Lust, Modesty and False Dichotomies

Of the many issues that are defined by false dichotomies one of them is most glaring and that is who bears responsibility for lust. It is very clear that Jesus makes us responsible for our own wandering eyes:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.
(Matthew 5:27‭-‬30 NIV)

This is the ultimate case for taking personal responsibility and why I don’t buy it when men try to blame women for their lust or claim immodesty caused sexual assault. If poverty is not an excuse for looting or theft from those with something desirable, why would a victim of rape be considered even partly responsible for what was done to them?

If people can blame-shift for one behavior they can for all.

There’s always an excuse for aggression and yet Jesus says that we are responsible for even managing our temptations.

It makes sense. In a world full of advertising telling us to consume, moderation depends on our learning self-control. McDonald’s did not make you fat. No, your choice to bend to the urge to grab yet another Big Mac, on the way home, did that. Ultimately, A truly moral person learns how to avoid stumbling blocks and would sooner remove their own eyes than make excuses.

So where is the false dichotomy?

Well, while we can’t blame fast food restaurants for obesity, we have recognized that advertising does influence decisions. Marketing would not be an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars if this were not the case. For this reason it is worth being aware and acknowledging reality, it is our responsibility not to lust and it is also just smart to recognize the power our physical bodies have over others.

The Two-way Street…

People love to display their bodies for the attention and recognition it brings. We have body building competitions and beauty pageants for this reason. Our bodies are beautiful, like great art, and especially attractive to our sexual opposites.

But then it seems only young women complain loudly when that “creeper” takes notice of them in a cleavage baring skin tight outfit, as if they aren’t posting pictures of themselves in the same outfit for the world to see on social media, and that’s just plain meanspirited. So maybe they are just seeking more attention by bashing older and physically unattractive men? I mean, come on, do they really not know that their exposed bodies are not a magnet for the male gaze?

Some want to have it both ways: They want the positive attention that their bodies bring them and then become angry about being objectified by men. It is as dumb as a sugar daddy being upset about the “gold diggers” when he was the one flaunting his wealth as a way of gaining access to women. If you truly want other people to value you for your personality then make that the centerpiece by being modest about your other ‘assets’ and also seeking others on the same basis rather than being superficial.

The response to overbearing purity culture, where women are wrongly blamed for male struggle, is to deny biological reality and that being sexual attraction. That is to say this ridiculous notion that a person can wear the most revealing and provocative clothing then be upset when they’re objectified. It would be like me claiming that I can walk into a gay bar, wearing hot pants and a tank top, then claim I wasn’t inviting attention.

Modesty is not about preventing others from lusting so much as it is about not advertising what we’re not willing to give to all. If I don’t want anyone to stare or appreciate my Shelby GT-350, I’ll keep it under a cover in the garage and never take it out on the street. Our bodies are an object, they are the most wonderful of physical things, and to appreciate this is not a matter of lust or sin. We should not be offended when people take notice of what we have very publicly displayed.

Finding the Balance…

Jesus said what he did about responsibility for lust as an instruction to those who are trying to be moral.

What he did not do is contradict what others in Scripture told us about being modest nor did he recommend making a big display of our various valuable assets for all to see.

While it is not my fault if my car gets stolen and, indeed, it could happen anywhere—I still understand that the streets of some Baltimore slums are not the place to park my new car with the keys in the ignition.

What this does not mean is that immodesty is an excuse for sexual assault.

Without exception, all cases of lustfulness and sexual abuse are wholly the responsibility of those who are commiting the immoral act. But we should understand that 1) our bodies (albeit sacred) are a desirable object and 2) there are many evil and immoral people willing to take advantage of the unwise. Being an adult means understanding that the world does not always live up to our own ideal we must therefore take reasonable precautions.

Sure, we can curse gravity when we get stumble-down-the-stairs-drunk yet it makes more sense to acknowledge the reality and avoid known risks. For example, wearing a skirt that only leaves the last little bit to the imagination, then going to a frat house party and getting totally wasted, is obviously risky behavior. By denying contributing factors we are, at some point, the enablers of negative outcomes. We should teach our children to protect themselves by being aware of enter-at-your-own-risk situations.

It is why my wife has warned me against talking too openly about my many fanciful dreams in her home country: Although my ambitions are far bigger than my wallet. Some people hearing may misunderstand—think that I’m incredibly wealthy—and this would potentially make me or my family a target for crime. I could complain about this, claim that I should be free to express myself as I please, but that won’t save me from a kidnapping or being murdered.

To be clear, many (if not most) cases of rape and sexual assault have absolutely nothing to do with what the victim wore or where they were. It was a relative or someone they knew who took advantage of their trust and they really could not have done anything better. And, again, even if the victim was ‘immodesty’ dressed, they did not cause the aggression inflicted upon them. If we don’t tell people who were carjacked that they should have left their car in the garage, why would we ever tell a girl that her exposed legs caused an assault?

My point is simply that bad people do exist and aren’t deterred by a lecture about respecting other people or their property and bodies. We know not to put our valuables on display in a seedy neighborhood—it’s just unwise.

Appreciate the Good…

Many who rejected patriarchalism are more the embodiment of the very toxic attitudes that they claim to oppose than those whom they accuse.

As the saying goes, “When you point a finger, there are three fingers pointing back at you,” we should be careful in our zealousness for a cause not to fall into our own delusion.

Or as Jesus taught:

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
(Matthew 7:3‭-‬5 NIV)

Browbeating moral men about “rape culture” is no better than religious fundamentalists who constantly guilt-trip conscientious and modest women about male lusts.

The vast majority of men are not rapists nor is someone a “rape apologist” for stating the truth about sexual attraction and additional risks for women. The fact is that there are bad people in the world, willing to exploit the vulnerable if allowed, and that is why we put locks on our doors. Clothing is just one of many layers of defense and also a way to keep the focus on something other than our bodies.

We take for granted the religious laws against rape, theft or murder, as if such things are written into the substrate of the universe, but the reality is that this is order built upon moral men who use their strength to protect rather than exploit. It is truly only under the protective umbrella of civilization that a person can expect to walk around (without the direct protection of their clan) and not be immediately set upon by predators.

We should, therefore, appreciate the good self-controlled men and distinguish between them and the bad.

Do you really want a life without conflict?

Thinking, as I’m sipping my coffee at Dunkin, a Saturday habit, we build civilization as part of the urge to reduce variables and the effort of living. The thought started during my pre-waking slumber: We work, build shelters and store resources, create complex networks, to try to decrease unpredictability and the end result is that I don’t need to worry about my source of caffeine.

This orderly environment we create is ideal for raising children. It is a nest. Or at least at some levels. Where we, like birds, weave a structure out of chaos in order to keep our offspring safe from predators and ourselves protected a world that can be unkind to the unprepared. Squirrels scurry around, in the fall, gathering up things to keep for food over the hard winter months. Our own species, likewise, is as instinctively forward thinking and creates systems to ease the strain.

The human endeavor, towards these ends of producing stability and abundance, has been so successful that many can go their entire lives not appreciating it.

We’re so well-off, in the developed world, that our impoverished are obese rather than hungry and many now think that healthcare (a service provided by others) is a right. we live in such unprecedented luxury and ease, even the poor can afford a lifestyle that many ancient kings would envy and yet feel so entitled to everything that we will shoot up the McDonald’s drive thru if we can’t get our bacon:

Evidently, being in civilization doesn’t make someone civilized.

Anyhow, other than entitlement and lack of appreciation, another product of civilization is boredom and fat. In the absence of wars we created sport and without hard work, to keep from physical deterioration, we go to the gym. It is truly bizarre, when you think about it, that we go out and seek the very anxieties that our ancestors built civilization to escape. We are adrenaline junkies, doing intentionally dangerous things for the fix, we want to have unpredictable outcomes.

All of this really does make everything about our existence a weird paradox. As soon we achieve a little bit of stability and peace we become restless. That’s what convinces me that we are as much nature, made for the world we are in, as we are not. That feeling that we somehow do not belong in this place with death and sorrow is what has motivated our progress. It is less about our own being otherworldly and more what has enabled us to survive this universe that would kill us the moment we grew complacent.

This, incidentally, is the one thing that many people do not grasp about entropy, we tend to see decay and deterioration as being only a bad thing. I mean, we fight it. If someone walks into the house with muddy boots it is upsetting and spurs action. But, without this tendency to disorder, without this repeated need to clean up on aisle five, would we even have a reason to live? As much as we hate disorder, it is this continual struggle against it that gives us meaning and purpose.

Sheep Need Shepherds, Not Critics

Want to say “does not respond well to authority” without saying it? Just post a meme proclaiming yourself as a lion and decrying others as sheeple. Of course, the popular origin of this lion meme was a Trump retweet of the quote, “It is better to live a day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” The irony being that these ‘lions’ who have used the phrase since are still following someone’s lead.

The reality is, even in this current age of individualism, we are social creatures and are more often responding to the pressure of the crowd than thinking for ourselves. The ideas that motivate us, the narratives and interpretive overlays that we embrace, these aren’t things that we created in our own minds. But rather we have inherited many base assumptions from our homes or communities and will continue to be influenced our entire life.

And, speaking of influence, there was a review of Downfall, a movie about the last days of Adolf Hitler, that got me thinking about leadership. For obvious reasons, this is viewed from a negative light in regard to the Nazi dictator. The faith of the German people in their government is what enabled the atrocities of the regime. Viewing a flawed human being (or any collection of human authorities) as God is something very dangerous.

I’ve written frequently warning against the mob spirit and peer pressure. We should learn how to think for ourselves, make our own decisions, or we may be swept up in the latest propaganda campaign and used for immoral ends.

However, I also had to think that this unique ability of humans to organize around one charismatic personality is also the strength of our species and has given us a great competitive advantage over the strongest individuals. Our hunter-gather ancestors were only able to take down larger animals for food or to protect the themselves from deadly predators by working together. This took leadership, it required someone to be the point man of the group or coordinator of the collective effort.

So, sure, as the video says, “those full of doubts are desperate to follow those who are sure of themselves,” and “view them as shortcuts to prosperity,” yet this urge to fall in behind the Alpha is not always such a bad thing and is actually key to our success in building civilizations. A great leader can empower and get more from the group than the sum of the individual parts. I see this in John, the co-owner and true boss man at my company, without his infectious ambition and decisive confidence I can’t see us being near where we are.

The truth is that there are extraordinary men, there are those who do better embody the collective hopes of their people and thus are granted a right to rule. One only needs to consider the story of David, a lowly shepherd boy, who faced down the giant Goliath and through his courage inspired the armies of Israel to defeat the Philistines. Of course, this is not only a role for men either, the confidence of Deborah (Judges 4) or faithful example of Joan of Arc is what led to the decisive victories of their people over occupiers and oppressors.

People Need Leadership, Not Lords

We can talk about the ideal and imagine a world where everyone is completely able to take initiative, where order is always 100% voluntary and there is no need of authority or a leadership position. That is the design of the Israelite tribes before they demanded a king to rule over them. But even then, in that sort of anarchist system, there were judges that were appointed by Moses to arbitrate disputes and Moses, for his Divine call and standing up to Pharaoh, was the defacto leader of his people.

Every human is flawed. Moses fled into the wilderness after killing an Egyptian and, despite hearing from God, needed Aaron to speak for him. King David, the great warrior leader he was, had a loyal companion, Uriah sent to die in battle in order to cover for his adultery with Bathsheba. The temptation of every person given power over other people is to use it to their own personal advantage rather than for the good of the group. That is why the children of Israel were given this stern warning before appointing a ruler:

Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.” But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”
(1 Samuel 8:10‭-‬20 NIV)

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

We don’t have kings today, but we do have an all-powerful political class, that is mostly exempted from the laws they apply to us, who never met a new tax they do not like, and always willing to send our children to die to defend their own bloated ego or for the financial gain of the ruling class. Sure, call it ‘democracy’ as you vote for Tweedledee or Tweedledumb, but neither team red nor team blue actually represent you. We’re ruled not even by these visibly elected, but by special interests and those behind the scenes who pull the purse strings.

And therein lies the difference between the good leaders and the bad. The shepherd leader fills the role for the good of the flock, even willing to sacrifice themselves for the life of their sheep. The corrupt leader uses their power and authority as a means to dominate those who are under them. A good leader serves as an example, they encourage and try to get the best out of those looking to them for guidance. The evil politician, on the other hand, delights in creating dependency and keeping others subject to their whims.

In the end, no man is actually worthy to lead of their own authority and it is only through understanding our own place before God, that we ourselves are not God, that we can ever fill the role. Self-belief and narcissism, with a little psychopathy, is often what will get a person to the top spot. But humility and faith, valuing all individuals enough to go find the one lost sheep, that is the mark of a Godly leader. The only person fit to lead is one who is willing to submit to those who have authority over them.

The delusion of the Protestant independent spirit is that every man (or woman) and their Bible becomes their own king. This “you’re not the boss of me” attitude, in response to flawed leadership or simply as rebellion, is precisely why the church is becoming increasingly impotent. The Church, at least the one that Christ founded, had those given the authority to bind and loose, a council to decide important matters and those who acted as fathers. This hierarchy was never comprised of those faultless. No, what made them worthy, and the only thing that makes any of us worthy, is being clothed in the righteousness of the one Great Shepherd.

We need sheep who know they are sheep and shepherds, appointed to feed the flocks, like Peter:

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.” The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.
(John 21:15‭-‬17 NIV)

In my own spiritual journey, after my own Bible-based authority failed me, God provided me with a man who would end his emails with the phrase “your unworthy priest” and is truly that. Fr Anthony is a very well-educated man, a college professor, and one who could easily flaunt his credentials as a means to humiliate some like me. But what has given him true authority, in my eyes, is how he humbly serves as a true example of Christian leadership.

He is a shepherd and the Church really needs more who are like him.

The End Times — Same As All Times

There are many desperately trying to push back against the march of progress. I’ve seen the Ted Kaczynski’s (aka “the Unibomber”) Manifesto popping up lately because of how his predictions are coming true. Even those at the cutting edge of the current technological revolution, men like Elon Musk, are terrified of the implications of this rapid change.

Things like transhumanism, cashless society, social credit scores, next level automation and artificial intelligence are upon us. The internet, this once free space, that reduced the friction of communication and allowed the masses to bypass the established gatekeepers of information, is now enabling a new generation of tyrants with power that their predecessors couldn’t have even begun to imagine.

There is a feeling of helplessness against this faceless emerging (and present) threat, we know that they work behind the scenes to control the narrative. The NSA, Big Tech corporations, existing institutions, they’re all competing for their place at the top of this new order, often colluding and conspiring when their goals align. To them we’re ants, pawns to be manipulated and moved.

It is inevitable. Removing a few key players may be a speed bump. However, nothing short of an asteroid hitting the planet and mass extinction will stop this transition. To resist is to be like the Luddites who thought destroying a few industrial looms would preserve their trade. Their movement was destined to be steamrolled by the invisible hand of market realities. It would be easier to stop a freight train by standing in it’s path than to stop this.

That is what the conspiracy theorists and end time prognosticators get most wrong, they see this wind of change as being directed by a particular group of people, a few elites and celebrities, when it is truly a spirit of our time that even they themselves are participating in. I mean, how many posts do you need to read on Facebook decrying what it does to hijack our minds before the universe explodes because of the massive irony? We can’t help ourselves.

Even the Amish, who are way ahead of the curve as far as identifying the social danger of technology, cannot resist that sirens song and love their smart phones as much as anyone else. And they’re the experts at banning technology they’ve decided is bad for their communities and way of life. If they cannot collectively stop this influence, with their strong religious tradition, what chance do we have to hold back this flood of change?

Still some delude themselves, they believe they’re going to run into the hills and escape this onslaught. I’m thinking of the Rod Dreher types who believe that they will somehow be able to remove themselves, this isn’t the Eastern Roman Empire we’re dealing with. There is no place to hide, no place on this planet out of reach, maybe you’ll fall through the cracks or fly beneath the radar and yet I doubt it.

What we are seeing is the merger of something extremely old with some brand new means. There have always been those with an insatiable lust for power and control, those like the men of Sodom who believed that they should have access to Lot’s angelic guests. It will never be enough for them to rule their own domain. They will use the new technology to search out anyone who would resist them. They get off on your resistance and now have new tools.

The thing about the Biblical antichrist is that it is first and foremost a spirit. You can’t keep it out by walls or physical distance, we can see the manifestations, but we do not battle against flesh and blood. No, it is a war with isms, systems that deny Christ and put try to order the world without God. This always comes in such a glowing colorful and exciting form, but under this cover it is the same perversion of beauty and love.

The world isn’t ever going back to that of our childhood or parents and grandparents. For better or worse, the only constant in life is change. Yes, the pace now seems greater than ever, we are certainly finding ourselves with fewer places to hide. The surveillance state has never been stronger, privacy is a thing of the past, the new tools we use too complicated for most of us to understand and only give us an illusion of control.

Alas, all the things we face today are new forms of the same evils that have existed from the beginning of civilization. The only difference is that now it is on a global scale, with more sophisticated means and ability for centralized administration. The fake news, propaganda and misinformation is more subtle and convincing than ever. It all comes at us so fast anymore. It is easy to become disillusioned and demoralized, but we can’t let the giants defeat us.

There has always been an ebb and flow, the rise and fall of empires and epochs. The most cunning have always found ways to consolidate power and exercise control over the masses through various means. The times we live in could easily be compared to the “bread and circuses” of the Roman Empire. Now we have Netflix and the welfare state, enough entertainment and ease to keep us subdued. Maybe this is the time when the types who desire complete supremacy finally win?

We must pick our battles. There is probably not much you are going to do against the weight of the wealthiest most calculated and powerful of our time. What will be will be. Freedom and equal rights have pretty much always been a fantasy to keep us from being trouble to the elites. Most of us are slaves via debt. Step out of line, be the slightest threat to their rule, and they’ll put you in your place.

Liturgies of Life

The readers of this Irregular Ideation most likely noticed that I was down and struggling a bit. No doubt the prayers of my family and good friends have been heard. While the neck and other issues linger, there has been a break in the form of some good news that has brought with it that glimmer of hope again.

These cycles of mood and emotional swings have been something that I’ve pondered. Despite there being events that are involved, there is also this sort of rhythm and inevitability to these things. The phase “what goes up must come down” comes to mind. Sure, I’m probably on the more neurotic end of things, with higher highs and lower lows. But most people, no matter how good or bad their life is compares to others, seem able to identify with these ebbs and flows.

I mean, we have that time before coffee in the morning then that time after where the brightest of the world returns. There are those the weekly slow starts “a case of the Mondays” contrast with that euphoria of Fridays. Then the longer cycling patterns tired to holidays or weather. Has anyone else had encounters with SAD or Seasonal Effective Disorder? Descriptions like “terrible twos” or “the midlife crisis” exist for a reason. Is the “sophomore slump” real? I think so.

And there does seem to be a preordained nature to this all, like the seasons or how the sun rises and sets.

This kind of constant change is confirmed in Scripture:

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
(Ecclesiastes 3:1‭-‬8 NIV)

To me this is both beautiful and terrifying at the same time. The woman who brought a man such joy in their youth may make him all the more lonely when the season of death and seperation comes. The attributes that make a nation rise in prominence, say a focus on equality, can be the very thing that brings about their collapse once it finally does reach the top.

Not to say that any of this is meted out evenly across board either, some do have it easier or a higher baseline mood and others not as fortunate, nevertheless there are patterns.

Bigger dreams lead to bigger despair. But a harder struggle can also lead to greater joy and a more wonderful triumph for the faithful than those who lived for their own comfort. There is balance, there is growth, larger and smaller patterns, a predictability that seems could be modeled. How it plays out across groups of people is also a fascination of mine.

My own thought is that we could probably remove the triggering events and still end up with the same patterns in the end.

In other words, there would have been a world war even if the Archduke Franz Ferdinand had not been assassinated, my disenchantment with the Mennonite denomination would have eventually boiled over even if not for the same specific reasons, and Elon Musk’s Twitter account isn’t the reason the crypto market dropped from those all time highs either.

First, Let Me Talk About Stocks…

If cycles of human emotion could be mapped out, the stock market might be the place to start. The euphoria of a “bull” market and seeming endless pessimism of a “bear” market show how our emotions, collectively, shape the direction or mood of the market. But it is more than just random noise, it is a complex dance of feelings and facts, that produces the ‘right’ price in the end. It can often be algorithmically predicted.

A little story, for example, of how it works: I have bought and sold Dogecoin over the past few months. My first purchase, in December, at a cost of $1000 then, would have been worth hundreds of thousands at the peak. I sold it for a small gain. But later, as not to miss out, I bought in again, and saw my portfolio balloon when the “meme coin” finally caught fire. However, over the past few months, things haven’t been too good and the price was going down and down.

At first I had complete resolve. The smart investor holds, I did my due diligence, this is only a correction cycle and things will reverse soon. But eventually the pressure broke me. I decided that it was time to save what was left of my gains and move to something that would produce a better return. I thought this down trend would continue indefinitely or at least go lower—give me a better buy-in price later, right?

I’ll show you where I sold around 80% of my Doge…

Oh well, I think I’ll be able to get more later.

Yup. I picked the very bottom of the downward trend. Even knowing that cryptos have gone through similar corrective phases in the past before continuing their upward climb, and even telling my coworkers that Bitcoin (despite the plunge) would end the year above $70,000, I fell victim to fear, uncertainty and doubt precisely at the wrong time. I had waited for two months to see that trend reversal, at the bottom, and would have gotten it had I held on for another couple more weeks.

But more than to talk about my missed opportunities, I’m interested in that larger cycle of the market and how human emotions (in an aggregate) create this clear pattern. Many people want to blame events, like a Tweet from Elon Musk or what have you, for their change in fortunes. However, while we could see these events as being triggers, it seems the larger patterns are something more or less baked in.

Dogecoin, for example, could not continue straight up forever. Smart investors, who know the adage, “buy the rumor, sell the news,” started to sell before Musk’s SNL appearance. And the sell-offs came with mentions both good and bad. It was not the autistic billionaire businessman’s fault that so many people decided on that moment to cash in nor that others began to panic sell as the price dipped. It was all predictable, part of some sort of fractal meta-pattern, can be modeled (like this), and would have happened (triggered by something else) regardless.

Smart investors learn to zoom at, look at the longer trend, rather than let the emotions of a bad day get to them. Cryptos, despite their recent dip, have remained in an ascending pattern with the recent lows still higher than the high of the prior cycle, which is why the smart money (unlike your’s truly) continues to buy the dip and HODL (Hold On for Dear Life) rather than give up. Most people miss on big gains because they’re impatient.

Despite Recent Lows, An Upwardly Building Pattern Prevails…

It was after my most recent dip in mood that I realized something. In my prior lows over the years, as a Mennonite, I would still go to church for the fellowship and yet would not sing if the words didn’t feel authentic coming from my mouth.

But this past time, despite my feeling low, I still showed up to sing and did because (despite my pain and depressed mood) someone had to carry my part in the choir. Music was my worship, spiritual combat, rather about how I felt. This time I soldiered through the liturgy, toothache, emotional turmoil, and all. I left immediately after the service, rather than do the social ‘coffee hour’ thing, because I was miserable.

It might seem to be virtuous to only show up or sing when the feelings are there and yet it is hardly sustainable. If I only showed up for my job when I was in the mood or having a good day, my paycheck would be small to nonexistent. Many marriages end in divorce because the ‘love’ therein depends on their feelings in the moment and is not an actual commitment to love through better or worse.

So, in short, this duty-driven devotion, rather than being led by emotions, is actually progress. It was not simply another dive into the same dumps as before. No, I have changed, improved, from the “be true to yourself” advice to doing my job, for the good of others (including my choir director), gutting it out. Two steps forward, one step back, will eventually get you where you need to be.

There is a sense in which it was always a choice whether or not to participate. But my character development? That seems like something guided, the result of years of small nudges in the right direction, and not something that I can take credit for. In other words, I’m becoming what I was meant to be, having been placed in the right time and circumstances.

Despite Individual Progress, Are We Becoming Weaker?

That’s not to say that this kind of building pattern cannot work in reverse. When we consider our “first-world problems” in comparison to what people face in Afghanistan, it would appear that we are becoming collectively weaker rather than use the past generations boost. We use our opportunity to “stand on the shoulders of giants” to bellyache about ‘oppression’ because other people are not forced to pay for our lifestyle choices.

To put things into perspective?

Charlotte, my Igorot bhest, as the daughter of a subsistence farmer in the mountainous Benguet province, was sent away to assist her grandmother. She describes her childhood as being her “grandma’s water pump,” carrying heavy buckets to keep the garden watered. The work was so hard that she would cry and wonder why she was even born. That’s pretty much how my grandparents or great-grandparents lived, they did complain and probably because there was nobody to listen. Everyone struggled, physically, and became strong enough to survive.

Not Charlotte. But how many in the world work.

Compare that to my generation, where we were mostly spared hard physical labor, yet find plenty of reason to cry injustice. We have gone from “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me,” to triggered because an Amish kid stares at us. Being looked at too long a micro-aggression, I’ve heard. My own endless existential crisis another example and there are many other cases, in my generation, of oversensitive and dark struggles of those truly privileged compared to their hardworking parents.

While past generations in my religious upbringing may blame their insecurities on the standards and not being appreciated by their workaholic father or whatever, the latest generation can’t even eat peanut butter without breaking into hives. It isn’t their fault either, they’ve been coddled and protected from birth, their parents worked overtime to make sure that they felt heard and connected. Now, rather than see their discontentment coming from having to follow ‘legalistic’ church standards, our youth will struggle with questions of whether or not they’ve somehow been mis-gendered at birth.

There is little doubt that our sterile environment is likely contributing to the vast increase in autoimmune disorders and allergies. Whereas previous generations fell to disease, endured actual physical hardship and wondering where the next meal would come from, girls married as teenagers, we now have people distressed that someone used the ‘wrong’ pronoun…

However, in a sense, over the generations it is the same struggle in different form. No matter how improved things become, whether we get that go cart we dreamed about every day or not, there will always be another circumstance to blame our own feelings of not belonging on. The more challenges we remove for our children, the less capable they become. No longer comfortable in their own skin. We blame different externalities for our despair, yet maybe it is something genetic, internal and inevitable?

How Civilizations Rise And Fall

There have been various descriptions of how civilizations rise and fall, one example below:

Many Americans see that we’re on the decline and that our fall from world prominence is now as inevitable as the sun going down. And, given that many great empires have come and gone, this is not a big surprise. How could a nation of immigrants, people who left the oppression of the old world, traveled across the treacherous Atlantic and conquered a continent, who understood sacrifice, lead to a generation so entitled, unappreciative, self-loathing and suicidal?

It is easy to paint a very bleak picture. But then, gripes about the next generation are as old as human civilization and this doesn’t always mean a collapse is imminent. Yes, there is change. Top hats have gone out of fashion and will likely never make a return, trends come and go. There have been times of great social upheaval, like the American Civil War, followed by periods of relative calm. Those who lived through the Great Depression, the World Wars or Cold War all had their anxieties about the end being near, only for that “great peace” and fall of the Soviet Union to follow.

What feels like the end, under fresh leadership, could be the start of a new epoch. Take the fall of Rome. Sure, the Mediterranean empire fragmented, yet the common thread of Western civilization has remained to this day and is arguably stronger than ever. Yeah, the British Empire may no longer rule the seas, but their rebellious American sons and daughters have become even more powerful than any empire ever. So maybe after a painful declining corrective phase there will be a revival or rebirth?

Our survival depends on our optimism. We must assume that each pullback will lead to the next increase in amplitude. No, that doesn’t mean this is easy, doubt and despair require far less effort than hope and faith; failure is always possible even with the best efforts, but humanity has made it through many bad moments—moments many times worse than any of us will likely experience in our own lifetimes.

Maybe the down is what we needed to give us the bounce to greater heights?

How To Cope In the Best and Worst of Times

“What most frequently meets our view (and occasions complaint) is our teeming population. Our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can hardly support us . . . . In very deed, pestilence, and famine, and wars, and earthquakes have to be regarded as a remedy for nations, as the means of pruning the luxuriance of the human race.”

That quotation, while it sounds current, was written by Tertullian, an early Christian writer, in the second century and in a time when the human population was around 190 million—as in total population of the planet!

Today, nearly two millennia later, with a population of 7.7 billion of us anxiety cucumbers, we carry on this tradition of handwringing and worry about overpopulation. Books, written decades ago, predicted there would be mass starvation in the 1970s and yet here we are—each new generation fearful of the impending doom.

How could this be?

How could the experts of a generation ago be so wrong in their gloomy predictions?

We have perpetually overestimated our importance in the grand scheme of things and then simultaneously underestimated our ability to innovate (collectively) and adapt to an ever-changing planet.

Sure, we’ve had our impact, things like extinctions and deforestation are concerning and there’s a strong argument for conservation of resources. However, those preaching about the coming apocalypse are often either the victims of their own pessimistic bias or being exploited for political reasons.

No, the Amazon is *not* the lungs of the planet. It is an ecosystem that also consumes nearly as much oxygen as it produces. The widely reported fires are not unusual and, for the most part, involved land that has already been cleared rather than the old-growth forest. Furthermore, the trends of deforestation are slowing and will likely reverse. The only real change is that a man whom leftists dislike was recently elected in Brazil.

Climate alarmism is also a perennial favorite of secular doomsayers. But, oddly enough, these dire warnings never seem to change the behavior of those making them. For example, the Obamas recently made a purchase of a $14.9 million dollar estate in Martha’s Vineyard. That would be an incredibly stupid move for someone who really believed that the oceans were about to rise. But the truth is that the headlines screaming about the end coming in a decade have been a reoccurring theme for decades and the only thing that has changed over the past couple decades is an *increase* in the polar bear population.

What is missing from the fear-mongering campaigns and politically motivated hype is some perspective. This planet has been around for a long long time and has seen dramatic changes in climate. North America was once covered in glaciers. The Sahara desert was once lush and populated. Species have come and gone. Events like Permian Triassic Catastrophe (the ‘Great Dying’) have nearly made this planet uninhabitable, took eons upon eons to recover from, and occurred long before humans arrived. This or something like it will probably end the world as we know it and no amount of windmills will make the slightest difference.

We are not in control. We do not make the sunrise in the sky nor do we know what lies ahead. Tomorrow could just be another day or it could be the day a civilization ending asteroid hits and wipes out everything we have worked tirelessly to create, accumulate or preserve. My point isn’t to be defeatist or to encourage indifference. No, my point is to free you from fear and give you an opportunity to embrace what we do have—this fleeting moment to live and enjoy the experience.

No Earthly Good…

There is an ironic expression “don’t be so heavenly-minded that you are no earthly good” that is used to describe a person who wrongly uses big things to escape their small responsibilities. For example, when the Pharisees, always concerned about maintaining appearances for their religious peers, would declare “Corban” (set aside for God’s use) resources that should have gone to their mothers or fathers instead and Jesus calls them out for it.

Many use lofty reasons as an escape from faithfully performing their own mundane duties. It is easy to decry abuses a world away, but much harder to sacrifice our own personal advantages to serve local needs. We live in a world full of virtue-signaling social media personalities who either naively believe their 280 characters is making a difference or do so cynically, for selfish gain, and simply know what will help them climb the social ladder. There are many who would gladly make others suffer for sake of their conscience and yet rarely lift a finger themselves.

Those stuck in their worries rarely do much good in the world and especially when the anxieties are about things well out of their control. If anything the environmentalist’s obsession with planet-sized issues leads to indifference. In other words, some excuse their own hypocrisy in the name of saving the planet. Many others, more realistic about their ability to save the planet, are disheartened and give up entirely on the enterprise. Both miss the opportunity to make their own corner of existence better.

I recall many lectures from Evangelical pastors about things like the “10/40 window” and millions of ‘lost’ people in the world. The message, if meant to encourage, backfired for me. Unlike them, evidently, I could “do the math” and, by their reasoning, millions of souls would be damned regardless of my involvement and my time would be wasted. I mean what difference could one man make? Likewise, many are frozen rather than empowered by their global focus, even the activists themselves, and would be far more effective if they significantly reduced their scope.

In the parable of the good Samaritan, the two who passed by the wounded man were too concerned with other things to intervene on behalf of the immediate need. Likewise, in the story of the rich man and Lazarus, the unnamed rich man overlooked, possibly even stepped right over starving and sick Lazarus, on his way to important business elsewhere. In both cases above you have ‘big picture’ people missing a small, but obvious, local need and being condemned as a result.

To be truly “heavenly-minded” (at least according to the Gospel) is actually to love your neighbor, meaning that person right along the path you are on or literally at your front gate. That is how to be heavenly in a way that makes a real difference in the world. Those who try to ‘play God’ and save the world are “out of their lane” and are bound to be completely delusional or constantly overwhelmed. To be actually lofty means to sacrifice global ambition and to become locally active.

True faith does not require travel over land or sea, does not need outside funding or forced cooperation of the multitude, it only requires seeing the need in front of you and being the solution.

The Real Problem of Our Time…

The times we live in are unusual, but not for lack of a means to feed ourselves. And we’ve definitely left our mark on the planet, we (like all organisms) consume and in our consumption change the environment we live in. The universe is in a state of entropy, this planet is no exception, yet somehow there is life and we are here, extremely advanced, consciously aware of our place in it. We did not create the order we live in nor will we preserve it forever.

The established order of life, death, and birth again is something that should awe-inspiring and never a source of anxieties. From dust we came and to dust we shall return.

However, we are social creatures, we desire to have meaning and purpose in our lives, therefore we should find a role to serve. Which is the big problem in our time, we have our basic needs met with very little effort (at least in the developed countries) and should feel happy and content. But we are also more acutely aware than ever of the world’s problems and as a result, many feel more helpless and stressed than ever. In a time of peace, prosperity, and connectivity many are feeling angry, alienated and desperate for attention.

A History Guy video, “John B Calhoun and the Rats of N.I.M.H.,” about the threat of over-crowding and urbanization, deserves credit for provoking my thoughts. Calhoun had led a series of scientific studies involving rodents placed in a controlled, seemingly ideal, environment where necessities were provided and conditions right for a rapid expansion of population. The results of the experiments were startling, as the crowding increased so did the social dysfunction. Traditional mouse courtship was abandoned. Bizarre behavior from that of non-breeding “beautiful ones” to inexplicable violence (cannibalism, killing young, etc) became increasingly commonplace leading to a total collapse.

This “behavioral sink,” as Calhoun described it, was not a problem of lacking resources, the rats and mice had more than enough to thrive. But it was an issue of socialization, a question of carrying and comfort capacities, and illustrated the need for social structures. There are problems with this experiment, like all experiments, and human behavior is much more complex than that of rats or mice, but there does seem to be information relevant to our own human condition, as social creatures, and the rapidly changing times we live in.

What is really happening in our time is a disruption of beneficial structures and indiscriminate destruction of normalcies. Long gone are the times when most people stayed closely connected to a small group of people in one geographic place, we now drive thirty minutes to be with a friend, search for love across oceans, and many have no church, were raised in daycare by strangers and think “likes” on social media is relevance. The increase in substance abuse, mass shootings, and suicide could all be symptoms of a break down of social structures, like family and community, that give individuals a secure place.

We seem to be accelerating towards a cataclysmic end of our civilization, but that is a bit too pessimistic an outlook. Our species did not rise in numbers solely as a result of prolific breeding or by living in ideal environments. No, in fact, we survived to later thrive as a result of our unique capability to adapt ourselves to any climate and modify the environment to suit our own needs. Still, that does not mean we can continue to go in the direction we are going and our introspection is good so long as it leads us to make the changes needed.

Calhoun spoke of the need for a “compassionate revolution” and that our success often came as a result of honoring deviance over tradition. But he was also a man of his age. In our time it may be revolutionary, even rebellious, to live an ordinary life, to not indulge in travel, to stay local, to be loyal to our own familial commitments and remain faithful to the needs right at our doorstep. We need a restoration of the home and sacred space, a place to belong and also to be separate from the chaotic din of the mass media age.

We are not gods nor are we dumb beasts. We cannot singlehandedly save the planet, we can’t fix every problem either, but we can help to improve our local environment and settle our own internal space in a way that will bring light into the life of those we meet. The world needs fewer things to worry about, more love, hope, hugs, and Matthew 6:34:

“…do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

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