Off the Crazy Train

I got on to Facebook in 2007 for work purposes. Back before all of the privacy settings were really in place I used it for doing roommate placements my first year in housing. I would look at potential roommates and think, "Could these people live together?" and largely based decisions on that. I also used it for programming and event marketing and various other work related community building initiatives. It wasn't long before I was placed on this or that task force for social media every where I went. At Eastern Oregon I was tasked with chairing the social media committee for the whole division. Even when I first got to Gonzaga it only took a month before being tasked with a Facebook research and development project. I completed that project a month ago and for the first time find that I have no professional reason to be on Facebook.

I may have joined for professional reasons, but the majority of the time was spent recreationally. I have an aspect of my personality which Clifton describes as Input. I recommend StrengthsFinder a mile above any other personality inventory out there (yes, even the Myers Briggs). This aspect or strength of mine is what leads me to constantly pursue and absorb information - whether in formal academic avenues or through sitting around reading the dictionary (Merriam-Webster.com) or the encyclopedia (wikipedia.com). It also fueled most of my recreational activities on Facebook. What is this friend doing? What is this corporation about? What is happening on Facebook? That type of information is not really what I want to be filling my head with - but I find it a compulsory aspect of my personality. If the Internet is the information superhighway then Facebook is the exit for the mall. I hate malls - so why was I on Facebook? I want the exit for the library please. Take me to npr.org or or Google Scholar.

This is why I'm no longer on Facebook. The twenty people or so that need to know how to get a hold me can do so and the rest of them can figure it out if it's important enough. All the pictures and other stuff that your friends are uploading... when did that become what everyone wanted to see? It used to be considered an acceptable form of torture to go over to so and so's house and watch the slideshow clips from their vacation. Now we're crave for that fix like a junkie in withdrawal. Not me - thank you.

Those of you still on Facebook, for whatever reason, this is not a statement about you. I'm just letting you know why I'm not on there so please don't feel the need to get defensive. I'm sure whatever your reason for being on there it works for you or you wouldn't be there. Myself, I've unplugged from the crazy train.

Have a great day!

Quotable Quotations

I would really like to be able to say something of such consequence as these wonderful people.


“A kiss is a lovely trick, designed by nature, to stop speech when words become superfluous.”
– Ingrid Bergman

“The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.”
– Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1953

“Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.”
– Dorothy Parker, interview in Paris Review, 1956

“He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.”
– Abraham Lincoln, quoted in Frederick Trevor Hill's Lincoln the Lawyer, 1906

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”
– George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946

“Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place.”
– William Strunk and E.B. White, The Elements of Style, 1959

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
– Mark Twain, 1888

1183

The human/philospher/citizen part of my brain wants the government out of the control business. I don't like the state being in charge of selling alcohol, I don't even want them regulating power/electricity. The more liberties that exist the better off I think we are. I think that government should never impinge on the rights of a person or a society to make the choices around personal liberties. This should be regulated by the culture and the culture should self-regulate and self-correct. I think the church should be more actively influencing society instead of attempting to have the state regulate such things (whole other topic).

The academic/practitioner/future parent in me wants as little presence of alcohol in our society as possible. I know and firmly believe the more available it is the more problems we're going to see. It will make more work for me at work and facilitate poor decisions in the under 21 age adults. Underage drinking isn't what it used to be - there is seriously growing negative trend around alcohol consumption in the 16-20 year old population.

These two parts of my brain could not be reconciled. So I spent about an hour reading over the bill itself at lunch today. Here's the link: http://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/initiatives/text/i1183.pdf.

The part that first caught my eye was this:

"Require private distributors who get licenses to distribute liquor to pay ten percent of their gross spirits revenues to the state during the first two years and five percent of their gross spirits revenues to the state after the first two years"

This alarmed because it seems like it is designed to reward people that are currently in the business and make it difficult for people not in the business to enter the business. Thus discouraging new business and the entrepreneurial spirit. The more I read the more I realized that this bill is not only supported by big business it is tailored directly towards big business:

"the board may issue spirits retail licenses only for premises comprising at least ten thousand square feet of fully enclosed retail space within a single structure, including storerooms and other interior auxiliary areas but excluding covered or fenced exterior areas"

I've ultimately decided that I am for the privatization of liquor sales but I can't vote yes on 1183 because it simply replaces one superpower for another. Big businesses have enough of an advantage in the market economy naturally without government tailored policies that support them. I don't think there should be an policy that either favors or penalizes big business for what they are and this bill, in my understanding, favors them immensely. This whole thing strikes me as the government trying to be where government doesn't need to be: pandering toward big business corporations. I think this bill needs to be shot down and reworked to be more equitable. It was ready last year and it got voted down, I say we vote it down again and have them come back next year with a better version.

Quote #2

"Education is one of the paramount and enduring occupations of human society, whether carried on with or without set purpose. One generation forms another and the existing generation is constantly acting and reacting upon itself in a chain reaction of cultural evolution; a force driven by the acquisition of knowledge. Among the best in each generation it is turned toward the pursuit of wisdom; the only worthy application of knowledge."

-Jae Webb

The more we know, the less we see...

Back again... a year later. I went to one of those churches last Sunday that allows you to worship and get your cardio in at the same time. You know the ones I'm talking about. Towering speakers, rock band, chorus of vocalists, and the aisles filled with people jumping, twirling, and dancing to the upbeat music with arms swinging. In addition to not knowing any of the songs that were sung I felt very much like stranger observing anthropologically some foreign ritualistic ceremony. We didn't stay the whole time but cut out and went to another church across town where we knew we were more comfortable. I don't want to talk about what style of worship is better, more holy, more appropriate, or any of that. There is one question that strikes me as I reflect today - why is that a part of their relationship with God and not mine? I talked to people there and felt a good connection, very friendly, we seemed to have a lot in common and were able to relate. They weren't charismatic nut jobs like you may assume if you just watched them during worship. Growing up in the CoC I was considered the charismatic one. I mean, I clapped, and when the Spirit moved me I would raise my hands. I made more than my fair share of people uncomfortable. But this full out body rocking that I've witnessed at a number places is just flat out... uninhibited. In the CoC growing up it was all about the acquisition of knowledge and then, hermeneutics, the application of that knowledge. How well you did in Bible Bowl or how well you could recite scriptures or lead songs in 4/4 time were directly correlated to your spiritual well-being. I think this is very indicative of humanity in general. I think humanity is very impressed with and obsessed with it's own accomplishments, with everything it knows or thinks it knows. At least I know I am, but there's that word again: know. What I witnessed in those people had nothing to do with what they knew, and only a little to do with what they felt. It was more about, in my observations, surrendering to not knowing. Something which, despite my ability to recognize, I still lack an ability to understand. I process and relate to the world through an understanding of cognitive ordering and logical reasoning; at least in the day to day. But when I look at the most impactful and most pertinent moments in my life they have little to do with that. When I feel the most enlightened is when I encounter something I don't try to understand and surrender to it. That's when I can see more clearly than when I know what it is I'm looking at.

Quote #1

"Out of the ashes of our burned dreams rise the hopes of tomorrow."

-Jae Webb

Epiphany...

I realized a month ago why I've never been a blogger. Aside from one brief month this summer. I don't have the spare time required to do this.

Here's to maybe hearing from one day again or maybe not.