ways, have different priorities in selecting mates, and at the end of the day, most false beliefs about this topic are due to the fact that we have received a mistaken social narrative that paints a skewed picture of reality.
We’re all human. We’re all selfish. And it’s possible that we all can be much better than we are, with God’s help.
Blueberries, I Miss Ya
June 15, 2011 | Filed Under Small Talk | Leave a Comment
I think the thing I miss most about the North now that I live in the South, is not so much being able to watch every Phillies game and get local post-game coverage. It’s the lack of good blueberries.
Blueberries in the South are just plain nasty. They are grainy and tasteless.
I want big juicy tasty mouth watering blueberries. The kind you just can’t stop eating.
the dirt that inevitably splatters on the mirror of our self-regard
May 30, 2011 | Filed Under Poetry, Small Talk | Leave a Comment
