Archive for August, 2009
Learning and Growing
Aug 24th
Recently I noticed something that has secretly baffled me for years but, only recently, was able to describe in words. It’s something I see in politics, faith, technology, and many other places and is a barrier to gaining new knowledge and loving our neighbor. It’s something I would normally break down into a single concept in this sentence, but lack one…so I’ll give an example instead:
Think back to the last political campaign (or any campaign you can remember). During these campaigns, would-be presidents state what they believe about certain issues and what they will do in certain situations if and when they’re elected. They hold to these core beliefs throughout the election cycle until one of them is in The Office. Oftentimes, this is when things change. When that person becomes president it’s a whole new world of information and insight. They’re able to view top secret information, attend top secret briefings, talk to high level experts on issues, and otherwise fill their heads with a whole lot more information and perspective than they had before.
Now, let me ask this: What would you think of a person who gains a whole bunch of information about a topic, information that is absolutely sure to change their perspective on some things, and yet still refused to change their opinion or stance on certain issues? What would you think of someone who got new insight which changed the game but they stayed stuck in what they believed before they got all that info?
I can tell you that, in this culture, we call them “confident”, we call them “sure of themselves”, and we call them a leader. You know what I call them? A prideful and arrogant person who can’t grow and learn.
When we learn new information about issues, situations, and life in general we should be changing. We should be growing. We should be thinking things like “that stuff I said last week was wrong now that I know this”. And then we should be publicly stating that we lacked information and that we’ve grown since our last statement of belief. But instead, we don’t. In our world, changing our mind is seen as weakness. It’s seen as being wishy-washy or ‘passionate’ (in a bad way) or ‘flaky’. It’s because of this perception that people continue down a straight and arrogant path, refusing to learn and grow, admitting that they may have been wrong in the past.
It’s funny to me whenever I listen to political commentary and “the other side” jumps all over a political figure as a “hypocrite” because they changed their mind on an issue. How stupid is that? I’ll tell you: incredibly stupid. What’s the alternative? You learn new information that should change your mind and you keep old and incorrect perspectives? Shame on us for encouraging that.
Over the years I haven’t been afraid to change. I’ve changed because I’ve learned life lessons and have learned that I was wrong in the past about various issues. I’ve done this politically, spiritually, socially, and every other way you can imagine. It’s funny because some people write me off as “passionate” or “wishy washy”, they think I change my mind and live in the moment. The reality is, I change my mind based on new information or personal interactions that teach me that my previous views were wrong. I’m not afraid to admit that and no one else should be either.
As I always say, if anyone claims to have all the answers about anything (or even most of the answers, I don’t care the topic) I instantly don’t trust them and think them foolish. If you’re not willing to learn and grow, and in the process admit you’re wrong and make drastic changes to correct that, you’re missing out on living a life in the pursuit of truth. I hope to see more and more people put down their egos, admit they’ve been wrong in the past, and change. I learn to do this more and more every day and have learned that change is the only thing that should be constant.
Living in a post-WWII country
Aug 5th
I’m not sure if everyone else has the level of nostalgia that I do, but it sure doesn’t look like it. The reason I assume they don’t is that no one else seems to long for a time before industry, technology, and the hustle of normal life in the same way that I do. All of my daydreams are of big open and empty spaces created by the hand of God, not by some dude in a factory. I dream of the day when I can cancel my internet service and get rid of my cell phone because I live in a town where everyone I know is a 30 minute walk from my front door and I buy all my groceries from a farmer just down the road. The problem is that this type of world has disappeared, or is rapidly disappearing from this country and I don’t believe it will ever return unless we have no other choice.
The more I thought about the disappearance of this world, the more I traced it to a single and monumental time in our history: World War II. I used to think that our country had it’s most radical shift in lifestyles and ideas during the 1960s and Vietnam war…but the further I traced it the more I realized that the 60’s were only the practical and inevitable outcome of a post-WWII country. The explosion may have happened during the Nixon years, but the fuse was lit on a quiet Sunday morning in Pearl Harbor.
Everything we are, everything we know is almost universally a product of the second Great War. (I can hear a big giant “duh” coming from the history crowd) Lifestyles and expectations of what we ‘deserve’ were all born into existence during my grandparents generation. We entered the 1940’s as a mostly rural-focused, simple country. We left that decade an industrial and political super power.
As an example let’s look at the women’s liberation movement. The 60’s get all the credit for freeing women but it was actually done 20 years earlier when Rosie the Riveter beckoned women to the factories and away from the kitchens. This was undoubtedly a step forward for women’s equality (which I embrace and applaud) but it was done at the expense of putting industry and ‘career’ before family (which I heavily regret). It was Rosie that made women strong but the family weaker. It was Rosie who was responsible for helping to win that war but made McDonalds meals the inevitable replacement for women who no longer knew how to cook from scratch.
Speaking of McDonalds…WWII is where our concern for our body’s fuel (ie. food) fell by the wayside. We had better things to do, like win a war…we didn’t have time to worry about what we put in our stomachs. We’d outsource that to Swansons or Kraft. The problem is when the war ended our culture and habits didn’t change. We continued to live in ‘war mode’ eating prepackaged or pre-prepared foods which, as we see now, was killing us just as efficiently (albeit a little slower) than a Nazi bullet.
This whole ‘organic’ food movement is a direct backlash on post-WWII life. When the war ended we have a whole lot of explosives material and factories that we no longer needed. It had to so somewhere. Then someone had the brilliant idea of putting it in our food. No, I’m not kidding. The fertilizer that we now buy in bags from Home Depot is the product of too many unexploded and left over bombs from WWII. The non-organic food we buy in supermarkets is sprinkled with explosives, which is why it’s so huge and green.
How about The American Dream? (and subsequently our overachieving and non-stop lifestyle) A direct product of the War. We came home victorious and proud to a country untouched by the ravages of war. We were strong and wealthy and we started to believe we deserved it. The 1950’s were the living of this dream that we though we deserved. We lived high on the hog in our suburban houses, we all bought cars, we shopped for fancy clothes and built bigger buildings. We all ‘deserved’ dishwashers and washing machines so we bought them. We decided that we and our American Dreams were more important than community and relationship. We worked harder (and more often) to buy more stuff…we neglected our kids and outsourced their development to Mr Rogers, Big Bird, and Ronald McDonald.
I could go on forever but I’ll stop here. We think that this post-WWII world has always been ‘the way it is’…but in reality it’s only 60 years old. Our previous 200+ years were radically different in this country (not to mention our previous thousands of years before this country). We shunned self for community. We worked hard, but not so hard that we neglected family. We raised our own kids and cooked our own food. We talked with people instead of e-mailing @ them. We knew our neighbors and our farmers and we lived with them and supported them emotionally and financially.
And now I wonder how to escape this post-WWII world. How do you live in this era connecting with your family, your neighbors, the land, and God without the distraction and pull of a post-WWII world that constantly tugs on your shirt trying to lead you to a more ‘fulfilling’ life? I have no answer, but I can tell you that I yearn to disconnect from the hussle (not to mention the bustle). I look every day for ways to discard digital life for hard cold reality. Someday I might get there but until then I’ll live each day as an opportunity to move closer to December 6, 1941..just hours before the day that lives in infamy..and the day that changed America and American lifestyles forever.
